Debate on Budget Vote

15 July 2024

DEFENCE AND MILITARY VETERANS

Honourable Chairperson, having served in the National Assembly during the 1 st Administration, I am back to serve. I suppose this can be called my second 'maiden speech'.

It is dedicated to the liberation soldiers who fought for our liberation.

Specifically, two - whom I have known personally - and who were killed because of the betrayal of their closest comrades: Commander Chris Hani, and Comrade Vincent Tshabalala.

Commander Chris Hani was assassinated by Janusz WaluS, but his real killers are still free. Some of them are members of the 'Government of National Unity' (GNU) executive.

In a similar act of betrayal Vincent Tshabalala, died in an ambush in Alexandra township, betrayed by his closest friend. Today that very same friend' holds high executive office. The evil deeds of these impimpis will come to light!

In my autobiography, that will be published in November, I will name the senior leader who betrayed Vincent Tshabalala, but I have actually already revealed enough, to identify that vile traitor!

Chair, these are the sell outs that now form the "GNU" , and who continue to kill the revolutionary legacy of Chris Hani and Vincent Tshabalala. Nowhere is that betrayal starker than in the farcical budget votes of the Ministry of Defence and Military Veterans, that our portfolio committee was expected to rubber stamp.

The budgets were presented to us in a rushed three-hour meeting. We were expected to 'approve' these complex budgets on the basis of 20-minute presentations! It was a total travesty!

This was not a budgetary oversight process. It was a sausage machine! The rushed time frames are in direct contravention of our constitutional oversight mandate. Overall, the parliamentary budgetary process is a mockery.

As members of the National Assembly, we laid down an oath of allegiance to carry out our responsibilities. l, and my fellow members of the Economic Freedom Fighters, cannot be expected to contravene that oath.

The voters who voted for the EFF, did not vote for us to be turned into rubber stamps.

Thus, we are left with no option but to oppose these budget votes. I am not even sure if it is worth going into any of the detail of the budgets. However, in order to highlight how serious the situation is, let me do so.

The budgetary allocation of the DOD for 2024/2025 is R 51 810 billion. This boils down to a R 50 billion Rand shortfall. The consequences are disastrous as the DOD cannot meet its Constitutional Mandate to, "defend and protect our country".

While our national safety is compromised, the President still deployed SANDF troops to Mozambique and the DRC. This, while our troops are not resourced, and their safety cannot be guaranteed. They are callously deployed to fail and die.

Recently two SANDF soldiers were killed and 20 seriously injured in the DRC.

We must immediately withdraw our troops. Instead, the President wants to deploy a further 2 900 SANDF members in the DRC. The butcher of Marikana continues to send our soldiers to be butchered. The EFF will not approve such callousness!

Although the DOD is broke, it still funds 'The Castle'. A colonial relic, intricately associated with the old apartheid SADF, that incorporated it into their insignia.

The Ministry's lack of focus on core priorities is, therefore, staggering!

The Department of Military Veterans is in administrative shambles. It cannot provide any of the 11 benefits that Military Veterans are entitled to, in terms of the Military Veterans Act. Military Veterans dont have adequate housing, medical care, or educational funding, and most don't receive military pensions.

The Database Verification system is in shambles. THE OLD LIBERATION CADRES OF CHRIS HANI AND VINCENT TSHABALALA ARE BEING DISCARDED!

Chair, a nation's moral fibre is judged by how it treats its military veterans. We are a morally bankrupt nation. As Mzwake Mbuli, recites: "If only the dead could rise and see what their sacrifices had become.

Only by acknowledging the terrible rot that has set in, can we turn things around. If Minister Angie Motshekga is prepared to work towards a turn-around, she will find in the EFF a willing partner. However, if not, she will encounter in us an impeccable opponent!

STATE SECURITY AND OTHER INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES

House Chairperson, in rejecting this budget, we want to take this opportunity to reflect broadly on the state of our intelligence agencies in this country, in consideration of the R4.4 billion proposed budget for State Security.

Despite the slow pace in transforming the broken state security agency since this administration began in 2018, particularly the much-needed separation of domestic and foreign branches, and dismantling the chances of executive abuse that attained under the previous administration, State Security still seems largely purposeless and unproductive.

After what was an embarrassing display of incompetence following the July unrest in 2021, our intelligence agencies have still to unlock the several infiltrations, misinformation, and information peddlers within its ranks.

However, what should worry South Africans is the continued rise and growth of sophisticated organised crime, which has recently been revealed by the Thabo Bester escape from prison.

There is growing evidence that criminals, through highly placed and important personnel within the correctional services, continue to facilitate sophisticated criminal operations that undermine the credibility of the entire criminal justice system.

Criminals are able to leave maximum security prisons to perform heinous crimes and come back to their cells without any trace. This is the biggest security breach and will result in the general populace losing total confidence in the criminal justice system.

The Thabo Bester escape, above everything, tells us that we do not have intelligence agencies that are able to pick up and prevent such breaches to our national security.

Another related aspect of this phenomenon is the growing power of assassination networks in our country. These networks extend to the prison system; one can, today, rely on a convicted criminal serving a long sentence in a maximum-security facility to perform assassinations outside and go back to prison.

It is also a fact that these assassination networks are commanded or even used by some within the top echelons of security forces to settle differences, and at times eliminate opponents.

A country with an inability to neutralise organised assassination networks is a country with a totally dysfunctional and infiltrated intelligence capability.

In addition, the growing power of criminal com-tsotsi gangs that operate in pursuit of the parasitic local government tender system are continuing to erode service delivery in many communities across the country.

It is also a fact that there are many organised gangs, masquerading as the "community" demanding 30% from any local government contractor who must provide services in a given community. These gangs enrich themselves by blocking progress to deliver services in exchange for pure bribes that have nothing to do with the community; which reveals some, not all, of the service delivery protests as disingenuous.

Our intelligence agencies cannot predict and totally undermine the efforts of these activities so as to allow service delivery to occur. In fact, this is one of the key reasons the EFF believes in building internal state capacity so as to not rely on the tender system to deliver services.

We must then ask what is the money dedicated to our intelligence agencies really doing? What do majority of the people at the State Security Agency, Crime Intelligence and their associated institutions get paid to do?

The Phala Phala saga may carry answers for us. The Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence refused to hold an open investigation/inquiry in to the Phala Phala matter in which serious allegations of abuse of these agencies by the sitting president were made.

Once more, Parliament failed to hold the executive accountable, choosing instead to shield the president from scrutiny and pretend as if it is business as usual. This attitude is also seen with regards to the problems around the electricity crisis.

We have allowed a total disabling of Eskom in a general plan to privatise it, the greatest national security threat this country has ever seen since the 1980s. The multiple compounding stages of load-shedding all work towards one goal: surrender Eskom to private hands, at the cost of the stability of South Africa itself. And our intelligence agencies are either complicit or clueless.

HOME AFFAIRS

Chairperson, the first thing that the new Minister of Home Affairs did when he came in to office was to extend temporary concessions, yet, as of January 2024 the visa backlog for critical skills, business and general work visas had been cleared. The only visa category which had significant backlogs were Section 11(6) and Section 18 visas for spousal and relatives respectively. So, there was no critical skills visa backlog that required urgent attention by the Minister.

Among the reasons cited by the department for the backlog was the legitimacy of the relationships claimed by the applicants. We know that the department had instituted an investigation in relation to the awarding of visas and permits after the Lubisi Report exposed the endemic corruption within the department with regards to the issuing Of visas and permits. The first priority Of the Minister on his first day in office was to resolve romantic affairs instead of the long queues and the system that's always offline. We have a Minister of Romantic Affairs not Home Affairs.

We have a serious problem, particularly here in the City Of Cape Town, of European immigrants who entered the country on visitor's visas and then overstayed their visas just like those who arrived here in 1652 and never left.

They are contributing towards the high cost of living by driving up rental and accommodation prices as they are seen to be more preferred than locals because they pay in Dollars and Euros. The Department of Home Affairs has consistently failed to enforce our immigration laws on them, and their focus is mainly on fellow Africans and we know that this hypocrisy will become worse under the new DA Minister.

House Chairperson, we want to draw the attention of the house to the pernicious role of the white billionaires of Stellenbosch who are on a clear mission to capture our political system and subvert our democracy by pumping millions of Rands to fund certain political parties and in the establishment new ones. This is reflected in the report published by MyVoteCounts which reveals that the Stellenbosch mafia spent over R300 million in the 2024 elections. The DA received more funding than the ANC itself.

All patriotic South Africans should be alarmed by this brazen attempt to capture our democracy, we must never allow money to subvert the clarion call made over 60 years ago in Kliptown that the people shall govern, not the money, not the markets but the will of the people will reign supreme. What we are witnessing now is a clear brazen attempt by the Stellenbosch mafia to capture our hard-earned democracy, but we are not surprised because in 2017 they successfully captured the former liberation movement and installed a Manchurian candidate who was raised and groomed by big white business.

The Political Party Funding Act established the Multiparty Democracy Fund which is managed by the IEC which allows for any private donors who are genuinely interested in strengthening Of multiparty democracy to contribute towards a fund which will distribute those funds equitably and proportionally. The IEC should tell us how much the Stellenbosch mafia contributed towards the IEC administered fund and whether the I EC has ever approached them to solicit any contributions towards the Multiparty Democracy Fund.

As the EFF we are going to demand that the portfolio committee, in line with its powers, must summon the Oppenheimer family, the Rupert family, and others to come and explain their motives for spending such obscene amounts of money on elections. What is their objective? What do they seek to achieve? Where was this money when black people were enslaved under apartheid?

House Chairperson, the lack Of funding for the Border Management Agency (BMA) is impacting negatively on their ability to execute their mandate. This means millions of fake products with devastating impact on our economy will continue to find a way in our country. We have noted that although the BMA received many functions which were done by other departments, the funds did not follow those functions.

The persistent system failures and Iona queues at Home Affairs offices disproportionately affect the poor as they have to travel long distances just to access your services and we consider this as the most pressing challenge that the Minister must urgently address. Many of our people are still dont have IDs and can't access critical government services because they remain undocumented. The department has become a cartel for crime syndicates trading in fake identity documents, marriage certificates, and other important documents.

The need for efficiency in the delivery of identity cards is crucial to improve the lives of the citizens. It is unacceptable that citizens can only receive their cards instantly during elections period but suffer immensely to get their cards on time once the elections are over. There is a lack of efficient methods to reduce turnaround times that citizens have to endure in the acquisition of identity documents.

We reject this budget vote.

CORRECTIONAL SERVICES

Chairperson, the Economic Freedom Fighters rejects budget vote 22 on Correctional Services.

We equally reject the appointment of an active advocate for apartheid to oversee the political management of correctional centres, which by design, continue to house a predominantly young black population.

Chairperson, the country's correctional centres have been a heaven for criminals, allowing those meant to be guarding criminals to be at the top of the food chain of criminal activity. Our correctional facilities are rotten to the core, they are rotten because those who lead the institution are rotten themselves.

Keeping young black people in prison is surely profitable for a select group of individuals, who have no scruples, and are prepared to line their pockets at the expense of thoroughgoing rehabilitation work for inmates.

While this is the case, our prison facilities are turning petty criminals into hardcore criminals who come out of the system to be a menace to society.

According to the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services, which is itself chronically underfunded, South African prisons have a population of more than 157 000 inmates, 16 000 of whom are serving life sentences.

There are only 119 000 bed spaces available in our prisons at the moment, meaning that the correctional services are overcrowded by over 40 000 prisoners. But 43 000 of these inmates are remand detainees, who could be released on bail if we had properly functioning lower courts.

It costs the Department over RI 25 000 per annum to keep an individual inmate in jail.

Most of these inmates live in overcrowded conditions, driving most of them to various forms of illnesses, most notably, mental illnesses.

Consistently, the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services reports of various problems with inmate care in prisons, and that this leads to a growing problem of mental illnesses amongst inmates. Correctional Services has done nothing to address this problem, and there is no sufficient provision in the budget to address these problems.

It is for this reason that about 40% of deaths in prison are as a result of suicide.

The Department of Correctional Services is in crisis. It is failing its constitutional responsibility to be a corrective, not a retributive service.

The flipside of this is that thousands of young black people, most of who are remanded for petty crimes, will have their lives changed permanently inside a very corrupt system of correctional services.

This situation cannot continue any longer, therefore, the State must commit to doing the following:

Perform a very urgent audit of the seriousness of the crimes of remand detainees, and release from prison all those who committed petty crimes.

Increase the funding and mandate of the Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons, to allow it to be thorough in its work of inspecting prisons and holding the Department accountable.

Build sufficient capacity to handle mental illness cases in prisons.

Transform correctional services to include compulsory education and skilling for all prisoners. This will be followed by the scrapping of the criminal record statuses of ex-convicts who were convicted of certain schedules of crime, depending on the seriousness of the crimes committed.

Ensure that no correctional services facility or programme is run by a private corporation or company, as they are not interested in the well-being of inmates, but in making as much money as possible.

Cancel all catering contracts and make sure that inmates themselves engage in productive work, such as agriculture, and that others get trained to cook for the prisons in which they are held.

Provide incentives to inmates who engage in productive and corrective activities, and those who embark of personal improvement activities, such as formal studies.

Provide regular medical check-ups for inmates, to ensure that illnesses, particularly mental illnesses, are picked up early and that inmates get given the necessary treatment for these illnesses.

Root out gangsterism inside prisons by getting stricter with prison warders. This must include regular rotation of warders in between prisons, to ensure that no warder gets to stay in one prison and become familiar with inmates.

The budget tabled does not address, in any meaningful way, any of these challenges.

DEPARTMENT OF FORESTRY, FISHERIES, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Honorable Chairperson, the Economic Freedom Fighters rejects the proposed budget vote 32 of the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment.

When the Minister addressed the committee last week, he indicated that the core focal areas for the department are climate change, biodiversity conservation, and pollution control. These challenges affect the health of our people and decrease agricultural yields, which in turn affects food security.

Unlike the mainstream noise made by proponents of the so called Just Transition, which is parroted by the new Minister, in its truest sense, environmentally sustainable development means that this generation is able to meets its need for survival, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

It does not mean this generation must self-immolate on the altar of Western imposed notions of Just Transition. The transition will not be just if it leaves behind millions of people out of jobs, and compromises our energy sustainability.

So, Minister Dion George, you may want to curb your enthusiasm about the concept of Just Transition and focus on ensuring that our natural resources are protected from injudicious exploitation by multinationals.

For this reason, the EFF advocates for nature conservation that centers the needs of the people because we realise that conservation and human development are not mutually exclusive imperatives.

On fisheries, we condemn the continued exclusion of local fishing communities from the formal granting of fishing licenses in favour of established companies.

The country's approach to the fishing industry ought to be guided by the principle that marine resources are public resources, and should therefore the exploitation of these resources should benefit the public as a whole.

This must essentially lead to wide scale transformation of the fishing industry by allocating fishing rights and licenses to small scale and emerging black fishing companies.

This must include catalytic technical and market related support and subsidies to fishing communities to guarantee that they transition from subsistence to commercial fishing.

This proposed budget continues the neglectful attitude the government has had towards small scale fishing for the past 30 years.

The same attitude persists in the conceptualisation of the forestry industry.

While the State owns vast forestry reserves, these are leased out for next to nothing to private companies, who exploit these resources without regard for communities around which these forests are located.

This requires that one of the key priorities of the State ought to be the recapitalisation and repositioning of the State Company, South African Forestry Company (SAFCOL), as the prime forestry company in South Africa, leading the transformation objectives of the State in this sector.

SAFCOL must be given overall control of all State forests currently leased out to private companies, and allow SAFCOL to renegotiate the terms and conditions of the lease agreements, to prioritise the flow of benefits to communities in and around these forests.

This budget is way off the mark, and continues to center the same old players that have contributed to the stagnation of these sectors for the past few decades.

The EFF rejects this budget.

COMMUNICATIONS AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

The 26 July movement celebrates 11 -years in our struggle for Economic Freedom In Our Lifetime. This year, we host our celebration in Kimberley, Northern Cape on Saturday, 27th July.

Salute to the only sustained revolutionary movement in South Africa who refused to sell out the African child just for crumbs that are thrown from the table of white supremistANC — DA coalition. Ours remain a generational mission.

The handing over of the ill-functioning Department of Communications and Digital Technologies under the ANC to the capital-driven anti-African DA can only result in further broadening digital exclusion as we slowly progress into a digitalised economy.

White privilege will now operate on steroids with an influx of white people, who far exceed their population demographic, occupying strategic positions without satisfactory qualifications.

We'll probably see an increase in the sale of black shoe polish as the DA has, during a plenary session stated that white people have to paint their faces black to access economic opportunities - a total disregard of their institutionalised privilege.

It is for these reasons that we reject the budget as it refuses to advance steadily into the 4th Industrial Revolution.

The Department is mandated to enable South Africa's digital transformation to achieve digital inclusion and economic growth by creating an enabling policy and regulatory environment.

However, all Government Departments' information remains fragmented within the Department of Communications despite budget allocations for digitation and cloud services.

The EFF, since its vibrant and sound entrance into the 5th Parliament in 2014, has advocated for digitised government services and cloud servers across all Government Departments to allow easy and quick access to public services and reduce long, tedious paperwork and long queues.

We are in 2024, our Gogos are still queueing in public health facilities required to complete unnecessary forms just to get Panado. Students must still display their poverty to access NFSAS because the department has failed in its mandate to digitise profiles of its citizens that can be accessed by all state institutions for efficient service delivery.

The digitising of government information and services is no longer rocket science as it has long been successfully rolled out in countries across the globe.

The South Africa Connect project has not met its roll-out target of 1 474 government sites. Acritical project for effective service delivery has failed. South Africa is positioned at 91 st place out of Il O countries in terms of the number of internet users, an enormous digital divide. This is largely due to the cost of purchasing smart devices and that data costs are ridiculously high even in comparison with other African countries. Yet, it is the same South African companies that sell data in those countries.

The EFF has been advocating for a regulatory framework that imposes a limit of data prices, however, this has fallen on incompetent ANC ears. With the DA in charge of this department, the network oligopolies, mainly white-owned will further flourish while many poor people are closed out of public discourse, and access to information fundamental to their survival.

The very capacity for a healthy democracy, as well as quality education and healthcare lie in access to information which is made possible by the internet.

The true test of ICASA is to regulate and monitor network operators, to end ripping our people off, by imposing a regulatory regime that makes data cheap and ensures that consumers actually get the data that they paid for.

There is no sound reason why the SABC is not generating maximum revenue from advertising while private broadcasters, mainly white owned with significantly less population access, do.

The EFF, in 2022 made submissions to the SA Human Rights Commission regarding the racist patterns of spending in the advertising industry. The Department under the ANC failed to regulate the industry in a bid to racially transform the industry. With the DA, the driver of white monopoly capital heading the Department, policies and regulation to deracialise the industry is but a pie in the sky concept and the public broadcaster will continue operating at a loss.

The Department failed to provide answers to the committee on what the mentorship relationship between Postbank and Standard Bank entails, in particular, what is Standard Bank benefitting from this arrangement.

The ever-escalating costs of financial services that blocks the poorest of the poor access can be fixed if the Postbank plays a developmental role of maximum participation of local communities. However, the banking industry monopolies will use every tactic available, including the DA to block the success of the Postbank.

The EFF rejects this budget vote.

TRANSPORT

The EFF wishes to send their condolences to the families of the eleven pupils killed in an accident involving private scholar transport in West Rand, Gauteng, this past week. Chairperson, the EFF believes that different transport modes and systems, like road, rail, air, and sea, play a significant role in connecting places, ensuring the efficient movement of people, goods, and economic activities.

Hence, the provision of an efficient, affordable, safe, and easily accessible public transport system is critical for the development of the South African economy and the integration of the region and the continent.

But the reality is that the South African public transport system is unsafe and inaccessible, to a greater extent in rural areas. It is expensive and even more so for persons living with disabilities.

The minibus taxis, with their limitations, are the most accessible, although not for people with disabilities, and the most common and flexible mode of transport.

But they are also expensive and unsafe for commuters who are constantly exposed to the volatile violence caused by fights over routes and other Issues. The reality is that those most affected by violence and infighting between associations in Alexandra, Mthatha between Border and Ncedo Associations, Umhlabuyalingana, and other parts of the country, are workers with no alternative form of transport.

The associations in Tembisa and Kempton Park, and many parts of the country, harass motorists and illegally hijack them under the false pretense of enforcing laws they do not have.

If it is not violence, it is roadworthy minibus taxis. The government recapitalisation has completely failed.

In 2020, the EFF proposed that the taxi recapitalisation program be scrapped and that concerted efforts, including funds, be redirected to the formalisation of the industry.

Instead, the government continues with its inefficiency and subsidises a mode that caters to only 20% of public transport users and neglects the one that serves 70% of the labor workforce, which is the backbone of our country's economy.

The 2024/2025 Annual Performance Plan (APP) and the proposed budget presented to the committee by the Department of Transport do not make any provision for the subsidisation of minibus taxis, yet the then Minister Fikile Mbalula had set the implementation date of the taxi subsidy as the 1 st of April 2021.

The APP is notably silent on universal access, particularly for persons living with disabilities, despite the commitment made in the 2021 APP to urgently address the issue of access to transport for special needs commuters.

The Department of Transport, in collaboration with the Department of Education, has persistently failed to prioritise scholar transport to ensure not only the safety of young learners and pupils but also that they regularly attend chool on time and in a conducive manner.

Earlier this year, thousands of pupils were left stranded due to a failure to provide transport, and to this day, many children still have to walk long distances to get to school, exposing them to violent criminals. Many still have to cross dangerous overflowing rivers to get to school.

A decrease in funding and a lack of investment in public scholar transport increases the emergence of illegal private scholar transport, which overloads vehicles and disregards the safety of our learners by driving unroadworthy vehicles.

Speaker, over 60 million people live in South Africa, with more than 3.3 million individuals identified as living with disabilities or being differently abled.

Thirty years since the dawn of democracy, we believe it is unacceptable and alarming that persons living with disabilities are still discriminated against and have barriers to accessing basic living activities.

One of the key barriers and perpetuations of exclusion, which the government is implicit in, is the inaccessibility of transport for people living with disabilities.

One of the key barriers and perpetuations of exclusion, which the government is implicit in, is the inaccessibility of transport for people living with disabilities.

This is most concerning because the inability to access transport causes a ripple effect, as it means one is further excluded from healthcare, education, employment, etc.

While South Africa has legislation such as the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act (PEPUDA) and the White Paper on the Provision of Integrated Public Transport (2007), the willingness in enforcement and implementation of these laws to ensure accessibility for persons with disabilities is inadequate.

The transport infrastructure itself often does not meet the minimum needs of persons with disabilities in the form of uneven pavements, poorly marked crosswalks, and a lack of tactile paving, which makes it difficult for those with visual impairments to navigate safely.

The MyCiti Dial-A-Ride in Cape Town only caters to 350 regular users, yet the service is oversubscribed, leaving many people on the waiting list for long periods.

The cost of accessible transport options is prohibitive for many black and poor individuals with disabilities, particularly in a country with economic disparities like South Africa. Only those who can afford access to private companies have an efficient transport system for persons with disabilities.

It would be treasonous for the Economic Freedom Fighters to approve a budget that does not reflect a focused objective and commitment to achieving equality.

The Economic Freedom Fighters, therefore, correctly reject a budget that still fails to address the inequalities that have existed for more than 30 years, and continues to ignore and neglect the immediate and fundamental problems of our people.

BASIC EDUCATION

Chairperson, this year marks thirty years since the transfer of political power from a racist minority regime to a government elected by the people as whole.

Over the past three decades, the Department of Basic Education has consistently failed to deliver on its mandate, leaving a legacy of neglect and broken promises.

Despite the Constitutional guarantee of the right to Basic Education for all, black children in particular continue to face systemic barriers to quality education.

This failure manifests in numerous ways, including inadequate infrastructure, insufficient resources and a lack of qualified teachers.

The persistence of pit toilets in schools is a stark reminder of the Department's failure to provide safe and hygienic facilities.

The tragic death of Michael Komape, a five year old who fell in a pit toilet in Limpopo years ago, has not led to any awakening from the department because schools continue operating with dilapidated infrastructure. This seems to be the exclusive misfortune of black school children, because their white counterparts never suffer the same lack.

In 2018 Mr Ramaphosa committed to eradicate all pit toilets within 2 years via the formation of the Sanitation Appropriate of Education initiative, but much like many of his dreams such as smart cities and bullet trains, the eradication of pit toilets remains a pipe dream.

Every year there are reports of textbooks arriving late or not at all. This issue persists, contributing to poor academic performance and high dropout rates. To date Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga are still experiencing significant delays in the delivery of textbooks. This means that the starting point for children in rural provinces and those in suburban provinces is uneven from the beginning. We must correct this, it cannot keep happening year after year.

The Department has consistently failed to address the shortage of qualified teachers, resulting in overcrowded classrooms and poor teacher-learner ratios.

Reports in 2024 suggests that the country faces a shortage of 31 ,OOO teachers, with the highest number of unfilled posts in KwaZulu-Natal (7,044), Eastern Cape (6, 111 ), and Limpopo (4,933) Failure to address this problem of teacher shortages is a death knell on the future of our children.

Socio-economic factors continue to hinder effective education. Many learners drop out due to financial pressures, including the cost of uniforms and transport.

The lack of Social Workers and Psychologists in schools means that these issues often go unaddressed, further worsening the problem.

The current budget proposal fails to address these critical issues. It does not allocate sufficient funds for the construction of quality schools, the eradication of mud schools, or the timely provision of scholar transport. It neglects to ensure the employment of enough qualified teachers, provide adequate teacher learner support materials, or address the socio economic barriers to education.

The EFF firmly rejects this budget vote and proposes a comprehensive alternative grounded in our commitment to transforming basic education. This must include:

Investing in contracting schools with proper infrastructure to ensure a conducive learning environment for all learners.

Allocating sufficient funds to immediately eradicate pit toilets and mud schools, preventing further tragedies and ensuring safe, hygienic facilities.

Guaranteeing the timely provision of scholar transport to all needy learners, preventing disruptions to their education.

Committing to employing all qualified graduates to address teacher shortages and ensure manageable teacher learner ratios.

Ensuring that educators are paid competitive wages to attract and retain quality teaching professionals.

Ensuring every school has a Social Worker and a Psychologist to address the socio-economic and psychological barriers to learning. Implementing a program to provide sanitary towels monthly to all school going girls. If the government can provide FREE condoms for pleasure activities, it should prioritise this essential need driven by nature.

In conclusion, Chairperson, the EFF demands a budget that truly invests in the future of our children and the well-being of our educators.

PLANNING, MONITORING AND EVALUATION

House Chairperson, the Economic Freedom Fighters rejects the draft proposed budget as tabled by the Minister of Finance and now adopted by the portfolio committee, and we do so for the following reasons.

While we appreciate the importance of robust performance monitoring and evaluation to ensure early warnings are identified and corrective measures are put in place, the collapse of municipalities, the killing of people in Hammanskraal who drank poisonous water, high levels of crime and gender-based violence, and the systemic collapse of municipalities is a clear indication that there is no planning, and there is no monitoring and evaluation.

The Department was initially created to support the National Planning Commission and facilitate the implementation of the misguided National Development Plan, the NDP, based on incorrect assumptions.

More than 14 years ago, the Department was formed to ensure that there was proper alignment of government department strategies, budgets and NDP goals.

The NDP planned to eliminate unemployment by 2023; it is 2024 now, and more than 18.2 million people are living in extreme poverty. This is nearly 30% of the population, and there is no believable plan to address poverty.

More than 18.8 million people are dependent on grants to survive.

The NDP planned to reduce inequality by 2023. In the past 14 years, the opposite has happened. Today, South Africa has the highest income inequality in the world.

The NDP planned to create 11 million jobs by 2030. When the NDP was adopted, just over 4.5 million people were unemployed, today, more than 11 million people are unemployed.

In the past 10 years, South Africa's economy has grown by less than 2 percent year on year, even if we ignore the post-COVID recovery in 2021 that was artificial.

No one can deny that the NDP has failed. No one can deny that the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation has completely and utterly failed, and the state has completely collapsed.

We see this by the poor quality of water, poor quality of our public education, where our kids cannot read with meaning and purpose, clinics are dilapidated, and roads are full of potholes.

What should then be the purpose and way forward?

We must do away with the so-called District Delivery Model that was piloted by the 6th administration, as it is not going to work with dysfunctional municipalities.

We must appreciate that we have to rebuild state capacity and put the state at the centre of South Africa's economic development. We need more state intervention in planning, industrialisation and economic growth. We need a more capable state, not less.

We need municipalities that are not dependent on selling water, electricity, and sanitation because our people do not have money to buy what should be public goods for the betterment of all of us.

We need the Departments of Trade and Industry, Minerals and Energy, Transport, and Education at the forefront of planning South Africa's economic future, not the National Treasury. The National Treasury is obsessed with budget cuts. You cannot think about budget cuts and build a better country at the same time.

We need a functional education system that will prepare a future society, prepare for a future based on artificial intelligence and robotics, and new industries.

But House Chairperson, if we dont take the land, we cannot plan the future. We need the land to plan the future.

We need to do away with apartheid spatial planning and apartheid in order to deal with poverty, unemployment, and inequality.

We will take time to demonstrate in committees that even the NDP review was flawed and will not give different results, but the same as we have seen in the past 10 years.

The EFF rejects the proposed budget for the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation.

Issued by EFF, 15 July 2024