Date: 24/03/2004
Source: Democratic Alliance
Title: Leon: The cause of change
Tonights great Democratic Alliance fundraising event is the largest I have attended in 18 years in active politics. More than 1300 of you have done us the privilege of paying several hundred rands per head to help fuel our campaign for the last three weeks of this election.
What a turn-out and what a triumph for our hardworking organizers, Cllr Gail Daus and her team, the regional fundraising chairpersons, Mervyn Cirota, Rika Hunter and Karel Minnie and also Cllr Sherry Chen for her support.
I would like to acknowledge Molly Solomon, who has been a life-long member and who worked in the Greenside office of our party until she was 91 years old and used to catch two buses every day to get there. She turns 98 in August and we are very happy to have her here tonight. She is an example of loyalty and commitment. It is on shoulders like hers that we stand tonight.
I have come here tonight fresh from the campaign trail in KwaZulu-Natal, where we really are on a roll. In fact, we have already criss-crossed the country from Bushbuckridge in Limpopo to Atlantis in the Western Cape; from Manguzi on the Mozambican border to Cambridge Township in the Eastern Cape; from Bochum in Limpopo to Middelburg in the Karoo; from De Doorns in the Hex River Valley to Carolina in Mpumalanga.
Next week we hit the Northern Cape and the Western Cape before our final big rallies in the six major centres of South Africa. But our campaign is not about events and does not consist simply of mass rallies and major fundraising dinners like tonight.
Our campaign is about real people-their hopes, their dreams, and their suffering. It is about facing up to the real challenges of our times and taking our good principles into the thick of the fight for change and justice.
I do not know whether President Mbeki, our smug national leader, is worse when he is joking or when he is being serious.
His comment about beating or whipping his sister if she supported an opposition party is not a joke. It is offensive on many different levels.
So much for the Presidents so-called sense of humour. But I am far more worried by his serious side. In an infamous remark at the opening of Parliament this year he said: "we do not foresee that there will be any need for new and major policy initiatives".
The President would never suffer from such complacency, and such a suffocating sense of denial, if he actually went and listened to what the people were saying rather than just embracing them for a photo opportunity once every five years.
If he went to Newcastle in KwaZulu Natal where I was yesterday, he would have heard and seen how ISCOR has shed 17 000 jobs in the last 20 years. And 1300 jobs in the local textile factory-as many jobs as there are people in this room-are in mortal danger because of stifling labour laws, the rising rand, and the crushing uncompetitiveness of Transnet.
If the President had actually listened to what had been said when Dr Mangosuthu Buthelezi and I went to the President Steyn Gold Mine in the Free State Goldfields, he would have heard that if government proceeds with its royalties bill, every marginal mine in this country will close down. There, in the once great centre of the mining industry of this country, we have gone from 20 000 jobs to 6000 and possibly, in the near future, to zero.
If President Mbeki went where we were yesterday at Manguzi Hospital next to Kosi Bay, right alongside the Mozambican border, he would have seen and heard how the doctors themselves, in an act of heroic desperation, are paying for anti-retroviral drugs out of their own back pockets. The state has not provided the drugs-not even to a hospital where 70 percent of the patients are HIV-positive. In the process, they find themselves having to make the most awful and terrible decisions as to who will live and who will die. And all the while, the Minister of Health provides recipes for beetroot salad. This because of the governments failure to meet a single deadline for its much touted, but seldom seen, anti-retroviral programme.
If you look at the new ANC posters, they say "creating work and fighting poverty." I am sure the words are correct-it is just that the governing party has got their order the wrong way around. Because as a result of ANC policies, the slogan has come to mean, in effect, "fighting work and creating poverty".
The challenges we face are to stare down and conquer unemployment, in which 8 million of our fellow citizens are trapped; the poverty in which 21 million of our fellow citizens are forced to live and the crime which has murdered a 1❄4 million of our for our yellow South Africans in the past ten years.
But for all these huge challenges there are big answers and better ideas. And the best answer of all is to embrace the cause of change for which our party stands.
This party has gone through some hard and dark times, but on the eve of the election, we stand strong and secure. I do not always agree with what the press says, but on 8 February 1995 I took to heart an editorial written by the Business Day, which stated: "A party consistently unable to win more than 2% of the popular vote would have little reason to exist, or be recognized as a serious player.the 1,7% Democratic party is hardly a home, it is more a desolate shack." We have grown, since then, into a big party. So that tonight, this is the second-largest party in the land and an ever-growing political home for all in South Africa.
Over the past ten years we have fought down the fiercest odds and overcome some mighty opponents, both internal and external.
And in a few weeks we stand poised to reap the reward for all your labours. Not for our own sake but for the peoples sake and for the cause to which we are committed, which will always endure.
I owe a great deal of my political conviction-and early inspiration-to the work and example of Helen Suzman who honours us with her presence tonight. As you know, we do not always agree on each and every issue. But we do agree on many things, the most fundamental of which is that South Africas best interest will be served by massively strengthening the DA on the 14th April and by cutting the ANC down to size.
My quarrel is not with the other opposition parties, despite them being in opposition to the opposition. My message to the people of South Africa is simple and clear. There is only one national alternative to the ANC. It is the Democratic Alliance.
Strengthen us. Stand with us. Support us. We will strengthen democracy. We will change South Africa for the better. We will build a new majority. Because-as you might have read somewhere-South Africa deserves better.
Source: Democratic Alliance
Title: Leon: The cause of change
Tonights great Democratic Alliance fundraising event is the largest I have attended in 18 years in active politics. More than 1300 of you have done us the privilege of paying several hundred rands per head to help fuel our campaign for the last three weeks of this election.
What a turn-out and what a triumph for our hardworking organizers, Cllr Gail Daus and her team, the regional fundraising chairpersons, Mervyn Cirota, Rika Hunter and Karel Minnie and also Cllr Sherry Chen for her support.
I would like to acknowledge Molly Solomon, who has been a life-long member and who worked in the Greenside office of our party until she was 91 years old and used to catch two buses every day to get there. She turns 98 in August and we are very happy to have her here tonight. She is an example of loyalty and commitment. It is on shoulders like hers that we stand tonight.
I have come here tonight fresh from the campaign trail in KwaZulu-Natal, where we really are on a roll. In fact, we have already criss-crossed the country from Bushbuckridge in Limpopo to Atlantis in the Western Cape; from Manguzi on the Mozambican border to Cambridge Township in the Eastern Cape; from Bochum in Limpopo to Middelburg in the Karoo; from De Doorns in the Hex River Valley to Carolina in Mpumalanga.
Next week we hit the Northern Cape and the Western Cape before our final big rallies in the six major centres of South Africa. But our campaign is not about events and does not consist simply of mass rallies and major fundraising dinners like tonight.
Our campaign is about real people-their hopes, their dreams, and their suffering. It is about facing up to the real challenges of our times and taking our good principles into the thick of the fight for change and justice.
I do not know whether President Mbeki, our smug national leader, is worse when he is joking or when he is being serious.
His comment about beating or whipping his sister if she supported an opposition party is not a joke. It is offensive on many different levels.
So much for the Presidents so-called sense of humour. But I am far more worried by his serious side. In an infamous remark at the opening of Parliament this year he said: "we do not foresee that there will be any need for new and major policy initiatives".
The President would never suffer from such complacency, and such a suffocating sense of denial, if he actually went and listened to what the people were saying rather than just embracing them for a photo opportunity once every five years.
If he went to Newcastle in KwaZulu Natal where I was yesterday, he would have heard and seen how ISCOR has shed 17 000 jobs in the last 20 years. And 1300 jobs in the local textile factory-as many jobs as there are people in this room-are in mortal danger because of stifling labour laws, the rising rand, and the crushing uncompetitiveness of Transnet.
If the President had actually listened to what had been said when Dr Mangosuthu Buthelezi and I went to the President Steyn Gold Mine in the Free State Goldfields, he would have heard that if government proceeds with its royalties bill, every marginal mine in this country will close down. There, in the once great centre of the mining industry of this country, we have gone from 20 000 jobs to 6000 and possibly, in the near future, to zero.
If President Mbeki went where we were yesterday at Manguzi Hospital next to Kosi Bay, right alongside the Mozambican border, he would have seen and heard how the doctors themselves, in an act of heroic desperation, are paying for anti-retroviral drugs out of their own back pockets. The state has not provided the drugs-not even to a hospital where 70 percent of the patients are HIV-positive. In the process, they find themselves having to make the most awful and terrible decisions as to who will live and who will die. And all the while, the Minister of Health provides recipes for beetroot salad. This because of the governments failure to meet a single deadline for its much touted, but seldom seen, anti-retroviral programme.
If you look at the new ANC posters, they say "creating work and fighting poverty." I am sure the words are correct-it is just that the governing party has got their order the wrong way around. Because as a result of ANC policies, the slogan has come to mean, in effect, "fighting work and creating poverty".
The challenges we face are to stare down and conquer unemployment, in which 8 million of our fellow citizens are trapped; the poverty in which 21 million of our fellow citizens are forced to live and the crime which has murdered a 1❄4 million of our for our yellow South Africans in the past ten years.
But for all these huge challenges there are big answers and better ideas. And the best answer of all is to embrace the cause of change for which our party stands.
This party has gone through some hard and dark times, but on the eve of the election, we stand strong and secure. I do not always agree with what the press says, but on 8 February 1995 I took to heart an editorial written by the Business Day, which stated: "A party consistently unable to win more than 2% of the popular vote would have little reason to exist, or be recognized as a serious player.the 1,7% Democratic party is hardly a home, it is more a desolate shack." We have grown, since then, into a big party. So that tonight, this is the second-largest party in the land and an ever-growing political home for all in South Africa.
Over the past ten years we have fought down the fiercest odds and overcome some mighty opponents, both internal and external.
And in a few weeks we stand poised to reap the reward for all your labours. Not for our own sake but for the peoples sake and for the cause to which we are committed, which will always endure.
I owe a great deal of my political conviction-and early inspiration-to the work and example of Helen Suzman who honours us with her presence tonight. As you know, we do not always agree on each and every issue. But we do agree on many things, the most fundamental of which is that South Africas best interest will be served by massively strengthening the DA on the 14th April and by cutting the ANC down to size.
My quarrel is not with the other opposition parties, despite them being in opposition to the opposition. My message to the people of South Africa is simple and clear. There is only one national alternative to the ANC. It is the Democratic Alliance.
Strengthen us. Stand with us. Support us. We will strengthen democracy. We will change South Africa for the better. We will build a new majority. Because-as you might have read somewhere-South Africa deserves better.
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