Address by Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi MP, President of the Inkatha Freedom Party, in the debate on the President's State of the Nation Address, National Assembly, Parliament, Cape Town, February 19 2013

Your Excellency the President; Honourable Members

I rise to speak with a sense of utter distress. As hard as I tried to hear something in our President's State of the Nation address that would restore my confidence in the current leadership of our nation, I found nothing on which to pin my hopes. What I heard in the State of the Nation Address were aspirations and dreams. What I did not hear, are timeframes, strategies or anything for which we could hold our President's administration accountable in this last year of the fourth democratic Parliament.

Indeed, Mr President, I doubt whether anything you spoke of last Thursday will come to fruition in the time of your Presidency, or perhaps even in your lifetime. I say that with respect, but with utter distress.

I looked for something last Thursday on which to pin my hopes, because I remember how hope sustained our liberation struggle. Even in the darkest nights, we retained hope of eventual freedom, and that hope kept our cause alive. Without hope, the future can no longer be imagined or pursued. For the first time in my life, I worry that our nation's future is darkening as, inch by inch, we drift further away from hope.

Last November the Inkatha Freedom Party stood in solidarity with opposition parties in this Parliament as we tabled a Motion of No Confidence in our President. That motion was driven by the shared understanding that the divide between the ruling party and the opposition in South Africa is no longer purely a difference in ideology, perspective or opinion. It is a fundamental difference in values. The values which we believe in as the opposition, the very values which are held dear in our society, have been abandoned by the ANC.

These abandoned values are the values of Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Dr John Dube, Mr Makgatho, Rev. Mahabane, Dr Moroka, Inkosi Albert Luthuli and other prominent past leaders of the ANC.

Now, however, the ANC believes the State is there to be pillaged, abused and disrespected for the self-enrichment of the ruling class. The rest of us believe the State is an instrument to serve the people of South Africa, to meet the needs, wants and aspirations of our people. There is a fundamental divide between the ruling party and the people of South Africa, and that divide is growing.

The President referred to the vast number of comments he had seen from South Africans on Facebook and Twitter. He is right that South Africans have a great deal to say. We have much to contribute. But how many of those comments express concern, frustration and anger?

The IFP invited South Africans to comment on Facebook during the State of the Nation Address and to express their own opinion on whether our President is telling it like it is. And they spoke. Not just on Facebook, but across the broad spectrum of social media. Sam Nujoma said "Zoooma lives in his own world. and expects us to believe him." Unathi Fiti said, "Yet another empty promise from our President." Anton Pillay said, "All the promises you made before you got elected. they ain't come true."

These few comments reflect an overwhelming public opinion that the President's address does not describe the state of our nation. The real state of our nation is expressed in the cry of more than a million young people who sit without work, while the President asks the private sector to "absorb" 11 000 FET graduates. The real state of our nation is expressed in the children who sat without textbooks for more than half a year, while the President asks the private sector to fund maths and science academies and Saturday schools. The real state of our nation is very different to what the President describes.

I have said before that I cannot walk in harmony with a President who is perceived to be speaking from both sides of his mouth. Mr President, you seem to speak from both sides of your mouth. What daring to speak about the Bill of Rights when you yourself are compromised on this issue. You sing Umshini Wam. You allow the slogan "Kill the Boer, Kill the farmer". You have stood in this House and declared, quite without qualms, that the minority has fewer rights than the majority. Where is your Constitution, Mr President? Please show me where that hallowed document grants some citizens more rights than others.

I have said, many times, even before Polokwane, that I do not see the President as merely the President of the ANC. He is our Head of State. He is my President too. I thus afford him the respect he deserves. I wonder though why the President seems not to respect me, even as a citizen. I have written to him many times and receive nothing more than an acknowledgement of receipt from his staff. How should I interpret the fact that my latest letter was not even acknowledged?

That letter informed the President of my own reasons for joining the Motion of No Confidence. I felt my President should know why I no longer have confidence in his leadership. I am not standing in this House to attack him, or even to criticise what his Government has done. I am standing here as a citizen who has lost hope and lost confidence, and who sees no way for us to continue on this path.

The time has come to close the first Republic under the ANC, which is characterised by corruption, lack of vision and lack of leadership. The time has come to usher in a second and better Republic dedicated to the people and the values of our liberation.

Our President has used the expression that one must cut the coat according to the cloth. As someone with many years of experience in governance, I know what he means. You can only work with what you have. And no one expects the President to do more for the country than what can realistically be done with the resources at Government's disposal. But we all know that the resources at Government's disposal are enormous and the budget allocations are generous to address key issues like education, poverty and healthcare. It is not for lack of throwing money at our problems that we flounder.

Our President also made it clear that what is happening globally is bound to affect us. But even within these two confines of limited cloth and the global economic meltdown, one cannot escape the truth that this Government has wasted money. It has wasted the resources available to it. What has been promised has not been delivered. And corruption has darkened the soul of our Government. To my mind, the President has lost his credibility to speak of external challenges.

For three years I have said in this debate that the IFP will support this Government where this Government does the right thing, and I will support the President when the President does the right thing. Thus I will not stand here and say that Government has done nothing for our people. I was in Government for ten years and I know what we did for this country. Even from the opposition benches the IFP has seen Government do some things for the people. But not enough things. Not quickly enough. Not with the kind of commitment that reality demands.

Instead, resources have been frittered away at every level of Government. In national government, provincial administrations and municipalities, performance is so poor and delivery so slow that I have lost hope of us ever coming close to addressing South Africa's problems successfully. I no longer believe that the vast sums of money set aside to address specific problems will actually reach those problems. So even the amounts the President quoted for infrastructure development are meaningless.

In spite of all the countermeasures the President mentioned, corruption is endemic. There is no visible improvement. Why should we be impressed that Government has now decided that Accounting Officers should face consequences for non-compliance with accountability measures? Why have there been no consequences before?

Euphemisms and hyperbolic catch-phrases will do nothing to solve genuine problems. The President told us that in 2008 Government declared education an APEX PRIORITY. While education was an APEX PRIORITY teachers were allowed to strike, textbooks were dumped in Limpopo, learners entered high school functionally illiterate, pass rates were dismal and thousands of leaners simply dropped out. So now, we are changing the name APEX PRIORITY, as though the name had anything to do with the problem. Now we are calling education an ESSENTIAL SERVICE. But, just to clarify, that doesn't mean teachers can't strike. It simply means. well, actually Mr President, what does it mean? Giving the problem a new title will not solve the problem.

It is insulting for the President to say, "We want society to take education more seriously" and "We want everyone in the country to realise that education is an essential service." We do take education seriously. We know it is an essential service. The people of this country have been begging for solutions to our failing education system. The only one that has not been taking this seriously is Government.

It is also insulting to the people of this country to say that the Annual National Assessments have become a powerful tool of assessing our education system, without having the honesty to say that the Assessments have left us in shock over how dismally our schools are performing. Study after study, report after report, South Africa's education system is proven to be worsening. Let's have the honesty to say so.

Let's also have the honesty to say that the R102 billion that has been spent on consultants in the past 3 years points to a civil service that has no idea how to do its job. Apparently over the last 19 years no progress has been made in building a civil service that knows how to govern effectively, efficiently or at all.

Yet when governance at all levels dismally fails, when money is rolled over and not spent, when corruption takes out service delivery; national Government steps in. The interventions in Limpopo and the Eastern Cape indicate the extent of the problem. But such intervention is no panacea, as the President would have us believe. It is also blatantly untrue that when the State intervenes in private industry, it turns things around and creates success. In fact, the opposite is true. How many state owned enterprises are prospering? SAA? Denel?

There is no evidence to suggest that Government would do a better job running our mines than private companies. Even if, after years of playing footsie with the idea of nationalisation, the ruling Party has abandoned this notion, the crisis in mining has not gone away. The President would have us believe that because an inter-ministerial committee supposedly restored social stability in Marikana, and because a Commission of Enquiry was set up, all is now done and dusted and squared away and there is nothing left to worry about.

It is again an insulting euphemism to refer to Marikana and the violent strikes that followed as "difficulties" in the mining sector in the last few months. Has any calculation been made of all that has been lost in the many protests and strikes that have swept our country? Has anyone calculated the cost of the looting of shops, the destruction of property and the lost productivity? Has anyone calculated the cost to our national psyche, our social cohesion and our trust in the rule of law?

When I was in high school, our Principal explained that one man's right ends where another man's right begins. When property is destroyed during violent protests, the Bill of Rights is trampled. And when teachers are allowed to strike, leaving learners without access to education, the Bill of Rights is trampled. Why then, Mr President, are you bowing to SADTU, except for the obvious reason that you need their political support?

I wonder how far we will get with the National Development Plan, when COSATU has already compared it with GEAR. How long before we hear the resounding call, "ASIFUNI NDP!"? Mr President, you cannot implement the NDP and please your alliance partner.

One cannot help but wonder if the analysts are right; that very few in either the ANC or its alliance partners have read the 450 odd pages of the NDP. How many Departments offered comments to the National Planning Commission on specific details of the NDP? The IFP submitted some 20 000 words of advice. We thus have no illusions about the NDP changing anything in our country in the next year, or the next five years. This is a twenty year vision, populated with aspirations and goals. We support the NDP. But we realise it is not the Band-Aid the President would have us believe.

There is no Band-Aid for the crises in education, healthcare, unemployment and poverty. When R126 million is set aside in the human settlements budget for gap housing, but only R70 million is spent, the Band-Aid clearly didn't work.

Let me offer the President some words of advice. Don't expect the Expanded Public Works Programme and the Community Work Programme to absorb all our unemployed youth. Don't insult those millions of young South Africans with the platitude, "Working together we will find a solution to youth unemployment." Don't expect South Africans to be silent as inflation robs them of food on their table and a roof over their heads. Don't think that the passing mention of the rape and murder of women and girls "in recent times" is enough to solve a scourge that has been plaguing our nation for decades. And don't drive wedges between our people by making it increasingly impossible for some segments of our society to do business, find jobs and provide for their families, all in the name of BBEEE.

Now, let me speak about the sanctity of human life. South Africa comes from a past of People's War, of black-on-black bloodshed and political violence. How much has nineteen years really changed? Even now we have intra-party and inter-party violence, we have rape and looting and rampant crime. With all the assurances that our police are gaining control, the situation appears out of hand. Perhaps we should look to the number of prisoners filling our prisons to capacity. Perhaps that would be an indication of whether we are winning this war, or losing it.

Marikana should remind us how easily things can get out of control. Throughout the history of man there have been conflicts which resulted in war. Coming as we do from a past of war, we should be more concerned about political violence. Disdain for the sanctity of human life clearly still hangs over our heads. It seems some people have no qualms of conscience, no scruples, either conscientious or religious, about killing people for political reasons. I was hoping to hear our President pronounce on this matter.

He and I come from different schools. Our President knows that when the ANC abandoned the values of its 1912 founding fathers and embraced violence as a means to end apartheid, the IFP did not agree. In 1979 our two parties met in London to discuss an armed struggle, and the ANC urged Inkatha to avail its structures to bring bloodshed and violence into this country. We refused.

I upheld the sanctity of human life in every circumstance. I felt we should adopt a composite strategy towards ending apartheid, through negotiations. Still, I never condemned the decision of the ANC to take up arms and I understood the frustration that drove them to it. In fact, addressing a thousands strong rally at Jabulani amphitheatre I said that they could go through that fence, for our border is very wide. Cabinet then sent Minister Piet Koornhof to complain about what they understood to be my support for the armed struggle.

But I have always believed in the sanctity of human life. My respect for life never diminished, no matter what happened, throughout the People's War and afterwards. Thus I never ordered, ratified, condoned or authorised a single human rights' violation. I think it important that leaders pronounce where they stand on these matters, for even today political killings continue.

The political violence of last year demands that the President of the ANC, and the President of our country, pronounce on the sanctity of human life and declare where he stands with regards to political violence. Our President has spoken about people's right to life, but somehow this has no resonance given our history. One would want all our country's leaders to be able to say, "My hands are clean, my conscience is clear". But our history speaks otherwise.

South Africans wanted to hear last Thursday what this Government is going to do to turn things around. Instead, we heard nothing new. The State of the Nation Address was deeply disappointing. It has caused me, at last, to lose hope. Not in my beloved country, but in my President. It has given me no cause for renewed confidence and I find myself leading my Party to return to a Motion of No Confidence.

The time is indeed here to close the door on this first Republic and to admit that through corruption, poor leadership and a lack of vision, South Africa was placed on a path to destruction. Let us open now, with the rising voice of a nation at odds with its Government, the better second Republic our people deserve. Let us set this country on the right course, by doing what is needed: by unseating a leadership not fit to rule.

Issued by the IFP, February 19 2013

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