Note to Editors: The following speech was delivered by RISE Mzansi National Assembly Caucus Whip, Makashule Gana MP, during the first reading debate on the Appropriation Bill.
Ndza khensa, Mutshami wa Xitulu
Members of Parliament
President and Deputy President
Ministers and Deputy Ministers
South Africans
Although RISE Mzansi will make declarations in respect of two Budget Votes, we will support the Appropriation Bill, Minister. One of the reasons we joined the Government of National Unity was so that Bills such as this should pass with no fuss so that the South African people do not suffer any further. They need these funds and need them urgently.
But I also wish to remind the Honourable Members of this House that it was at this podium in 2009 that President Motlanthe outlined a package exceeding R740-billion over five-years to stimulate the South African economy. Those funds were supposed to go mostly to infrastructure – trains, roads, bridges and so on.
It was this package that set off the feeding frenzy of corruption we now know as State Capture. At Transnet, Eskom, PRASA, water boards and other agencies, the stealing continued at an industrial scale. Today, the money is gone but we do not have this infrastructure, and very few people have been held accountable.
While the stealing was going on, from the 2014/15 financial year, Cabinet and Parliament approved annual budgets that reduced spending on land reform and restitution. And yet, the same people who had supported that reduction in financial support for land reform demanded changes to the Constitution because they blamed it for slow progress in land reform. They were diverting attention from how they protected waste and stealing, and deprivation of our most important aspect of nation building, the land issue.
Madam Speaker, the 7th Parliament and Administration cannot engage in this kind of dishonesty. There is only so much the Treasury can do. It cannot run municipalities that waste money and permit stealing. It cannot micromanage corrupt executives and politicians who oversee, with no remorse, borrowed billions being stolen while power stations take forever and more money to build.
South Africa’s economic crisis is borne by the ideology of entitlement to stealing or creaming off the top. When you tabled this budget in February minister, you said the government pays between 1.5 to 2 times for goods and services. That unsustainable ratio cannot stand. The Constitution demands that the South African people get value for their money.
We now pay more to service debt that we do to keep South Africans alive! We even borrow to pay debt! The endowment left by the Third Administration has been squandered, leaving South Africans hopeless and angry.
Building a new endowment for future generations must begin with this House doing its job of oversight properly, and help to double the impact of this budget by making sure that every penny is used properly.
Ndza khensa!