Madam Speaker:
On the occasion of President Mbeki's penultimate Budget Vote, I maintain that history will remember him as someone who cared deeply and passionately about the new South Africa, its people and its place in the world.
I have known the President for over thirty years and served alongside him in Cabinet for ten of those years. The President and I were political opponents, but never, enemies.
We have sometimes differed sharply, most notably on the government's strategy to combat HIV/AIDS and immigration policy to attract skills and maintain an open, but controlled immigration policy, based upon international best practice. I contend if my approach had prevailed, and God knows we tried, an involuntary African Diaspora with the flood of millions of refugees from Zimbabwe into South Africa could have been avoided.
I was saddened that my departure was preceded by finding myself cast in the improbable role of defendant in a court case in which my President was the litigant against his Minister. My respect for the institution of the Presidency, however, was not diminished by this sorry saga. To digress a little, Madame Speaker, may I take advantage of this opportunity to record my disquiet for the manner in which the Honourable Member of the DA, the Honourable Mark Lowe, together with his colleague, tarred me with the brush of mismanagement of the Department of Home Affairs yesterday.
I wonder whether Mr Lowe was here when one spook after another was appointed to head the Department; people whose only forte was that they were spooks with no particular record of efficiency or experience in administration. Was Mr Lowe here when the Masetlha saga took place? A DG who defied me and refused even to implement my decisions. I submitted to the President and Cabinet four lever arch files listing his acts of insubordination. I received no sympathy. He was instead promoted to the Presidency. But God being great I could not believe my eyes and shared my surprise with the DG in the Presidency, Reverend Chikane, when I read a Sunday newspaper headline: "The President is a liar". The rest is now history.
In the same way, my party and I led the criticism inside and outside of government of how the President's first term was unproductively spent deciding whether HIV was the cause of Aids, something the medical science had long taken for granted, to the detriment of millions infected or affected by the deadly virus. But, despite these failings, I was proud to serve in the Cabinet with the President for ten years. South Africa has been led by a talented patriot with a clear grasp of public policy for the last nine years.
His fiercest critics in this House and beyond cannot deny that this man has given his best at home and given South Africa political clout far exceeding our lower middle ranking status in the international community. I know from sitting alongside him in countless international meetings that he bats for South Africa at every opportunity.
The President's crowning achievement is, of course, his meticulous work, alongside the Finance Minister, to integrate South Africa into the global economy. When we participated in the first cabinet meetings in 1994, Mr President, few of us could have imagined that the years of economic stagnation experienced under apartheid in the 1980s would be so swiftly reversed. These achievements, despite the rage all around us, will stand.
And this country will endure, will revive and will prosper because we are a great nation.
Madam Speaker, I am duty bound, as I have done over the last fourteen years, to spell out some of the dangers we face and call the President to account.
It is clear to me that our country seeks discipline and direction under leadership.
The President will by now have come to understand the painful words of Claudius to be true: 'When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions'.
Earlier in the year, I posed the question: is the institution of the executive presidency the best prescription for South Africa?
It was this question that led me to table the 18th Constitution Amendment Bill to separate the Head of State from the Head of Government to establish both a President and Prime Minister at the next general election.
For partisan reasons, the ruling-party rejected its desirability, but does the President himself recognise that a marker has been laid down and that sooner, rather than later, we will have to address the tough questions of governance that my Bill raised? The health of the Republic is not good. Our democratic institutions are failing the South African people. This Parliament has signally failed in its policy oversight and policy making role.
We all know that in the aftermath of the dastardly xenophobic attacks that the most immediate problem is food security. We must be tough on xenophobia and tough on the causes of xenophobia. The roots of such decadent lawlessness lie in an entrenched national malaise.
Franklin D Roosevelt's adviser Harry Hopkins famously observed in the midst of the American Depression, people don't eat in the long run; they eat every day - or starve in the long run. The time for food summits and workshops is long past.
I would like to ask the President to spell out in his reply tomorrow if the Presidency will make it an apex priority to ensure that no displaced person - and indeed no South African citizen - is left unfed. We need to hear the details, not worthy aspirations.
The muscle of the state is needed in the strategic fight against poverty.
The IFP asks: Will the Presidency now accept that a Basic Income Grant must be urgently introduced? Failure to do so will, I fear, result in the widespread rioting and looting that we have witnessed in countries from Egypt to Indonesia. The consequences for our already fragile national unity are simply too terrible to comprehend.
At this time, Mr President, apart from the legitimate cut-and-thrust of the democratic process, there seems to be a concerted effort to destroy your legacy.
I am concerned that as your term of office comes to a close, the undertaking that was made to the Coalition of Traditional Leaders by the Cabinet Committee which was chaired by the Honourable Mr JG Zuma, then Deputy President of the Republic and now President of the ANC, has been dishonoured.
Once again, I must remind the President that the Cabinet Committee promised that, in order to prevent the obliteration of the powers and functions of traditional leaders, Chapters 7 and 12 of the Constitution would be amended.
It was a solemn promise that the President made verbally and in writing. Mr President, a promise is a promise.
We also need a strong sense of leadership from the President in seemingly trivial everyday matters, not just in the big matters. We especially need direction in protecting our fragile environment. We need to be told authoritatively how important it is to save electricity and to begin car sharing to reduce carbon emissions. The endless traffic jams have become a permanent feature of all our cities.
I fear that, due to our immediate political crisis, we have not kept pace with the rest of the world in how to combat global warming. The IFP is alarmed that South Africa is not rising to the green challenge and exercising leadership. The damage to the environment, alongside poverty, is undoubtedly the biggest global challenge of our time. I would like to hear from the President what plans he has for the government to regain the green initiative.
Madam Speaker, in the life of every woman and man, in every nation, and yes, every Presidency, there is a tipping point. In my judgement, this great nation has not yet reached the tipping point between success and disintegration. But we are teetering on the brink.
For the sake of this country, I plead with the President to use these final few months to use the Presidency to reach out to the great majority of South African people of goodwill, to safeguard our fragile achievements, and to have the courage to discard failed policies.
I thank you.
This is the prepared address by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party, on the occasion of the budget vote of the Presidency, Cape Town, June 11 2008
