President Mbeki, to all of us who have worked with you over the decades you embody the qualities of sound democratic leadership - your reason and judgment about creating a just society and a good society are beyond reproach. You are courageous in the face of enormous pressure; you fight for and uphold the rule of law in the face of authoritarianism; you live by your principles; you speak truth to power and listen to truth from the dispossessed and the marginalized. Goethe in one of his poems about the relationship between leadership, freedom and human existence wrote:

Yes, to this thought I hold with firm persistence;
the last result of wisdom stamps it true;
He only earns his freedom and existence
Who daily conqers them anew.

What we have learnt from you is that leadership is indivisible from the fight for freedom and human existence, and only has meaning when we are free from want and poverty. Leadership does not stand apart from freedom and human rights, from social justice and morality. You have shown that the basis of morality including political morality is to demonstrate courage of conviction in the face of obstacles, danger and in spite of personal consequences.

Your leadership has brought to our country peace and stability including macro-economic stability.

You have an unwavering commitment to equality including gender equality and empowerment. Through your appointments, the overall representation of women in Cabinet, including the Deputy President, is 43.33%. There has been a three-fold increase in the number of women Ministers appointed from 1997 to 2008. Cabinet has also taken the decision that by 2009 50% of all senior managers in government should be women.

Your commitment to peace and security on our continent has you work tirelessly to resolve conflicts in the DRC, Burundi, Sudan the Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe.

You are a democrat and an ardent proponent of good governance and thus your commitment to the African Renaissance, NEPAD and the African Peer Review Process.

Your leadership style is based on the principles of respect and consensus. You have always valued the input of your peers, and always seek to build consensus.

Under your leadership and personal involvement we were successful in our bid to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup of Soccer and I can assure you it will be one of the best ever held.

You have taken positions on the global stage that have gone beyond self and country and have been based on principle. You have for example been consistent on the need to find a just and lasting solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict for the establishment of an independent and viable Palestinian state.

You fit into the tradition of the intellectual who revels in a good debate on issues of vital importance; you are a humanist who cares deeply about the condition of the marginalised and excluded in Africa and the world. You are an intellectual and a philosopher in the sense that Marx meant when he wrote; "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it".

You are a formidable, and even the opposition would agree, an honourable adversary, who wants his ideas debated and scrutinised. You are a practical politician who delights in the pleasure of literature and poetry, you are a philosopher and your narrative encapsulates simultaneously the particular form of South African exile and displacement, our national liberation and our bold and audacious step into the fraternity of democratic nations.

The recent storm of hostility and vituperative commentary surrounding your leadership has unfortunately and unnecessarily sought to polarise our society. The commentary seek deliberately to obfuscate and obliterate but they cannot, for history will record the successes of our government and it will point to your real achievement which is to have undertaken the historic project of massive socio-economic political and administrative transformation of an authoritarian system into one that is democratic, representative and stable. You have situated the politics of dispossession and oppression at the heart of the most far reaching project of transformation to have been undertaken in the post-colonial era. So to fully understand the significance of your leadership and its successes is to understand the recent history of South Africa.

As the government of the day and as members of Parliament we must claim our successes and acknowledge our failures. Under the leadership of President Thabo Mbeki the African National Congress has won successive elections with ever greater margins. Since 1998, the economic policies we have pursued have allowed our government to utilize the revenues generated to invest in improving the well being of our people. Political stability coupled with macro economic stability have created an environment in which we have witnessed increased public spending on housing, water, electrification, sanitation, education including early childhood education, health care, physical infrastructure and strengthening the delivery capacity of the developmental state.

To the naysayers who say our economic policies have been a failure, let us point out that our economy is in its longest and most sustained period of economic growth - nine straight years. This is unprecedented in the history of South Africa. In the last three years alone we have created approximately 500,000 new jobs per annum.

South Africa has made great progress in addressing the country's twin challenges of poverty and inequality. Basic services have been extended to ever increasing numbers of formerly disadvantaged people. The total number of grant beneficiaries is 12.4 million, and expenditure on social assistance will be R75.3 billion next year. The provision of social grants is just one of the important interventions we are undertaking to alleviate and eradicate poverty.

We point to these significant and unparalleled achievements not for partisan political purposes, but to state for the record that we can all take pride in these achievements. We can in the face of untruths point out that this government, this executive, this legislature, and this administration, whatever else their shortcoming, did in a period of fourteen years make a positive impact on the lives of the poor in our country. That we have the resources to pursue pro-poor socio-economic development strategies is testimony to the vision of our President who argued that poverty constitutes one of contemporary era's gravest fault lines and needs to be eradicated.

Ours remains a dual strategy of short term poverty alleviation and long term poverty eradication. And if there is an achievement we can be proud of, it is that the poor in our country are not getting poorer, even if the wealth and gaps between rich and poor are increasing. We still see poverty and unemployment as major challenges and we have established a "poverty war-room" headed by the Deputy President and we will not rest until our dual strategy is completely successful - that is until we eradicate the last vestiges of poverty in our country.

Honourable Members I want to concur, in the strongest possible terms with our President and Deputy President and other Ministers and Members of Parliament that as a government we extend our deepest sympathies and condolences to the families of those who have been injured and killed in dastardly acts of violence. Among those killed were many South Africans. In a liberated South Africa where we cherish the values of pluralism and diversity, we condemn chauvinism and xenophobia and acts of violence.

While these attacks mark a shameful moment in our young history, we also need to acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of our people condemn xenophobia and xenophobic violence. The outpouring of generosity both of spirit as well as of much needed resources, including food, clothing and shelter reflects and represent the true virtues of our people. As a country we have now entered a new phase where reintegrating displaced persons into the communities from which they were displaced has become a priority.

In conclusion Madam Speaker, I would like to express my deep appreciation and gratitude to the staff in my office including Mr. Louis Du Plooy who no longer works in the office, the Director-General, the Reverend Frank Chikane, the Head of the PCAS Mr. Joel Netshitenzhe, the COO Mr. Trevor Fowler, the Advisors in The Presidency, the staff and Commissioners of the National Youth Commission as well as the entire staff at all levels in The Presidency for their dedication, commitment and hard work over the past year.

This is an extract from the speech by Essop Pahad, Minister in The Presidency, on the occasion of The Presidency Budget vote, National Assembly, Cape Town, June 11 2008