Response by ACDP President, Rev. Kenneth Meshoe MP in debate on President Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation Address, National Assembly, February 15 2012

"The ACDP commends President Zuma on his State of the Nation address, with its focus on growing the economy, with huge expenditure on a number of infrastructure projects, such as rail, road transport and ports. These ambitious plans undoubtedly bring hope to the nation faced with high levels of poverty and unemployment. The challenge will be to finance and implement these huge projects. It is crucial for government to create a sufficiently enabling environment for investors, entrepreneurs and manufacturers, rather than creating an obstruction to doing business.

Government will have to ensure that we have the necessary skills for these projects, that endemic state corruption and incompetence is addressed.

Equally important, Government will also have to guard against tenderpreneurs from unlawfully exploiting the rich pickings that these massive infrastructure projects present. Being politically well-connected must not be allowed to replace honest hard work, such as we've seen in Limpopo.

We also welcome the undertaking to reduce the cost of doing business by addressing high port and electricity costs. Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus has already expressed concerns about the impact of administered prices such as electricity tariffs, warning that above-inflation electricity price increases should not be allowed to inhibit growth and investment. Addressing such costs will go some way to ensure that South Africa becomes more competitive globally. Increased productivity remains the key, however, for increased competiveness.

The ACDP welcomes Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu's confirmation at last week's Mining Indaba that nationalisation was not a viable option for the country. Regrettably, Honourable President, the debate on nationalisation and regulatory uncertainty has curbed investment in the mining sector in South Africa . South Africa has mineral wealth equal to that of Australia and Russia combined, yet the sector is declining due mainly to regulatory uncertainty, government capacity, infrastructure constraints and a lack of suitably skilled persons.

We need to ensure that other challenges facing the mining sector such as increased costs, and now alternative proposals such as increased taxes, resources rent and more state intervention don't further damage the mining sector which is so crucial to growing the economy and creating jobs, not only for South Africa , but also for the SADC region.

We agree with Planning Minister Trevor Manuel that research and development is key to unlocking the potential of South the mining industry. We regret that more was not said regarding the crucial role that small businesses play. This is the real place to grow the economy and create jobs. Honourable President, more needs to be done to support small businesses by, for example, reducing regulatory bottlenecks and red tape to reduce the cost of doing business and to facilitate easier access to soft loans.

What was surprising from the President's speech though was to hear the President praise teacher unions, who he claimed, heeded a call to teachers to be in school, in class, on time, teaching for at least seven hours a day. I believe most parents and school children would dispute the President's claims.

If teachers were teaching at least seven hours a day, then South Africa would not be regularly be finding itself at the bottom or near the bottom in international rankings for literacy, numeracy and science. If the President's claims were true, then Graeme Block, a so-called education expert at the Development Bank of Southern Africa , would not be saying that 80% of schools are "dysfunctional" and that half of all pupils drop out of school before taking their final matric exams. SADTU that usually calls for strike action during schools hours must take some responsibility for the fact that only 15% of our students get good enough grades to qualify for university.

If the President is truly concerned about the education of our children, then he should challenge members of SADTU, who have called for schools to be shut in support of Cosatu's protest against the e-toll system to stop their planned action to down chalk. The ACDP does not want our children to be prejudiced any longer because of striking teachers during school hours.

Speaker, despite evidence that corruption is increasing in South Africa, the President did not say much about the government's plans to fight this scourge, save to welcome Cosatu's launch of Corruption Watch.

Yesterday, members of the Portfolio Committee on Police were stunned by what was revealed during a presentation made by the Police's top management regarding leases by the SAPS. While it was made clear to us that SAPS does not negotiate the leasing of any building, as the department of Public Works (DPW) does so on their behalf, we were, nevertheless, shocked by the top management's ignorance of the terms and conditions of the leases they are paying for. By way of example, they could not explain why they were paying exorbitant rates for leasing space, such as R1, 292.00 per square metre for a period of 99 years! This, we believe, is wasteful expenditure by the police and should be investigated. It was, therefore, not surprising to hear the Public Works Minister say that his department is in chaos and dysfunction with no hope of achieving a clean audit at the end of this financial year.

We were informed that police officers who dealt with the department of Public Works regarding the leases in question have since resigned or gone on early pension, and we can't help but wonder why.

The ACDP believes that both department of SAPS and DPW should be investigated. Those found guilty of corruption and benefiting illegally from State tenders should not only be punished and taught that crime does not pay, but should also make restitution by paying back what they have stolen, with interest. If such drastic action is not taken, then I believe the cancer of corruption will never be uprooted in our country.

It is shocking that the Special Investigating Unit admitted, in response to an ACDP question during a parliamentary briefing last year that the level of fraud and corruption in the state procurement process is between 25 and 30 billion rand per year.

Honourable President, we must ensure all crime-fighting units such as the SIU and the Hawks have sufficient capacity and funding to successfully investigate and prosecute incidents of corruption in the public sector, and where necessary to recover the stolen or misappropriated funds. It is imperative that the SIU's enabling legislation is amended to give it full legal standing to bring civil cases to recover stolen state funds.

The ACDP questions the President's argument for wanting to review the powers of the Constitutional Court after he said and I quote: "It is after experiencing that some of the decisions are not decisions that every other judge in the Constitutional Court agrees with."

The President further asked, and I quote: "how could you say that the judgment is absolutely correct when the judges themselves have different views about it?"

The ACDP questions the logic of a President who questions the logic of having split judgments. Does he expect judges to become rubber stamps of government's decisions, or to sit on the bench just to endorse rulings that they may not agree with?

I want to remind the President that decisions by the Constitutional Court need not be unanimous - a simple majority prevails if there is a legal quorum. In a split decision, the will of the majority of the judges is binding, and one member of the majority delivers the opinion of the court itself. One or more members of the minority can also write a dissent which is a critical explanation of the minority's reasons for not joining majority decision. This is standard practice in democratic states.

While the ACDP welcomes a healthy debate around the powers of state bodies and their effectiveness, we nevertheless reject what appears to be the President's encroaching and attempts to interfere in the work of the Constitutional Court. If he succeeds in reducing the powers of the Concourt, he might begin targeting our other courts, just as his comrade, President Robert Mugabe, has been doing for a number of years. We would therefore appeal to you, President Zuma, to be very cautious when considering reviewing the powers of the constitutional court as this can be seen as a direct threat to the independence of the judiciary".

Issued by the ACDP, February 15 2012

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