Dear friends and fellow South Africans,

This morning, amidst the bustle before the budget speech in
Parliament, an IFP MP remarked that we seem to have learnt very little in
the past two thousand years when it comes to the economy. He quoted Cicero,
speaking in 55 BC -

"The budget should be balanced: the Treasury should be refilled, public debt
should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and
controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest
Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on
public assistance."

Ironically this echoes much of what has been said in the public debate since
President Zuma's state of the nation address a fortnight ago. Opposition
parties have been unanimous in cautioning that the proof is in the pudding
when it comes to the President's forecast of Government's output this year.
It was also Cicero who said, "Advice is judged by results, not by
intentions".

We have eagerly anticipated today's speech by the Minister of Finance, Mr
Pravin Gordhan, for the President indicated that the details regarding the
billions of Rands he mentioned in the state of the nation address will be
unpacked in today's budget.

To answer my colleague about what we have learnt when it comes to the
economy, I feel that as a country we have made some progress. But it is far
too little, and far too slow. In the past, the ruling Party advocated
Socialism. Thus, we were all encouraged when President Mandela embraced the
free enterprise system. I believe this was the ruling Party's Damascene
experience.

Most of us believed that the free enterprise system was the best economic
policy for South Africa, despite some of its shortcomings. It still is the
only path towards sustainable job creation.

When President Thabo Mbeki announced the policy of GEAR, an acronym for
Growth, Employment and Redistribution, I was still in Cabinet. I remember
describing this in Parliament as a Damascene experience on the part of the
ruling Party. And yet what happened? Immediately the tripartite partners of
the ANC, COSATU and the South African Communist Party, rejected GEAR. We all
saw them on national television jumping up and down, shouting: "WE DO NOT
WANT GEAR! WE DO NOT WANT GEAR! ASIFUNI GEAR!"

Next we had ASGISA, the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South
Africa. Cosatu now has its own economic policy. And let us not forget the
current debate on the nationalisation of mines. It is a Tower of Babel
situation on a matter which is critical to us.

In such a situation, when President Zuma promises to create new jobs, one
asks the question, "Is he going to re-invent the wheel in the midst of so
much dissension on the economy?"

I fear today's budget speech will offer little change from the present
paradigm. Like any other South African, I would like to hear the Minister of
Finance announcing less taxes, especially the many indirect and regressive
forms of taxation, which penalize the poor more than the rich. I would wish
the Minister to cut the extensive government waste, without rewarding
constantly failing public companies and institutions with more money.

More importantly, I would wish him to direct expenditure towards the end
point of service delivery, correcting the present budgetary imbalance where
most of the money is spent at the top, or just by Government to run itself,
with very little translating into actual services and goods enjoyed by the
people.

I would also wish to see measures to concretize the President's announcement
of a partnership with the private sector in job creation, which, in order to
be viable, must be in the form of alleviating the burden of doing business
and employing people, rather than more subsidies which create unviable and
parasitical industries.

If our economy is to prosper, we must find common agreement on how to
address poverty and joblessness. This has the potential of starting a
revolution in our country, no matter how fervently the President denies it.
If such a revolution does take place, all the gains we have made so far to
forge a common destiny will be lost.

We need a national consensus on how to address the economic policies that
can liberate us from the trenches of economic enslavement. Achieving this
successfully will have a domino effect on the other problems facing us,
which are equally challenging to us as a nation. These are issues, such as
BEE, which continue to divide us.

Deputy President Kgalema Mothlanthe and President Zuma himself have remarked
that we need to have a national discourse on these issues. To my mind, the
sooner we start the better.

Yours in the service of the nation,