SPEECH BY THE CHIEF WHIP OF THE MAJORITY PARTY, DR. MATHOLE MOTSHEKGA, DURING THE OCCASION OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY'S DEBATE ON THE PRESIDENT'S STATE OF THE NATION ADDRESS, 15 FEBRUARY 2010

In his inaugural address in 1994 our icon, Nelson Mandela, laid a firm foundation for nation-building and social cohesion when he reminded us of the need to work together as a nation.

Madiba said: "We know it well, that none of us acting alone can achieve success. We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world".

President Mandela elevated the spiritual philosophy of Ubuntu to the overarching value system for the desired new nation.

In 2007 the ANC observed that the darkness of apartheid is receding, making room for the birth of a non-racial, non-sexist, united, democratic and prosperous society in which the value of every citizen is measured by our common humanity. On 22 April 2009 millions of South Africans went out to cast their votes, encouraged by a South Africa that belongs to all, a nation united in its diversity, a people working together for the greatest good of all.

Honourable President, you linked the recovery of the humanity (Ubuntu) of all South Africans, both black and white, with the five ANC priorities in the following words:

"...(The recovery of the humanity of all) has been a guiding tenet of the ANC for many decades of its existence. It will be a central feature of our shared efforts over the term of this government, because we know that working together we can do more to build a great South Africa.

"Decent work and steady improving quality of life are essential for the recovery of the humanity of all our people. So too is empowerment through access to quality education and skills development. Safe water; affordable energy; decent shelter; and cohesive, secure and vibrant communities are similarly all important for the recovery of this humanity.

"To be treated with respect and dignity by one's fellow citizens, and by those who have the responsibility of providing a public service, is important for the recovery of our humanity. Central to this recovery of our humanity is also the need for access to economic opportunities and to earn a living."

This statement revealed the President's loyalty and commitment to the fundamental values of the ANC, its five priorities and programmes. In its January 8 Statement, the ANC made job creation a priority "to ensure that the minimum demand that all shall share in the country's wealth" is met.

The statement also said that political emancipation without economic transformation and economic freedom is meaningless. Spurred by this commitment of the ANC, Honourable President, you told the ANC Lekgotla that:

"Everything we do this year must be designed to help us achieve this goal. Therefore we must make economic transformation our national project, and we have to rally the whole country behind this national priority as we did with education, health, and the fight against crime".

The achievement of this goal will also require the transformation of this parliament into a truly people's institution that is efficient, effective, responsive and activist in character.

Transformation of Parliament

Our democracy is both representative and participatory. The ANC believes that development is not only about the delivery of basic services to a passive citizenry. The people must be involved and participate in the legislative processes and development of programmes aimed to benefit them. In taking this approach the ANC seeks to give effect to the principle of participatory democracy which requires us to take parliament to the people.

The ANC defined the fourth parliament as an activist parliament, responsive, efficient and effective people's tribune. In building an activist parliament, we needwhich were established to educate the public, for instance, Parliamentary Democracy Offices (PDOs) and sectoral parliaments including the youth, women and religious parliaments. Sectoral parliaments were created to provide a national platform for marginalised communities to interact with their public representatives on critical issues that affect their lives. These structures have not made the desired impact, their resolutions were never channelled into parliamentary processes and parliament's response to the issues raised were never communicated back to the communities or referred to the Executive for implementation.

The People's Assembly, which is inter-sectoral is supposed to sit twice a year but has thus far failed to meet for the last two years. Sectoral parliaments and the people's assemblies are political programmes, and should not be annual events driven by officials. These programmes must indeed be realigned and transformed into effective and powerful tools for parliamentary oversight and community participation in line with the objectives of an activist parliament.

We need to ensure that these programmes are totally accessible to ordinary people, including rural youth and women, and that parliament and the executive branch of government take the issues they raise forward and report back. They must serve as catalysts for real change and development in the lives of our people. In short, they must become organs of an activist parliament.

What is an activist parliament?

An activist parliament intercedes, and intervenes, with the executive, organs of the state and business on behalf of the people. It seeks to ensure the delivery of faster change in the lives of the people. Such a parliament challenges public representatives to work faster, harder and smarter to meet the legitimate demands and expectations of the people.

It requires public representatives; including MPs, MPLs and Councillors, who constantly seek to improve their capacity to serve the people. Such public representatives should strive to be in touch with the people all the time, listen to their views and learn from them. They should be accessible and flexible and not arrogate to themselves the status of being the source of all wisdom.

The ANC and the people need activist public representatives who form part of a collective of visionary and revolutionary men and women whose task is to steer parliament toward the attainment of our five priorities and, in particular, the national project of creating jobs and transforming the economy. Such Members of Parliament should be instrumental in transforming this institution into what our people expect of it - an activist parliament.

It is for this reason that the ANC is today recommitting itself to deepen and entrench its robust oversight role on the executive and all organs of the state. In doing so the ANC will put the interest of the people of South Africa first and ensure that all people, whether they are members of the public, government officials, members of the executive or business leaders, are treated with respect without compromising the Constitutional responsibility of MPs to conduct robust and fearless oversight. It is also expected that those appearing before portfolio committees, including ministers, officials and members of the public irrespective of their standing in society, should treat members of parliament and this institution with respect. Thus mutual respect will characterise all interactions in our parliamentary work.

The ANC has the responsibility of leading the entrenchment of the ethos and values of activism within this parliament. It has to ensure that it leads this institution in playing a critical role of conducting robust oversight over the executive. Parliament will use this constitutional right to monitor the adherence of government departments to the five priorities, in particular, job creation and transformation of the economy by government.

Parliament's oversight work will compliment the peand evaluation by the presidency and enhance the principles of co-operative governance. This will also require policy coordination and interaction of programmes across the three spheres of the legislative sector.

What are the organs of an activist parliament?

Sectoral parliaments and people's assembly programmes alone cannot achieve the objectives of an activist parliament. Traditional roles of portfolio committees are also not adequate to carry out the objectives of an activist parliament. The ANC wants this parliament to conduct its oversight role even more robustly than ever before.

Parliament is elected to represent the people and ensure government by the people under the constitution. Thus parliament has a responsibility to ensure that the public forms part of the democratic processes by understanding the role of parliament and their involvement in parliamentary processes. This places an obligation on this institution to ensure that democratic processes are well known and reach all citizens of the country.

By its nature, parliament is a nation-building institution. It seeks to transform the entire society. To this end, the ANC will ensure the transformation of its structures to enhance parliament oversight capacity through public involvement, participation and education.

There can never be an activist parliament without a strong, well resourced and effective structures of parliament. An activist institution will therefore ensure that this institution plays a meaningful role in community interaction to curb violent service delivery protests such as the one currently taking place in Ermelo in Mpumalanga. In this regard, we wish to appeal to the protesting community of Ermelo for calm. We also condemn the violent nature of the protest, which includes destruction of property and attack on journalists and their property by the protestors. We call on the protestors to give authorities a chance to address their grievances.

Nation Building and Heritage Committee

Parliament has an obligation to provide a public platform for consideration of issues, debates and education. To this end, parliament has transformed the Parliamentary Millennium Project (PMP) into a Nation Building and Heritage Committee that will promote reconciliation, tolerance and the creation of an inclusive society.

This Committee is tasked with the following additional responsibilities:
* To serve as a consultative mechanism to drive the activist parliament
* To reach out to the marginalised sectors of our society, especially rural youth and women
* To provide a platform for public debates and education
* To promote parliament, legislatures and councils as instruments of nation building and heritage development
* To monitor progress with government's nation-building initiatives and the development of an inclusive South African society based on reconciliation, tolerance and mutual understanding
* To monitor efforts of the executive to foster a shared South African and African identity

The Nation Building and Heritage Committee will ensure that parliament does no solely rely on government reports for its oversight work. It will interact with communities and let them speak for themselves on whether or not jobs are being created and the economy is being transformed.

The ANC will also ensure that:

1. The Committee develops and harnesses the African cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge systems for job creation and economic transformation

2. The Committee becomes an important driver of programmes such as Africa Day and Nelson Mandela Day as part of African renewal, advancement and development.

In this regard, the ANC will rekindle the spirit of progressive pan Africanism and mobilise all sectors of society to participate in this processes.

One-stop Centre Parliamentary Constituency Offices

Constituency work is at the centre of the work of an activist parliament as it serves as an opportunity for public representatives to interact with the people through local constituency and public participation forums. We have therefore restructured our constituency offices to make them one-stop centre parliamentary constituency offices which bring together public representatives (MPs, MPLs and Councillors) under one roof to promote policy coordination and integration of programmes for community outreach. Satellite offices will be established where necessary to ensure that we reach out to the remotest rural areas of our country.

The one-stop centre PCOs will ensure that community issues obtained by public representatives (including MPs, MPLs and Councillors) are formalised in parliament, legislatures and councils and raised with the executive for consideration and response in all the three spheres of government.  The ANC will ensure that the separation of powers is effected at the local levels to enhance robust oversight. We will then resource our PCOs, appoint competent administrators and researchers.

This means that we need to resource these PCOs adequately, staff them with capable people and train the current staff, and develop better management and coordination systems.

PCOs are the face of parliament within communities. The image of our PCOs must change for the better and Parliament has a responsibility to make resources available for better infrastructure.

The ANC believes that caucuses, not the administration, need capacity to track responses to the issues raised by public representatives and ensure that information on issues from the public is formally processed in parliament, legislatures and councils and reported back to the people.

Deepening and Entrenching Ubuntu values and principles

Our icon Nelson Mandela, observed, quite correctly, that social and economic transformation cannot be achieved without spiritual transformation. He placed the overarching value of our common humanity (Ubuntu/Botho) at the centre of this spiritual transformation.

We said in the January 8 Statement of 2010 that human development has both spiritual and material aspect and undertook to work together with the National Interfaith Leaders Council (NILC) to promote spiritual and social transformation.

On 5th January 2011 the NILC and the National Religious Leaders Forum met at OR Tambo International Airport and resolved to form a single National Interfaith Organisation. They declared that they have common objectives relating to moral regeneration, nation building and social cohesion. The interfaith movement has also identified job creation and skills development as top priorities.  They also agreed to make their infrastructure available for skills development, cultural and creative industries in partnership with government.

The seeds for collaboration between the Interfaith Movement and government were laid at the National Conference on the values of a just and caring society held on 31 August 2010. The Conference resolved to launch Ubuntu Alive Campaign and to call on government to identify a National Ubuntu Day, which does not need to be a holiday, to celebrate and cultivate the values of a just and caring society.

The Ubuntu Alive campaign will address, among other challenges, all manifestations of moral degeneration, including drug and alcohol abuse.

The conference also deliberated on the Bill of Responsibilities produced by the Department of Basic Education. The department, together with Lead-SA and the National Interfaith Movement, will launch the Bill of Responsibilities in March this year.

The Bill seeks to inculcate the values of rights and responsibilities among school children. In particular, the Bill focuses on the respect for human dignity and the work ethic. It is particularly important for building the character of children, deterring teenage pregnancies, use and/or abuse of drugs and alcohol. We welcome the invitation of the President to civil society for partnership with government in the fight against substance abuse and teenage pregnancies. In this regard, the ANC urges government to partner with the National Interfaith Movement and the mediUbuntu values and principles are the glue that will ensure the creation of cohesive, caring and sustainable communities. The ANC will mobilise all sectors of society to throw their weight behind the Ubuntu Alive Campaign for the deepening and entrenching of human and people's rights culture.

Working for a better Africa and the World

The ANC will rekindle the spirit of progressive Pan Africanism by mobilising all sectors of our society, Africa and her diaspora for African renewal, advancement and development. This we will do through, among other things, the Diaspora Conference in November and the ongoing preparations for the ANC centenary celebrations.

This mobilisation will also focus, in particular, on moral, social and economic transformation of the continent, the deepening and entrenchment of democracy and human rights.

Conclusion

The ANC fully welcomes and supports the President's State of the Nation Address speech.

Issued by the Office of the ANC Chief Whip, February 15 2011

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