Dr. Pieter Mulder, FF Plus Leader and deputy minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Reply to President Zuma's State of the Nation Address 2013, National Assembly, Parliament, Cape Town, February 20 2013

The famous scientist Albert Einstein said: "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, is insanity".

For nineteen years I have heard every year in this assembly how government, with black economic empowerment, with affirmative action, with stricter labour laws and with land reform, will be solving South Africa's problems.

For nineteen years already the government has not succeeded in resolving the unemployment problem.

For nineteen years we have been struggling to attract more foreign investments to ensure economic growth.

After nineteen years, corruption remains a serious problem.

The logical conclusion is that the current policy directions do not work. New and fresh plans should be devised to resolve these problems.

In the president's State of the Nation Address, we heard a repetition of most of these old policy directions.

Sir, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results just does not make any sense.

Let us look at foreign investments.

Foreign direct investment flows into South Africa plummeted by 44% (43.6%) in the previous year - the largest decline amongst all developing economies - according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's (Unctad's) latest Global Investment Trends Monitor.

The reason is not only the world economic recession. South Africa's poor performance was in sharp contrast to the rest of Africa, which saw a growth rate of 5% in foreign investment.

What about black empowerment?

The Institute for Race Relation's research found that the policy of black empowerment only made a small number of individuals very wealthy while the broader masses did not profit from it. Broad based black economic empowerment has become narrow based elite empowerment. They propose that it is scrapped.

With regards to corruption, I have time for only one example. The recent forensic investigation into the Eastern Cape's Health Department found that 35 spouses of health officials were in business with the relevant department.

They also found that 929 workers of the department were at the same time official providers to the same health department. It cannot continue that public servants are allowed to do business with the state.

What are the consequences of this?

Uncertainty and a total lack of hope for the future. In a December opinion poll by Grant Thornton amongst South African business leaders, 48% stated that uncertainty about the future, directly affect their current business interests. The result is that they postpone decisions, such as to expand. 26% indicated that the uncertainty has led to them deciding to rather go and invest elsewhere.

Last year in this debate I said that the most dangerous thing the government could do is to create expectations with citizens which is then not realised. Expectations which do not realise are the recipe for revolution.

For nineteen years we have had uncertainty about land reform. Commercial farmers did not want to expand and so create new employment opportunities because they were unsure whether they would keep their land. People who had instituted land claims were also unsure whether the claims would succeed. I had hoped that we were now at a point where there could be certainty. Minister Nkwinti's announcement, that land claims before 1913 would be re-opened again, brings great uncertainty on the one hand and huge expectations on the other hand. Why is such an announcement made before all the details have been thought through?

Only the full details, which are now not being stated, could remove uncertainty and false expectations. The Koi and San want to know whether they could reclaim land back to 1200 when they were present in the whole of South Africa. There are San drawings in the Drakensberg, in Zululand at Nkandla and where Cape Town stands today. Can they claim all this? After I spoke about this last year, a member of the Koi-San phoned me and said they should make me a Koi-San chief because I fight for their rights in Parliament. The president knows how I had, in the recent cabinet lekgotla, where I had more time to speak, argued about the serious impact of this as well as the far-reaching consequences of the wage increases.

The Freedom Front Plus and the ANC differ as to how more jobs in rural areas should be created and how food security could be ensured. We also strongly differ about how unemployment and economic growth could be resolved. We believe the current labour laws should be amended as they discourage employers to create new jobs. The labour laws protect unionised workers at the expense of the jobless.

What is our alternative? Why not use an Industrial Development Zone or a harbour a pilot project. In that area government allow more flexible labour laws and less government interference in the private sector. I predict that there will be dramatically more employment opportunities created in that area, high economic growth will take place and black empowerment and corrections will take place naturally due to the numbers relationships in South Africa. This is a challenge and opportunity for the ANC to prove us wrong.

The Freedom Front Plus supports the National Development Plan that must bring new solutions. The weakest chapter in the plan is chapter 15, which deals with nation building and social cohesion.

Do we have the right recipe in South Africa for nation building? I say no and the answer is also not in that chapter. The ANC's current recipe does not work. One cannot stumble from one international sporting event to the next and call it nation building.

In the majority of African states there is not only one language and one culture to use for nation building. Which recipe did these African countries use? They used the citizens' joint anger and opposition to the European oppressors as a nation building recipe.

Because the colonial "bosses" had returned to Europe, it worked well to unite people like this against a common absent enemy.

This African recipe cannot work in South Africa. President Mandela realised this. That is why he reached out to Afrikaners and other "whites" who have no other country to return to. To declare them as an enemy is the Malema recipe. We saw last year the consequences of this recipe. It is a recipe which divides, which incites people against each other and leads to conflict. Often, when the ANC is in trouble, some leaders use the Malema recipe. We once again had to listen to such recipes yesterday. The whites, the Afrikaners or the farmers are the cause of all the problems and identified as the enemy. It is short-sighted and cannot work.

The title of the film "Invictus" comes from a poem which President Mandela used in jail for inspiration. According to the poem, you can do something to me, but you cannot change my thoughts with laws or violence.

It appears as if the current ANC did not learn a lesson from this.

Following the Bambatha rebellion, Dinuzulu ka-Cetshwayo, King of the Zulu Nation was put in jail by the British authorities in 1908. Two years later General Louis Botha, as an old friend of the Zulu king, became Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa. One of the first things Botha did was to order the release of Dinuzulu. Louis Botha also saw to it that the king received a farm, the farm ‘Uitkyk' in the Middleburg district, Transvaal, to live on.

This history is not talked about today.

Today the statues of Louis Botha and Dinuzulu stand next to each other in Durban in recognition of this.

Louis Botha is also one of my heroes following the Anglo-Boer War with his attempts to stop British Imperialism in South Africa.

Every time I drive past the street name changes in Pretoria, I see how the ANC has drawn a red line through Louis Botha's name, and I am cross all over again. I experience it as disregarding my heroes and South African history.

There is no way in which one could force nation building on people in this manner. If it is not a willing process by all participants, it will not succeed.

The right nation building recipe is to view the different identities in South Africa as an asset and to recognise it as such. Through this, a situation is created where everybody feels like winners and there are no losers.

Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the UN summarised it as follows: "We can love who and what we are, without hating who and what we are not."

I ask for room to be myself in Africa. I demand that there is also a place for me, my language and recognition for my heroes.

What is our choice as leaders in South Africa?

The Malema recipe of dividing and making enemies or the Mandela recipe of reaching out and accommodating?

I choose the accommodation recipe where all identities, with mutual respect, are appreciated and accommodated by laws, by minority rights and by self-determination.

"Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, is insanity".

The current policy directions are not working. Fresh and new plans have to be made to resolve these problems and again give hope for and certainty about the future.

Issued by the Freedom Front Plus, February 20 2013

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