Date: 26/05/2004
Source: Ministry of Provincial and Local Government
Title: F Mufamadi: Debate on State of the Nation address
ADDRESS BY PROVINCIAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT MINISTER, FS MUFAMADI, ON THE OCCASION OF THE DEBATE ON THE PRESIDENT'S STATE OF THE NATION ADDRESS, 26 May 2004
Madam Speaker
His Excellency President Thabo Mbeki
Honourable Members
"STATE OF DEMOCRACY: TRANSFORMATION OF STATE INSTITUTIONS"
Mr President, yesterday we were reminded about the ostensibly historic handshake - the handshake you and the Honourable Mr Tony Leon shared on the occasion of your re-election. It was also suggested that the handshake should be a starting point of a new era in South African politics. Our nation already has a People's Contract, so we were told. We were also reminded that: "the struggle for freedom and equality is not, and was never, waged on behalf of the masses."
Those of us who were tempered in the trenches of that struggle and who remain committed never to dishonour the cause of freedom, know this that state power must be exercised in the name and interest of all the people of South Africa, Black and White. We know that we have an obligation to bring to the centre of state policy and programmes, those to whom poverty was an institutionalised material condition of life.
The contract between us and the masses of our people cannot be supplanted by a handshake. Thank you very much Honourable Mr Leon, your hand must not cross the floor. Please keep it to yourself!
Mr President, some of the "expert" observers of the South African political scene had a lot of intelligent things to say about the State of the Nation Address you delivered in this august House on Friday last week. They say you eschewed poetry and philosophy in favour of a concrete programme of action. Of course, they betray their own incomprehension of the poetry of the masses. They clearly missed the philosophy that underpins the programme of action.
Unlike the "expert" observers, the Democratic Alliance demonstrably understands the philosophical differences that exist between us. Although they seek to conceal this, they also understand the material implications of the ideational contestation. In this regard, Mr Leon's philosophy is discernible from his eulogy of Edmund Burke. It places him and the Party he leads, in the camp of traditionalist conservatives who are known to have sought a stable order, but through a life based around tradition, not forward-moving forces. These are reactionaries who see the highest virtues in the ways of the old. The self-confessed disciples of Edmund Burke who himself was a supporter of the notion of natural aristocracy, and saw the state as a "divinely ordained moral essence" in a society uniting "those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born".
A little over 10 years ago, the South African state had the following features:
* a central government
* 10 Bantustants
* 1 200 racially segregated local authorities
* 176 departments with a personnel compliment of 1, 23 million civil servants
* 13 houses of parliament and
* a quasi-legislative President's Council.
All these institutions were based on the ideology of "separate development" that was institutionalised into policy over time. Together, they constituted the apartheid state machinery that was characterised by centralised and top-down management, a lack of professional ethos and work ethic, lack of popular legitimacy and a tendency towards social exclusion.
Today's challenge of inclusion and exclusion is not an unfortunate legacy, which requires only a miracle to redress. It is the state we inherited that presided over that process of inclusion and exclusion. Under the regime of the time, the economy of our country was burdened with many objectives that ultimately undermined its viability in the long run. An obligation was imposed on the economy to:
* build up Afrikaner capital
* decree job reservation
* evade international sanctions and
* provide a "California" standard of living to a racially defined elite.
Needless-to-say, this elite was surrounded by the rest of the population - the masses who were institutionally condemned to wallow in conditions of abject poverty and underdevelopment.
Following the advent of democracy, government adopted the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) as its guiding developmental framework. The RDP sought to democratise institutions of state and government, redress the socio-economic inequalities of the past and to extend services to all. Some of the key focus areas included:
* the establishment of national, provincial and local spheres of government
* transformation of the public service and
* working for the achievement of macro-economic stability
The need to continue to create robust institutions of state is absolute - given one of the findings of our TEN-YEAR REVIEW, which point to the causal nexus between weak state capacity and poverty. South Africa's human tragedy - poverty - lies in the long shadows of our colonial and apartheid past. The scourge of poverty shares the same geo-economic space with a high aggregated concentration both of ownership and control of the economy. This state of affairs has sinister social effects and is in-proportion to a big scale job creation process that we visualise.
As we speak, many of our people have directly benefited from public investments through access to basic services focused on shelter, water, electricity and sanitation. No doubt, a lot more needs to be done. In the circumstances, it is objectively necessary for us to seek to improve the capacity of all state organs to pay a consistent and coordinated attentiveness to the problems facing our economy. Our institutions must be guided by policies whose clear intention is to stimulate growth and create conditions for sustainable development. When my colleague, the Minister of Trade and Industry, speak of the role we assign to parastatals, he is emphasising the need for the public sector to act as a critical player in the process of growth, reconstruction and development of our country. Even conservatives who happen to be slightly more enlightened will agree that the market mechanism is particularly bad at resolving coordination problems that require changes of the enormous scale that our situation does.
Madam Speaker, we say this not in order to deny the importance of a productive market mechanism. As a matter of fact, we are investing in processes, which seek to alter conditions that slow down productivity.
We are tackling the infrastructure backlog that pervades hitherto marginalized areas such as those we designated as nodes of urban renewal and rural development. We also seek to improve levels of investment in research and development as well as human capital. All these cannot happen if government policy follows market fundamentalist theories, which "my learned friend" was propounding, on this podium yesterday. Anybody who knows anything about the political economy of South Africa will understand that our insistence on closing the gap between White and Black South Africans can hardly be called an obsession with making demographics into a destiny. It is an economic imperative.
Madam Speaker and Honourable Members, I fully agree with the Honourable Mangosuthu Buthelezi who yesterday implored us to be serious about providing the full measure of our contribution as members of Parliament. He cautioned us against allowing Parliament to become a clapping crowd. By the way, even boasted about his 50 years in the involvement of the politics of South Africa. If all of that period was covered in glory we would not be having the difficult task of redressing the legacy of the Bantustant system. Coming as some of us do, from the African National Congress, we understand that our mandate is to design policies and institutions which are appropriate to tackling the challenge of poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment. We accept that we must coexist with those who may well be operating under a different mandate.
We have outlined our programme of action. This legislature has an oversight role to play. Depending on where you come from, you may play that role as a divinely ordained moral opponent of the Executive or as some coalition of forces that are suing for change, even if the change is defined to mean reversion to the status quo ante. By the way, I understand that at least one coalition, even though the ink on the ballot papers has hardly dried up, is already fragmenting under the weight of disagreements as to which of its two constituent elements is the official opposition (never mind moral) in KwaZulu-Natal. We are told that this matter will shortly be resolved over a cup of coffee. Those who tried before will testify that the matter is not capable of such a simple solution - especially if the prime suspect is the DA in its various names.
Yo, mafhungo a vhathu!
Issued by: Ministry of Provincial and Local Government
26 May
Source: Ministry of Provincial and Local Government
Title: F Mufamadi: Debate on State of the Nation address
ADDRESS BY PROVINCIAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT MINISTER, FS MUFAMADI, ON THE OCCASION OF THE DEBATE ON THE PRESIDENT'S STATE OF THE NATION ADDRESS, 26 May 2004
Madam Speaker
His Excellency President Thabo Mbeki
Honourable Members
"STATE OF DEMOCRACY: TRANSFORMATION OF STATE INSTITUTIONS"
Mr President, yesterday we were reminded about the ostensibly historic handshake - the handshake you and the Honourable Mr Tony Leon shared on the occasion of your re-election. It was also suggested that the handshake should be a starting point of a new era in South African politics. Our nation already has a People's Contract, so we were told. We were also reminded that: "the struggle for freedom and equality is not, and was never, waged on behalf of the masses."
Those of us who were tempered in the trenches of that struggle and who remain committed never to dishonour the cause of freedom, know this that state power must be exercised in the name and interest of all the people of South Africa, Black and White. We know that we have an obligation to bring to the centre of state policy and programmes, those to whom poverty was an institutionalised material condition of life.
The contract between us and the masses of our people cannot be supplanted by a handshake. Thank you very much Honourable Mr Leon, your hand must not cross the floor. Please keep it to yourself!
Mr President, some of the "expert" observers of the South African political scene had a lot of intelligent things to say about the State of the Nation Address you delivered in this august House on Friday last week. They say you eschewed poetry and philosophy in favour of a concrete programme of action. Of course, they betray their own incomprehension of the poetry of the masses. They clearly missed the philosophy that underpins the programme of action.
Unlike the "expert" observers, the Democratic Alliance demonstrably understands the philosophical differences that exist between us. Although they seek to conceal this, they also understand the material implications of the ideational contestation. In this regard, Mr Leon's philosophy is discernible from his eulogy of Edmund Burke. It places him and the Party he leads, in the camp of traditionalist conservatives who are known to have sought a stable order, but through a life based around tradition, not forward-moving forces. These are reactionaries who see the highest virtues in the ways of the old. The self-confessed disciples of Edmund Burke who himself was a supporter of the notion of natural aristocracy, and saw the state as a "divinely ordained moral essence" in a society uniting "those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born".
A little over 10 years ago, the South African state had the following features:
* a central government
* 10 Bantustants
* 1 200 racially segregated local authorities
* 176 departments with a personnel compliment of 1, 23 million civil servants
* 13 houses of parliament and
* a quasi-legislative President's Council.
All these institutions were based on the ideology of "separate development" that was institutionalised into policy over time. Together, they constituted the apartheid state machinery that was characterised by centralised and top-down management, a lack of professional ethos and work ethic, lack of popular legitimacy and a tendency towards social exclusion.
Today's challenge of inclusion and exclusion is not an unfortunate legacy, which requires only a miracle to redress. It is the state we inherited that presided over that process of inclusion and exclusion. Under the regime of the time, the economy of our country was burdened with many objectives that ultimately undermined its viability in the long run. An obligation was imposed on the economy to:
* build up Afrikaner capital
* decree job reservation
* evade international sanctions and
* provide a "California" standard of living to a racially defined elite.
Needless-to-say, this elite was surrounded by the rest of the population - the masses who were institutionally condemned to wallow in conditions of abject poverty and underdevelopment.
Following the advent of democracy, government adopted the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) as its guiding developmental framework. The RDP sought to democratise institutions of state and government, redress the socio-economic inequalities of the past and to extend services to all. Some of the key focus areas included:
* the establishment of national, provincial and local spheres of government
* transformation of the public service and
* working for the achievement of macro-economic stability
The need to continue to create robust institutions of state is absolute - given one of the findings of our TEN-YEAR REVIEW, which point to the causal nexus between weak state capacity and poverty. South Africa's human tragedy - poverty - lies in the long shadows of our colonial and apartheid past. The scourge of poverty shares the same geo-economic space with a high aggregated concentration both of ownership and control of the economy. This state of affairs has sinister social effects and is in-proportion to a big scale job creation process that we visualise.
As we speak, many of our people have directly benefited from public investments through access to basic services focused on shelter, water, electricity and sanitation. No doubt, a lot more needs to be done. In the circumstances, it is objectively necessary for us to seek to improve the capacity of all state organs to pay a consistent and coordinated attentiveness to the problems facing our economy. Our institutions must be guided by policies whose clear intention is to stimulate growth and create conditions for sustainable development. When my colleague, the Minister of Trade and Industry, speak of the role we assign to parastatals, he is emphasising the need for the public sector to act as a critical player in the process of growth, reconstruction and development of our country. Even conservatives who happen to be slightly more enlightened will agree that the market mechanism is particularly bad at resolving coordination problems that require changes of the enormous scale that our situation does.
Madam Speaker, we say this not in order to deny the importance of a productive market mechanism. As a matter of fact, we are investing in processes, which seek to alter conditions that slow down productivity.
We are tackling the infrastructure backlog that pervades hitherto marginalized areas such as those we designated as nodes of urban renewal and rural development. We also seek to improve levels of investment in research and development as well as human capital. All these cannot happen if government policy follows market fundamentalist theories, which "my learned friend" was propounding, on this podium yesterday. Anybody who knows anything about the political economy of South Africa will understand that our insistence on closing the gap between White and Black South Africans can hardly be called an obsession with making demographics into a destiny. It is an economic imperative.
Madam Speaker and Honourable Members, I fully agree with the Honourable Mangosuthu Buthelezi who yesterday implored us to be serious about providing the full measure of our contribution as members of Parliament. He cautioned us against allowing Parliament to become a clapping crowd. By the way, even boasted about his 50 years in the involvement of the politics of South Africa. If all of that period was covered in glory we would not be having the difficult task of redressing the legacy of the Bantustant system. Coming as some of us do, from the African National Congress, we understand that our mandate is to design policies and institutions which are appropriate to tackling the challenge of poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment. We accept that we must coexist with those who may well be operating under a different mandate.
We have outlined our programme of action. This legislature has an oversight role to play. Depending on where you come from, you may play that role as a divinely ordained moral opponent of the Executive or as some coalition of forces that are suing for change, even if the change is defined to mean reversion to the status quo ante. By the way, I understand that at least one coalition, even though the ink on the ballot papers has hardly dried up, is already fragmenting under the weight of disagreements as to which of its two constituent elements is the official opposition (never mind moral) in KwaZulu-Natal. We are told that this matter will shortly be resolved over a cup of coffee. Those who tried before will testify that the matter is not capable of such a simple solution - especially if the prime suspect is the DA in its various names.
Yo, mafhungo a vhathu!
Issued by: Ministry of Provincial and Local Government
26 May
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