Speaking notes of Tim Harris MP, Democratic Alliance shadow minister of finance, for his address to the DA Federal Congress, November 25 2012:
One Nation!
Dames en here: Die DA lewer dienste!
Yes, the DA delivers
Where the DA is in government, government works.
Yesterday you heard speaker after speaker report on how they are delivering more and better services.
This message of "delivery" is an effective one, but we must be careful of people misinterpreting it to promote a myth that the DA and the ANC have similar visions and policy platforms and that we just simply deliver better in government.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The dominant faction of the ANC believes in something called State Capitalism: where the state acts as the dominant player, and uses markets for their own political gain. This is the vision of Malusi Gigaba, and Ebrahim Patel's New Growth Path and the motivation behind the idea of a state mining company, a state bank and a state housing company.
The DA's vision is of an open society. A nation where all South Africans have the freedom to access opportunity.
Ours is a liberal vision, because it prioritises freedom. Political freedom has been at the heart of every successful modern democracy, and economic freedom has powered the largest increase in standards of living in human history.
But we are not libertarians. There are a couple of so-called intellectuals in the tripartite alliance who like to dust off their Marxist textbooks and fling such accusations at the DA.
There are three critics in particular I want to respond to today:
The first is Pravin Gordhan who tries to typecast us as market fundamentalist, as rabid free marketeers.
To Mr Gordhan I say: "we have never promoted totally unfettered markets". Over time, unregulated markets tend concentrate power in larger players at the expense of little guys. The state has to intervene to give entrants a fair shot at competing. The DA would give more money and more power to the competition authorities than this government does.
We also would break up the most monopolistic companies in the country, the state owned entities, like SAA that take billions of rands of bailouts from taxpayers with one hand while undermining brave entrepreneurs like the founders of OneTime, with the other.
Yes, we would break up parastatals like SAA, parts of Eskom, the SABC and Denel and distribute the shares to ordinary South Africans through the 2,5 million stokvels across the country.
The second critic is Pallo Jordan who wastes his breath trying to undermine the contribution of liberal South Africans to this country.
To Mr Jordan I say: "shame on you for questioning the role Helen Suzan played as the lone opposition voice in the Apartheid parliament". I am grateful every day for her work, as well as the work by the liberals - several of whom are with us here today - at the Constitutional Assembly, to enshrine values like federalism and basic human rights in the constitution.
The third is Blade Nzimande who, whenever he can, squeals about how the DA is a "party for whites". He's like the frog in the pot of water oblivious to the rising temperature. Or like Comical Ali, Saddam Hussein's propaganda minister during the Iraq war, who told reporters there were no American troops in Bagdad even as you could see tanks rolling past behind him.
To Mr Nzimande I say, "watch your back".
You can pretend the DA is the way you imagine it to be, or you can open your eyes and see our party fill Walter Sisulu Square in Kliptown to the rafters.
Or you can call your friend Mr Vavi and ask what it was like to look out of his office and see three thousand angry young South Africans in blue t-shirts who are done waiting for Cosatu to stop blocking the Youth Wage Subsidy.
Or you come and join us here today and meet thousands of South Africans: young and old, black and white, who are gatvol with the ANC and who will flood this province in a blue wave in 2014... and come and take the keys to your office in 2019.
My friends, the DA says "Freedom you can use" because economic freedom only works if you can use it.
If you are let down by the education system you can't use your freedom.
If powerful public and private players abuse their market power to unfairly undermine your small business, you can't use your freedom.
If the transport infrastructure can't support your exports, you can't use your freedom.
Freedom has to be freedom you can use. And it is up to government to give you the tools
The DA's plan for Growth and Jobs is powered by "Freedom you can use" because it would cut red tape to free up business, but it would also fix government education, rebuild state support for small business and help give ordinary people a stake in the economy.
This is not the idealistic detached liberalism of the ivory tower. It's practical sensible liberalism biased towards the outsiders: creating jobs for the unemployed, giving the poor access to assets and extending real education to all.
Our opponents on both sides fear freedom because they love control and use extreme ideologies to justify self-enrichment.
On the far left the SACP spouts discredited populist rhetoric while their general secretary spends R1,1m of taxpayer's money on a BMW.
And Cosatu masquerades as a social movement when their only real goal is to maximise the salaries of their workers. To protect this group they have leveraged their political influence to block the youth wage subsidy that would create an estimated 178 000 jobs for young people.
On the far right, the racial nationalists in the ANC - and the nationalists no longer in the ANC Youth League - talk about "economic freedom in our lifetime" but really, they mean the freedom to access tenders and buy expensive watches.
My friends, the ideas of the far left and the far right have taken our economy backwards. Today there are 1,2 million more unemployed South Africans than there were when President Zuma took office. Poverty remains persistent: every month one out of every three households run out of money to buy food.
I don't know about you, but I've had it up to here with my country being an example of a place that didn't live up to its potential
I am sick of South Africa appearing on the front pages of international newspapers for all of the wrong reasons.
And I hate watching us lose our lead in Africa to dynamic democracies that know how to treat foreign investors.
But, ladies and gentlemen: I never get tired of explaining why I am optimistic about my country.
There are five main reasons:
The African Opportunity. Africa has a billion consumers, it,s the fastest growing market in the world, but South African is only the 10th largest exporter to Africa. Italy exports more than us to Africa. So do Spain, Holland and Korea. If we can open up trade with Africa we can double our growth rate
The World Cup. In 2010, we showed the world that if South Africans, when government and business work together, and focus on getting the job done, we can put on the biggest show on earth
World beating Companies. Firms like SAB, Shoprite, Discovery, Black like me and MTN have taken on the world and won. Our government must now learn how to emulate their success
The World's Biggest Reserves of Mineral Wealth. Citibank has calculated that South Africa sits on $2,5 trillion of minerals. When the DA gets into power we will sort out mining policy and infrastructure backlogs and preside over a proper mining boom
The DA is today the strongest opposition this democracy has ever known. We have grown in every single election we have contested and will take power from the ANC in a democratic transition.
And, my friends, when we get into power we will be driven by a Plan for Growth and Jobs to turn South Africa into a country that can grow at 8%.
It is a plan that will turn ours into a nation of owners. To tell you more about that plan may I introduce the, leader of the group that drafted policy, Federal Chair of the DA: Dr Wilmot James.
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