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The policy of holding detrimental or unnecessary assets is so embedded
in the Department that, in spite of our full confidence in the new
Minister, the IFP must regretfully oppose this budget until the
Department embarks in the privatisation of non-performing State
enterprises and those which serve no compelling public function.

The global depression is reducing our tax revenues, while increasing
the need for social spending, with an envisaged shortfall of 80
billion Rand. It is envisaged that this shortfall will be made up with
taxes forced onto our children with compounded interests in the form
of an increased public debt.

We must make up this shortfall by selling public enterprises which the
State has no business owning. There is no reason to continue to own
South African Airways and South African Express. In their
combination, they appear ripe for disposition, and should not receive
the requested R1.6 billion bailout.

For ten years, Denel has been a major liability to tax payers, and
this year is approaching the Treasury for an additional 1.7 billion
Rand bailout. Domestically and internationally its weapons are not
selling. It is morally repugnant enough to force our population to be
arms merchants, not to have to bear the further injury of doing it at
a perpetual loss.

We call the Department to snap out of its apartheid legacy and become
the incubator of enterprises still ahead of the market but critical to
our industrial future such as biotechnology and nanotechnology
research, and to break up Transnet devolving port infrastructures to
the provinces and municipalities concerned as the rest of the world
does.