Issued by: African National Congress
SPEECH MADE BY DUMISANI MAKHAYE, ANC KWAZULU - NATAL MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT, TO KWAZULU NATAL PARLIAMENT IN PIETERMARITZBURG ON 11 JUNE 1996.
The Chairperson,
It is an honour for me to take the floor immediately after the Honourable Minister for Finance, Mr Senzele Mhlungu who has distinguished himself as a politician who is in a way apolitical. A man who when he does his work as a Government Minister forgets completely his partisan political background.
It is perhaps appropriate to from the very beginning pay tribute to the efforts to achieve peace and reconciliation among the people of KwaZulu Natal. A fresh breeze is sweeping across the province. The peace initiative is giving us an opportunity to rediscover ourselves; our humanity. We are rediscovering the difference between a beast and a human being. We are rediscovering our pride and our dignity. We are one people with a common destiny.
The forces for peace, democracy and development have seized the strategic initiative. The anti-people forces are on the retreat. We must cut off their retreating routes and turn their retreat into a complete rout. The task is to shift the balance of forces irreversibly in favour of peace, democracy and development. Real heroes and heroines will emerge from the battle for peace, democracy and development and not in the massacre of innocent and unarmed children and women; old men and women.
But I must warn. The anti-people forces will not take it lying. Their evil hearts heaved and trembled as they received the message: Peace among our people! They are already spending sleepless nights plotting the undoing of the peace efforts. In the vain attempt to boost their morale, they believe that they have encircled us and we cannot escape. But what they do not know is that we are at their rear and their flanks.
There are also those political forces who owe their continued political existence to the bitter rivalry between the ANC and the IFP. They publicly claim that they fully support the peace efforts. But in the heart of their hearts they are bleeding. It is a question of "tears in the teeth", as the story-teller Gcina Mhlophe would have put it. They will initiate controversial debates with an aim to pit us against each other.
We are facing an experienced and cunning and well resourced enemy. We are under attack. Let us close ranks as never before. Let us be vigilant.
The success of the peace efforts will depend on the iron discipline of both the ANC and IFP leaders and members. We will have to exercise the type of discipline that the Zulu army displayed at Isandlwana. A British commander had this to say: "It was a grand sight and they (the Zulu army) never uttered a sound. I defy the men of any British regiment to keep their intervals so well at a double."
Another British officer had to complain: "A Zulu can cover a longer distance in twenty-four hours than a horse."
The Chairperson, Allow me to now think and speak in Zulu in addressing a special word to Nyanda and Msholozi: Uma niphumelele ukuqeda loludlame phakathi kwabantu beSilo, siyonithwesa izimpaphe zegwalagwala. Isizwe siyonixoshisa ngezikhumba zezingwe. For so long the world regarded the Zulu people with the highest esteem.
But the current internicine war among Zulus is desecrating the very Zulu pride. Together with the rest of South Africans, we must regain our pride.
It is also proper that the initial steps were taken by both the ANC and IFP leadership in confidentiality. It was not secret meetings but confidential meetings. They were fulfilling the mandate of this very House. This house has repeatedly called upon the ANC and IFP leaderships to find each other. They have found each other. They are finding an African solution to this violence which only consumes African lives.
Yet the ANC and IFP remain two distinct, independent and sovereign organisations with mutual respect. They will not gang up against any political party. But they will gang up against political violence and the remnants of white autocracy.
The Chairperson,
Allow me to say something about delivery. The rationale put across by the racist bigots has always been a claim that Africans cannot govern.
Africans cannot deliver goods and services. Let us look at the facts. The greatest thing we have delivered to our people is freedom and human dignity. In defence of freedom and human dignity the remains of the Zulu soldiers lie strewn over the sacred hills of Isandlwana. In celebrating the delivery of freedom and human dignity we shall sing the song of Isandlwana. To deny us freedom and human dignity the so-called white christians had to decapitate Inkosi uBhambatha kaMancinza. In defence of white autocracy, the white establishment had to mow down our children in Soweto and elsewhere.
Yet South Africa is proud of having produced some of the best sons and daughters from the white community. From the very beginning there were white patriots like Dr Phillips and Van der Kemp. We had Ivon Jones and Buntings; we had Bram Fischer and Joe Slovo; Helen Joseph and Advocate Arenstein. There is John "J J" Jeffrey whom we met in the 1980s' in the underground. He had just graduated from being a teenager. He deserves to be in this Parliament. The racists hated these white compatriots with a special venom.
Of course, white autocracy did deliver too to the black masses. They delivered poverty, ignorance and the squalor under which our people are still living even today. Under such schemes as Project Vallex they delivered the so-called black-on-black violence.
By whose standard are we going to measure delivery? If we are going to measure delivery through white standards, of course African-led governments at both national and provincial levels, have not delivered.
Even this statement is misleading for all surveys show that the sectors that have benefitted the most under the new democratic dispensation are so far sectors from the white establishment. Of course, clean running water; electricity; hospitals; clinics; schools; roads; sporting facilities are niceties the white community has long taken for granted.
The building of rural roads, schools, clinics and hospitals; the provision of clean running water to the rural poor has been denied to our people for too long. We are delivering these things and we will continue to deliver them. That is delivery in practice. The claim that we have not delivered is part of the claim that Africans cannot govern; Africans cannot deliver. It is part of a strategy to foist a guilty conscience on the actual victims of apartheid. We must be proud of what we have achieved in the space of only two years. But there must be no complacency. It may not be enough but we are doing something.
We know where we are coming from; we know where we are and we know where we are going to.
We must remember that the NP came to political office in 1948 on the promise of delivering apartheid privileges to the Afrikaners. In practice they were able to do so only in the beginning of the 1960s. We are not delivering to a few millions. We are delivering to fourty millions. Take the private sector. Petty-apartheid crumbled more than fifteen years ago. There were very few if any laws after 1980 that barred the private sector from appointing black people to any position in their enterprises. Yet there are still very few black faces in commanding positions.
This should not be used as an apologia by those who are refusing and are lazy to deliver. Indeed, we must be intolerant to them precisely because they are helping our enemies with their propaganda that says Africans cannot deliver! Africans cannot govern!' There is a difference between the failure to deliver and the failure to communicate delivery. We must admit that various departments while they are delivering, are dismally failing to say they are delivering.
We must jack up our communication system. This demands literally a revolution in the information and communications industry in South Africa. The situation where information is exclusively in the white hands can no longer be tolerated. There must be a new information and communications order in South Africa. Information is power.
I have noticed that all departments have their information sections. But they are inadequate in terms of personnel and equipment and strategy.
Whoever says they are sufficient betrays a failure to understand the depth of the propaganda war waged against us. Africans cannot govern! Africans cannot deliver! It was better under apartheid! Fortunately, the majority of the black people have grown not to trust the printed word. If they did, there would be no black president in SA and no black premiers, including Premier Dr Frank Mdlalose, in eight provinces out of nine.
This is a burning question facing KwaZulu Natal and the rest of South Africa. I strongly propose to the Premier that he convenes a provincial Information and Communications Imbizo to map out a strategy of informing our people of our successes and failures; of our plans and goals. It cannot be done half-heartedly.
The moment of decision is now!
The hour has struck!
The Chairperson, Honourable Colleagues.
We have as Finance Committee gone through an exciting experience of two weeks. We spent this period proving to the prophets of doom that there can be and there is unity of purpose across the party line when it comes to the financial matters of the Province of KwaZulu Natal.
Our greatest weapon in achieving this unity of purpose was the fact that we individually and collectively and consciously, even if in the silence of our hearts, took a decision that when it comes to the question of bread and butter for our people, we shall shed our usual battle costumes, slogans, political cliche's and battle-cries. We shed even our own tribal markings. We became ourselves guided by the best human virtues. At moments of difficult the Finance Committee proved that it can fly best in the eye of a storm. The Committee may be small in numbers. It may be composed of persons who have no high public profile. Yet it is big in its heart.
We were also assisted by the fact that R15-Billion will always be R15-Billion whether you look at it with an eye of the IFP; ANC; NP; DP; PAC; ACDP or MF. It is nothing more and nothing less.
We must also take this opportunity to pay tribute to the Premier, Ministers, Chairpersons of and Portfolio Committees and officials of various departments for the way they co-operated with the Finance Portfolio Committee. Praise also must go to Mr Bongani Sibisi, the Secretary to the Finance Committee. But we must single out the officials from the Provincial Treasury for a special mention.
They were with us all the time when we met with various departments providing guidance to us all without attempting to hijack those meetings.
This team of experts was led by the dimunitive Sipho Shabalala, the Acting Chief Director of the Provincial Treasury. As an African, who like all Africans, was condemned by apartheid bantu education to intellectual docility, and yet he was able to rise above even those whose skin colour ensured them the best of life, he is a symbol of defiance of everything that apartheid education stood for. He is an example of the resilience and tenacity of the former oppressed masses.
He is not a product of affirmation, a noble programme which both national and provincial governments have not yet implemented.
We must begin to implement that programme now. When we do we will not apologise to anybody. Mr Shabalala taught us that in shortness, there can be and there is wisdom.
Lastly, I congratulate the Minister of Finance for the excellent work he has done. But we strongly suggest that the format the budget takes must be more detailed compared to what it is at the moment. The present format hides more than it reveals. The format must assists us to know the type and number of projects we are undertaking. At any given moment we should be in a position to know how far are these projects progressing. This cannot be done through simply monitoring cash flows.
For the Finance Department to tick, it needs and demands the co-operation of all other department. It is the heart of a government. We say to all those who contributed to the success of our debates:- Thank You Very Much!
Ukwanda Kwaliwa umthakathi!
I therefore support the vote of the Department of Finance.
Dumisani Makhaye - ANC KwaZulu - Natal Contact number: 082 5519192 11 June 1996