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Date : 17/02/2004
Source: KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government
Title: S Ndebele: Response to KZN State of Province Address


RESPONSE BY S'BU NDEBELE, KWAZULU-NATAL MEC FOR TRANSPORT, TO THE STATE OF THE PROVINCE ADDRESS, 17 February 2004

A State of the Province address seeks to review for members of the public what has taken place in the preceding year, it seeks to faithfully reflect all activities of government, if it is made by the Head of Government and in that way, through that reflection we are able to regain full strength, full insights - and be able to proceed and correct whatever mistakes.

I read through this year's State of the Province Address by the Premier yesterday. I also read the State of the Province Address by the Premier of North West and also other State of the Province addresses. But I also read the State of the Nation Address delivered by our President, and in it I find the whole spectrum of government mentioned. I did not find any grand standing about each department.

I looked at the Constitutional Principles and when you look at the Constitutional Principle number 8 of 1993, it is representative of multi-party democracy in which there are regular elections, universal adult suffrage, a common voters' roll and in general proportional representation. The State of the Province debate this year is therefore taking place not during an unusual institutional context but during one of those regular occurrences in our more established democratic order because the words complete by this Constitutional Principle are so logical, moral and correct.

This time ten years ago, February 1994, we had a national government elected on the basis of one person, one vote, one value, one white, so every one white person had a vote and elected a government that ruled over all of us. Black people did not vote for it, could not vote for it because they were black but they were bound by its laws. There was also the Natal Provincial Administration (NPA) elected on the basis of one person, one vote, one value, one white, similarly blacks were also governed by that NPA.

But there was also the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly - was it one person, one vote, one value for all Zulus? - No. Seventy five of its members were appointed on the basis of being traditional leaders and 55 were elected, but there were 60% appointed, 40% elected, but even that election was conditional on owning a citizenship certificate that is why in this house I can bear that you would not find more than five members who ever voted since 1978 to 1994. You had to have a citizenship certificate and if for instance you decided perhaps as UDF to contest those elections and 100% of them would have ended with 40% of the seats, so it was not democratic even in that sense therefore what has been ushered in should not be taken for granted. We are now just under eight weeks to elections and there will be other elections all over the country, it is part of the regular occurrences that we are going to have. That is one major delivery therefore that has been laid in our country. That delivery is a democratic election where you can choose your representative freely.

And one was subject to reading the Hansard of the KwaZulu Government where it is recorded that on free colonial activity, and I quote "When you see a black person roaming about in your respective ward, you should arrest that person and bring him before the Chief. "I honestly request the Chiefs to do this, they must tell their Indunas that if they see anybody white, black or Indian passing bad remarks about the KwaZulu Government, they should arrest such people. Unfortunately we do not have a law in terms of which we can deal with colonialists who are trying to fight us.

Today this law no longer applies. No one gets arrested for roaming around in Msinga or Umlazi so all of us are now free to be what we want to be and that is one of the major deliveries that the African National Congress (ANC) as the leader of the liberation movement has brought to the people of South Africa, i.e. that freedom to be wherever you are whether in rural areas or not.

But the other important principle in these Constitutional Principles is that of multi-party democracy. We have got a multi-party legislature here and we have got some seven or eight parties in this house, therefore the calls that have been made by Tony Leon might sound innocent calling for a two party system in South Africa, it actually goes against the Constitutional Principles of this country, we are talking now and he says "that in that two party system it will be forces that go with democratic forces led by the ANC or it will be the Democratic Alliance (DA) on the other side".

As the Sunday Tribune noted that throughout his speech, he talked of a DA-led government versus the ANC-led government. Nowhere did the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) feature and that journalist noted that. We recommend that we could be cautious and if therefore you are in the United States and you have got an election it is a two-force race between the Republicans and the Democrats. It has been like that for over hundred years now and therefore you will have these two presidential candidates debating, now His Excellency the President of the Republic must now have a television debate with a particular leader who does not even lead one small municipality in the whole Republic of South Africa - not one is led by the DA anywhere in this Republic and there are more than seven hundred of them.

If we talk about the New National Party (NNP) they have a Premier - one province - but here is this one leader, who, after finishing, must then go and have a debate with the IFP President, after that he must go and have a debate with the NNP, and after that with the ACDP, and after that with the UDM, and after that with the ID, so after that he must have all these debates and there is basis to have a debate with one individual who does not control even one single municipality, let alone there is no mayor of the DA in this country. There are 61 municipalities in this province - there is not one mayor of that party. Since the Premier was speaking as Premier not as one of the Leaders of the DA-IFP Alliance one would have expected more than two paragraphs in the 16 pages of the Premier's Address about the Department of Transport at least, and certainly less than eight pages about the Department of Economic Development and Tourism.

One paragraph alludes to the R300 million roads project from Mtubatuba to Nongoma, as well as P700 road from Ulundi to Richards Bay. In the context of the political situation prevailing in our country one can add that the only no go area that we can now accept is where there is no road. We have built roads in this province and people should have no go areas only as a result of there being no road to drive through and address the meeting but not because they are being blocked for any other reason.

Roads lead people and communities. We cannot spend so much on their construction only to have artificial barriers erected by those who cannot compete in an open market to advance their ideas or politics peacefully. I fully concur with the Premier on that point that the era of impurity must come to an end in KwaZulu-Natal and it will only come to an end not by the agreement between the ANC and IFP, in fact it is wrong for people to impose that the ANC and IFP have got a responsibility and we as the ANC will not run away from that, but people who break the law must be arrested. Arrest. Arrest. Arrest. It does not matter what t-shirt the person has put on, whether it is an official of the ANC or whatever, people must be arrested and this impunity where people occupy stadiums and nothing happens even ten years ago and today must come to an end.

The second paragraph that the Premier had about Transport is on Road Safety. Basic to Road Safety is a valid driver's licence. A car can be driven by only one driver at a time. There are three types of drivers that you can find behind the wheel; these are the licensed driver, an unlicensed driver and a learner driver.

If you relate the three categories to politics, a licensed driver can be equated to a President, a Premier or a Mayor whose party receives 51% of the votes. In the case of KwaZulu-Natal it would be a Premier whose party holds 41% out of 86%, anything short of that is not good enough. This is the iron man of politics.

The unlicensed driver is like a leader who has taken political power through illegitimate means and has no legal or moral authority. The African Union under the able leadership of President Mbeki has resolved not to recognize such a routine, but I am mentioning this not because we have got such in this province or in this country.

The third type of driver is a learner driver because only one person can be behind the wheel at only one time and you can never learn to drive without actually driving. A learner driver must first obtain a learner's licence. In politics this is equivalent to negotiations with a party together with which you can jointly command 51 or more seats in the house. A low pass with 51% and a low pass with 96% have equal validity. Negotiations are the first heck and they are never really finished and must be mattered throughout the term of office, but in the majority of democracy this is not aberration, it is the norm.

The second requirement of the learner driver is that he should at all times be accompanied by a licensed driver. In our case the licensed driver would be equivalent to a party that has sufficient numbers to give you 51 or more of the seats and the public starting with those in the car, the owner, the insurers and all other road users need to know that the car that is approaching is co-driven. Anyone approaching has to know that decisions might not be strict because the driver might be consulting or changing gears. It is therefore a legal requirement to paste a huge letter "L" in the front and back of the car for everyone to see and in this house the letter "L" must be written very loud and clear out there so that we know that this is co-driven.

It is a serious offence to pretend to be a licensed driver when you are not. There might be people who have seen you driving alone in some isolated area and might urge you to go it alone. Tell them the truth, if something were to happen the Road Accident Fund would not pay in full and people who depend on you for their livelihood will suffer. In politics these might be MECs, chairs of Portfolio Committees as catered. In this context it is too hard to try and exercise powers that the party does not have. The President of the IFP has had an occasion to express the dilemma of the IFP as itself instead of working with a clearly licensed driver, the ANC. The IFP on the 29 November 2002 tried a shortcut and enlisted the head of the DA. Then in April 2003 they discovered that the DA either had a fraudulent license or a suspended driver's license. They were thrown into utter confusion with the DA. They had thought that magic 41% out of 86%, and then they discovered that they came only to 38%, not enough to even constitute a quorum in this house and that therefore has been a distortion of democracy.

There are 275 members of the ANC in the 400 seats in parliament, only 24 of these 275 are members of cabinet or 8,7%. In this house there are 32 members of IFP, 4 plus Premier are in cabinet. In other words 15,6% are in cabinet. Out of the 32 only 5 are in cabinet. There are 35 members of the ANC in this house. 11% are in cabinet or only 4 out of 35 (11,4%). But the DA has got 6 members, 33,3% of them are in cabinet. In the Western Cape you will find 80% of them in cabinet, 4 out of 5 are in cabinet. If that is not riding on somebody's back I do not know what it is and their candidate list in the top eight they say, they choose them on the basis of merit.

The only African of merit in this province of 9 million people is the Honourable Wilson Ngcobo and the rest are chosen from a population of 450 000 Whites. That means they are racist, but let me state this matter of very great concern to me and I would ask that this house to take an immediate resolution. Members would know that we had a lot of problems about people opening roads that they did not need. There were a lot of queries in my department to provide a list of those projects; we refused, after knowing that some people "bavuna lapho bengatshalanga khona" (they reap where they have not sown) then we refused. We then had a query from the Honourable Minister Miller's department to our department for the departmental budget to say we must provide this list. "We said but why?" and we refused and the person that we refused then to went to Prof Kotze to complain that we were defiant and Prof Kotze came and discussed with us and after we had explained to him that this thing was politically loaded, he said that we do not have to, he does not even know why this list was requested from us.

The person who was making that request was the Chief Director in the Department of the Treasury while he is number five in the DA list to Parliament. We call on Minister Miller to get that person removed by lunchtime today from perusing our files. Even his questions about billboards and the question about how much we pay for advertisements, a decision that was taken by the IFP National Council and then its taken through this Enyinna Nkem'- Abonta to the Honourable Mr Keys to go and look at our files that is spying for the old apartheid order.

We call on Minister Miller to remove that person from our files, it does not matter whether he is kicked out or whatever, but he must be removed from our files because he is a spy, who is working with a political agenda to get himself elected. He is even ahead of Mark Lowe on the list. So you are having such spies from the old apartheid order, but what would you expect if you have got a leader of the DA, when PW Botha said we will fight until the last man, he meant those people in the defence force, particularly the propagandists, and the acting dog of the Defence Force Newsletter was non other than Tony Leon and therefore they are still fighting until the last man. Can I really honestly ask you Mr Miller to have that man removed, he is a security risk to all of us, he is a spy, a spy on behalf of the DA and a mould in your department.

Finally I want refer to again, to remind members that, this crises we have in this province where we move with unlicensed drivers and people who cannot take you across, we have got a collision and the reasons that are resorted to and the Premier has reported that he works with like-minded people because there is floor crossing. Where is the application to certify a constitution text in the constitutional court of South Africa case no CCT 23/96. The registrar of the above honourable court kindly took notice that the written argument on behalf of the Inkatha Freedom Party and the Province of KwaZulu-Natal is filed evenly herewith. Where it was agreed that the IFP will oppose the certification of the present constitution because it prevents people from crossing the floor. This is court application and this case was held and was dismissed here. The lawyers of the IFP were Senior Council Peter Morris, and others, including Mr RF van Rooyen. These were submissions and amongst the reasons that the IFP put was that it is the universally accepted fundamental right which shall be provided for and protected that all voting age has got the right to seek office and one elected - the result of the expulsion of the member from her or his party is loss of membership of the legislature in question.

This would happen despite the party in question having deviated from its own original programme while the member, Prof Ndabandaba, can be steadfast on the principles of working together with black people and he then said he must be fired but the IFP argued that he should not be fired. This is not the court case. What is this dishonesty now of saying you entered into an alliance with the DA in the year 2000 and the floor crossing came in 2002 Oct and in April 2003 floor crossing was not there.

As the ANC we say and we are going to repeat this in every branch and we ask the IFP, let us go together to the branches at Dambuza, Mfolozi and UMsinga and regions and the entire province and say to our people, you canvass peacefully and there is no blood.

We call on the assistance of the police to arrest all those people who defy us and we call on the Electoral Commission to arrest those people who defy us. Let us not turn this province as if it is the province of just "malkoppe" that cannot think. Let us go there and address our people jointly and say, why are you here to fight? Let everybody canvas wherever at Ulundi, Lamontvile, Clermont, anywhere. Together let us do that.

It is time for KwaZulu-Natal to conduct its own elections peacefully without anyone being intimidated. Let us go to the elections peacefully.

Media enquiries:
MEC for Transport, S'bu Ndebele
Cell: 082 5533 592
Issued by: Department of Transport, KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government
17 February 2004

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