Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen, members of the media, distinguished guests.

Nadine Gordimer, our national treasure, once wrote: “a desert is a place without expectation”.

Our beautiful country is fast becoming such a desert, both literally and figuratively. Not only are we in the grip of the worst drought in 70 years, but our economy, our education system, and the state of government services is driving many to despair.

All of us here, as leaders in society, must rise above the hopelessness of dashed expectation. We need to offer hope; a vision of a better South Africa. And that is the role I see for myself, and the party I lead.

We are building a new majority of diverse South Africans who genuinely want our country to succeed. And, where we govern, we are offering a glimpse of what this country would look like if we were given the chance to form a national government.

Nothing fills me with more hope for the future than the regular reports I receive on what the Democratic Alliance is achieving in the places it governs. Frankly, it is no longer a matter of opinion that the DA governs better than any other party.  It is a fact, confirmed time and time by again by countless independent reports, and by the national government itself.

I recently read an independent report prepared by GroundUp on rural healthcare. It praised the Western Cape Department of Health for the world-class service it is delivering to the rural poor in the Alan Blyth Hospital in the Klein Karoo.

I quote from the report: “The bed linen was changed regularly and the mattresses wiped down and disinfected. The floors and other surfaces were regularly disinfected.” This might not seem impressive to all of you, but if you are familiar with South Africa’s public healthcare system, you will know that, in many places, these basics tends to be the exception rather than the rule.

You see, getting the basics right in our public institutions makes all the difference. As the same report concluded: “If all public hospitals functioned at this standard, we would be able to implement National Health Insurance tomorrow…The Western Cape is showing that with proper management a huge difference can be made in the quality of service delivery.”

By getting the basics right in our health system, we were able to bring down the nurse vacancy rate from 34% to 1% between 2009 and 2014. In the same term of office, we brought down the mother-to-child HIV transmission rate to 1.8% -- the lowest in the country.

When you have a team led by a capable professional like our Provincial Health Minister, Nomafrench Mbombo, it is exciting to imagine what the future holds for health in the Western Cape.

The other big focus area in the Western Cape is education. Again, we have been able to reverse the decline just by getting the basics right: Ensuring that teachers are in the classroom teaching, that there are enough learner support materials for each child and introducing basic monitoring and accountability can have a huge impact on the system.

Just look at the results we are getting.

This year, every province saw a decrease in their matric pass rate, bringing down the national average down from 75% to 70%. The Western Cape was the only province that increased its pass rate, from 82% to 85%.

Much more important than the pass rate were the indicators of improvement in the quality of matric passes in the province. For the first time every single learner in the Western Cape qualified for access to some form of higher education. More Western Cape learners qualified for university admission than anywhere else, and the province had the highest number of maths and science passes.

It is particularly gratifying to see the improvements in our poorest schools in the Western Cape. Since 2009, the matric pass rate in “no fee” schools has improved from 56% to 73% -- higher than the national average for all schools.

I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Minister Schafer and her team, as well as Premier Helen Zille for everything she has done in the last seven years to turn the Western Cape around.

In the City of Cape Town, where we have been in government since 2006, the difference is really starting to show. I can say with confidence that Mayor de Lille runs the best city administration in the country by far – having obtained a totally clean audit for three years running, the only metro government to have done so.

Strong financial management systems mean that the City can afford to deliver services where they are needed most. The City spends 67% of its more than R20 billion capital budget on uplifting poor communities by, for example, providing free basic services, and upgrading public transport systems.

And it does this without compromising service delivery in the economic hub of the CBD, which is so vital for investment, growth and job creation. The success of Cape Town is undoubtedly why this province has the lowest unemployment rate, and the lowest number of discouraged work seekers, in South Africa.

Our message to every South African in this election year is a simple one: A vote for the DA is a vote for change. Change that brings better services. Change that brings jobs. For every South African, black and white.

We know what we are up against in this election. Our opponents are losing the debate on the economy, and they cannot match our record on service delivery. So their intention is to stoke racial fears and tensions in an effort to divide people.

Of course racism is an issue that we must not shy away from. And we must redress the legacy of apartheid with policies that help those who were previously disadvantaged.

But we will not allow our opponents to turn this campaign into a racial slanging match. While others use this campaign to sow racial division, we will be calling on South Africans to unite. While they appeal to people’s fears, we will offer hope. We will show South Africa that a prosperous future is possible, in which everybody benefits.

This time next week, South Africans will be looking tentatively towards Parliament for the annual State of the Nation Address. Many will be looking for a President in command of his office, in touch with the needs of the people. A President with a firm grasp of the challenges we face and a clear, bold plan to fix them.

But, if we are honest, the speech will probably leave us no wiser as to the true state of our nation, with no clear plan to get us back on track. Instead, we can expect more action plans, task teams and vague reassurances that we are open for business. No acknowledgement of the scale of the jobs crisis, and no sense of personal culpability for what has gone wrong over the last five years.

Nevertheless, it is important that we hear what the President has to say next Thursday. And this is why the DA will not be party to any unlawful disruption of the SONA address. It is important that the President is held accountable to the people. And for that to happen, Parliament must remain functional and intact.

We will let the President speak, we will judge what he said – or what he didn’t say – and we will respond through the opportunity afforded us by that very institution.

The problem with spoiler parties is that they lack ambition. While they are in politics to make a noise, we are in it to make a difference.

Our intention is to occupy the majority benches in Parliament soon. We want to govern the country so that we can put right what Jacob Zuma’s ANC has done wrong. And when we do, it is vital that essential democratic institutions like Parliament are still intact.

But make no mistake: Just because we will not resort to chaos, it does not mean that President Zuma will get an easy ride from us in the weeks ahead.

We are barely a month into 2016, and already we know that this year is going to test our nation like we’ve never been tested before. The year has begun in the eye of a perfect storm of low economic growth, spiraling corruption, rising unemployment, drought, rising inflation, failed service delivery. And we are dealing with the immediate prospect of a rapidly falling currency and a further downgrade to our credit rating.

Each of these crises has the potential to derail us, and each will require urgent interventions. It will require leadership with the courage of conviction to make bold policy decisions, and then stick with these decisions.

So what would we, in an ideal world, like the President to say on Thursday?

For starters, we’d like him to commit to sorting out our disastrous State-Owned Enterprises, starting with SAA. We simply cannot afford to pour billions in bailouts into the bottomless pit of our failed parastatals.

Then, we’d like to hear a singular and decisive commitment to avert another credit ratings downgrade. Our fragile economy will struggle to recover from junk status, and the President must guarantee the country that he will do what it takes to prevent this in 2016.

We also need the President to declare the drought a national crisis, and explain to us how he intends to support farming communities to ensure our nation’s food security is protected.

The next thing we want to hear about is Higher Education funding and, specifically, a working plan to increase NSFAS funding so that no student is left behind. And while the President is on the topic of education, he must tell us his plans to improve the schooling of poor, predominantly black learners – particularly in our rural areas.

President Zuma should also use this opportunity to demonstrate his commitment to social cohesion and nation building. He must help put an end to the bitter racial conflict and divisiveness that has dominated the news and social media. He would do well to acknowledge that, for all our problems, there is more holding us together than keeping us apart.

Finally, President Zuma needs to tell us how he plans to raise capital to keep us afloat in 2016. We certainly can’t borrow more money, we can’t print more money and we have little room left to raise taxes. So that leaves the option of selling off state assets and cutting waste. And this is where we call on the President to be particularly bold.

We should be taking our cue from countries around the world that are doing what they can to cut waste in difficult economic times. Take the recently elected President of Tanzania, John Magufuli, for example. He cut the budget for his opening of parliament by 90%, put a stop to business class travel for Ministers, banned non-essential overseas trips for officials, and cut the budget right down to the quality of the Christmas cards.

Over the last few months, the DA has been working on a plan to streamline government to make it less costly and more efficient. If elected to national government, we would save R4,6 billion per year simply by re-organising the executive into a streamlined, delivery-oriented Cabinet of 15 Ministries. We call it Operation Hlasela Mafutha or “Cut the Fat”.

Let’s be honest: our Cabinet has become obscene. The staff, the bodyguards, the luxury cars, the first class flights, the food, the office refurbishments and the five star hotel stays. All status, no substance, and at the cost of billions of rands.

We need to Cut the Fat. And we can start by reconfiguring ministries and departments with the single-minded objective of boosting economic growth and creating jobs.

Before I outline what this means, a little background is helpful.

In 1994, our Cabinet consisted of 17 ministries. This was reduced to just 16 in 1996. However, under President Mbeki, this ballooned to 28 ministries. And today, under President Zuma, our Cabinet consists of a massive 35 ministries.

Ours is one of the largest cabinets in the world. Not only do we have a President, a Deputy President and 35 Ministers, we also have 37 Deputy Ministers. That’s an executive of 74 people.

The reason we have a super-sized cabinet is because our government has a super-sized patronage network. The only way to ease tensions between factions and reward loyalty is through the offer of a powerful, high-paying job. Like frequent flyer miles, ’The Cabinet’ has become nothing more than an expensive ‘loyalty rewards programme’.

Salaries, housing and car allowances, travel allowances and VIP protection services for all 74 members of the Executive make this an extravagance we can ill afford. In fact, our spend on VIP protection alone amounted to more than R2 billion last year.

This massive cabinet has a direct correlation with the size of our public sector wage bill, as each government department has a top-heavy structure of officials who all count on President Zuma’s ever-expanding loyalty rewards programme. Currently our Public Sector wage Bill accounts for almost 40% of government expenditure.

So if this cabinet is way too big and expensive, how do we go about trimming it?

The DA proposes cutting the number of ministries down from 35 to just 15, and structuring them in such a way that government spending would be carefully directed towards priorities that lead to economic growth and job creation.

Here are the 15 Ministries that would form the Cabinet in DA government:
Employment & Enterprise
Economic Infrastructure
Finance
Basic Education
Further Education, Skills & Innovation
Health and Social Development
Integrated Planning and Service Delivery
Police
Local and Provincial Government
Home Affairs
Agriculture and Land Reform
Justice and Correctional Services
Environment
Foreign Affairs
Defence
Some of our ministries, such as Finance, Police, Home Affairs, and Defence would remain unchanged, but others would be completely reassembled from existing ministries to ensure a streamlined and efficient focus.

For example, our brand new Employment and Enterprise Ministry would be made up of Trade and Industry, Small Business Development, Economic Development, Mineral Resources, Tourism and Labour. This Ministry would have one goal, and that is to grow jobs.

Similarly, our new Ministry of Economic Infrastructure would be tasked with managing the basic conditions of South Africa’s business environment. It would encompass, among others, the old Ministries of Communications, Telecommunications & Postal Services and  Transport.

Then, by combining the Human Settlements and Water & Sanitation with the Expanded Public Works Programme as well as various programmes from the Department of Public Works, we will create a Ministry of Integrated Planning and Service Delivery that can address issues ranging from service delivery to redressing the legacy of Apartheid spatial planning.

Our 15 ministries will result in a government that is responsive and citizen-oriented. And, importantly, it will result in a huge saving of public money. With the R4,6bn that we can free up by trimming our bloated government, we can truly begin re-investing in asset building.

It is worth mentioning that there is nothing extraordinary about small government. In fact, there are many examples of countries just as complex as South Africa, with far leaner governments. Germany, for example, has 15 ministries, France has 16, China has 20, Russia 21, the United States just 10. The President of Brazil recently cut the size of the cabinet down by 8.

Imagine how refreshing it would be if President Zuma announced a bold government-wide waste cutting programme like this in next week’s State of the Nation Address. What a signal it would send out about the seriousness of our fiscal situation.

Whatever the President does on Thursday night, I urge him to think very carefully about what is at stake. I would like him to think about what we stand to lose if we don’t start pulling in the right direction.

I urge him to start mending bridges with the private sector – to stop seeing business as the enemy – and to build partnerships through which we can tackle our massive challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment.

I urge him to make a strong statement condemning the racism and all forms of bigotry, no matter whom it is perpetuated by. He must send a signal to other leaders that racially divisive rhetoric has no place in our public discourse.

And, finally, I urge him to announce plans to harness the talents and energy of every person who is prepared to work hard to make a better life. It is these millions of positive, hopeful South Africans who hold the key to our future.

I thank you.