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Olivier Bernier wrote in "Words of fire deeds of Blood": "The French
Revolution, in less than four years, changed the World. From the
moment Louis XVI walked up the steps of the guillotine, no other
European Monarch felt safe again... (France gave itself a Constitution
and a Legislature). The liberties the French claimed for themselves -
of religion of the press, of assembly of thought; the right to be
taxed only if their representatives had first consented; equality
before the law and the end of privileges - all these startling
innovations soon appeared to be the normal requirements without which
no state could claim legitimacy."

Centuries on, the long and tortuous struggle waged by Black people in
South Africa against colonial exploitation and the legendary
oppressive apartheid rule culminated in the victorious constitutional
and Parliamentary democracy inclusive of all the people of South
Africa. South Africans, like the French, attained for themselves
substantive rights and freedoms without which the apartheid state
failed to claim legitimacy.

Ideally, the vision of the newly found democratic legislature from
1994 was to build an effective Peoples' Parliament responsive to the
needs of all the people, driven by the ideal of realizing a better
quality of life for all the people of South Africa.

A decade and a half later in 2009, the call by President Jacob Zuma
and subsequently by the Speaker of the National Assembly the Hon. M.
Sisulu for the emergence of the activist Parliament and State demands
of this fourth Parliament a new paradigm, an active review of the
manner in which the legislatures respond to the needs of the people in
particular those of the majority of South Africans who continue to
toil under the yoke of grinding poverty, systematic social and
economic deprivation, racism, intolerance and underdevelopment.

The new paradigm should mean that the sovereignty of Parliament and
state, the actions of the executive should reflect the activities and
liberties of all citizens. The Hon. Ben Turok asserted elsewhere that
the programmes of the executive should be driven by the people
themselves in order to attain optimum social and economic development.
A long-standing maxim by development theorists and practitioners.

We believe this state of affairs would be partly experienced where the
executive did not view the legislature as the adversary, where it did
not feel it had to defend the fallibility inherent in the state before
Parliament. The Hon. TM Masutha affirmed recently, and rightly so,
that the executive should be regarded as the integral part of the
Parliamentary oversight mechanism.

Activism on the part of the legislature and the executive will require
loyal adherence to the principles of egalitarianism, seek to promote
participatory planning and project implementation to remove
inequitable socio-economic conditions. The manner in which we have
pursued service delivery so far has been lacking in this egalitarian
concern, and thus threatened to turn the current process of service
delivery into a tool for perpetual dependency, underdevelopment and
permanent civil unrest. Fortunately, the Green Papers on National
Strategic Planning and Improving Government Performance by the
Ministers in the Presidency, envisioned the incorporation of the
dreams of South Africans about the future they want to have. The short
and long term strategic plan, goals and objectives will be interwoven
in the social, economic, political, moral, religious and cultural
aspirations and primacy of the citizens.

Rousseau maintained that "the State could serve as an instrument of
freedom only when all its subjects were at the same time sovereign,
for then alone could the people be truly said to rule themselves."

We have, for fifteen years in this Assembly, deliberated and
legislated with the firm belief, and fired by political party
manifestos and elections that the contract existed between Parliament
and the People and between the State and its citizens. Factually, we
have acknowledged, in part only, the obligations placed on Parliament
and State by this contract. We have unwillingly neglected the fact
that there should be equality of partnership in the contract, include
the people as co-decision makers, co-planners, co-implementors,
co-monitors and co-evaluators of the laws and projects that are meant
to change their lives for the better. Unless the legislatures and the
executive adopt participatory planning as the necessary process in the
government's development agenda, the country will find it difficult to
shake off the rampage of the civil protests that have now gone beyond
the realm of peaceful expression of discontent, and have become
appallingly violent and destructive.

The success of a developmental State which the government is now
pursuing with much vigour will depend largely on the kind of activism
that placed greater emphasis on the component of human development and
reserve direct State intervention for public safety, redress of the
imbalances of the past, welfare programmes and protective security.
Equally, distributive economic justice will require from the
Legislatures and the executive the kind of activism that will promote
strongly participatory economic development, where the economic
potentials of the majority are unlocked and economic self-management
is enhanced.

Perhaps what we are trying to say to parliament and the executive is
that let us refrain from perceiving the poor and marginalized majority
of our people as passive and helpless recipients of social services,
but as potential owners, controllers and managers of South Africa's
economic resources and wealth.

How else could we translate into reality what Deputy President Kgalema
Motlanthe said in Davos early this year when responding to the global
economic slump, that it was an opportunity for the nations of the
world to think of a new world economic order and rectify the negative
implications of uneven international economic inter-dependence while
President Jacob Zuma said the slump presented good opportunities for
South Africa to really look at its own economic development?
Precisely, what does an activist Parliament and state mean to us in
the House and the rest of the country?

I thank you.