DA calls on President Zuma to cancel Nkandla Homestead upgrade urgently

Note to editors: This is an extract of the speech that was delivered by DA Parliamentary Leader, Lindiwe Mazibuko MP, today, while addressing students at the University of Western Cape as part of their SRC election campaign

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. It is a great honour. I congratulate you on your great campaign to provide the best possible student government for the University of the Western Cape (UWC). This is a great university with a proud history and a great future. The students of this campus today deserve nothing less than dedicated and principled leadership. 

I am excited at how seriously, and contested, student council elections have become across South Africa. Even the media now follow SRC elections with great interest, including a lead article in the Sunday Times yesterday. 

The fact that young people, like you, are eager to get involved in the political process is of great significance to the future of the country.

I am especially thrilled that this is the first time DASO is contesting these elections. DASO handsomely won the NMMU SRC elections, scooping 16 of the 21 seats. DASO also have done extraordinarily well at UCT, although we do not know what the final composition of the SRC will be. 

DASO NMMU, like the DA in national and local elections, has campaigned on our delivery record. Their landslide victory demonstrated that we have won the argument.

So I am hoping that, to use a football metaphor, you will make it a hat trick! And I have every confidence you will. You are the Democratic Alliance's representatives here, and we are very proud of you. 

DASO's eight candidates are: Ashley Van Heerden, Abongile Mjokozeli, Jill Ryan, Bianca Marinus, David Latola, Sive Matomane, Inga Nani and Yasin Omar. They are fine candidates and I urge everyone here today to lend them your vote in the election. 

If you were in any doubt about the importance of DASO consider the example of Geordin Hill-Lewis. Geordin founded DASO at UCT, led it to victory, and became president of the SRC. Today he is Helen Zille's chief of staff, and one of the youngest members of parliament.

This is a good time to remind ourselves that our freedom - and ability to even contest this SRC election - was hard won. Many of the brave women and men who fought for our freedom have now passed on into the fields of memory and myth. Many of you who will be voting for the first time in 2014 would have been born since 1994. As young people, we have big shoes to fill. 

UWC holds impeccable credentials for its role in opposing apartheid, and for maintaining academic excellence at all times. As the injustices of apartheid mounted, the 1980s summoned courageous and brilliant young activists. They fought for a nation governed by a human-rights inspired constitution and the rule-of-law.

The challenges are different in these leaderless days, and yet your contribution is as necessary as the youth generation was three decades ago. As Helen Zille said last week, the battle lines for the soul of the country are now between the ‘constitutionalists' and the ‘populists'.

This is not the time for national politics because this is a localized contest. Your vision of public service and love of democracy must, however, defeat the populist and cynical tactics of Julius Malema and large sections of the ANC. 

When you watch Mr Malema in the courtroom or inciting a crowd, what do you see? Well, he is rabble rouser second to none. He makes for good theatre. And he is a man without a plan. The Emperor is naked. There is no discernible endgame or strategy. His tactics are simply to sow divisions and discord in our society. 

Today, the President and the ANC are now trying to distance themselves from Mr Malema. 

Yet, I am sorry to say, they share more than a brief flirtation together. Mr Malema is not like Mr Zuma; he is cast in Mr Zuma's image. They both choose populism over principle, theatre over substance, and short-term tactics over long-term strategy. Remember: Mr Malema's career began in the ANC Youth League. You can never be in any doubt about the role of youth politics for good or bad. Can you imagine if ‘Mr Malema the Terminator' had been unleashed in the 1994 election?

Do not think for one moment that the line between the ‘constitutionalists' and the ‘populists' is a theoretical one, or marginal to the country's public life.

Billions of rand are to be spent building a new town a few kilometres from President Zuma's homestead in Nkandla in rural KwaZulu-Natal. The building of ‘Zumaville' will cost South African taxpayers R1 billion.

The DA has learnt that thousands of people living on the outskirts of Nkandla, in villages like Babanango, Kataza and Ebizimali, are still without the most basic services. Yet R2 billion will be spent on a multi-purpose centre a few kilometres away from President Zuma's homestead. 

What about Mr Zuma himself? 

Reports over the weekend reveal that The Department of Public Works will be spending R203 million on President Zuma's private homestead in Nkandla. This is a serious abuse of taxpayers' money by a department which is failing in almost every other key responsibility. 

This is despite President Zuma's assurance that he would be paying for most of the expense for this upgrade. It is now clear that he will only foot 5% of the bill.

How can a leader ask the country to make sacrifices, and tighten belts in hard times, when he leads such publically-funded extravagance? This impoverished region of the country needs clinics, hospitals and decent classrooms. He has decided to build them literally in his own backyard. President Zuma's behaviour upends the very concept of social justice which is written into our constitution. 

That is why today I have called on President Zuma to do what is right, and what his high office demands of him.

He does not have to wait for the Public Protector inquiry, which I will be calling for, to correct this wrongdoing. He can cancel his upgrade, and instead spend the money on the neighbouring communities which so desperately need jobs, infrastructure and services. It would go far.

R203 million, for example, would be able to pay for these items:

·         At R55 0000 a house, we could have used the R203 079 677 to build 3692 RDP houses.

·         At a teacher's salary of R20 000 per month, we could have paid the salaries of 846 school teachers for a year. 

·         Even at a whopping R15 000 a day, the government could have hired almost 2000 trucks for a whole week to deliver textbooks to students in Limpopo.

It is not too late for President Zuma to apologise and cancel this lavish personal enrichment. 

This is why it is so important that DASO wins this election. You need to show the youth of South Africa a better way.

We must restore the belief that politics is not the place for personal enrichment, skulduggery, or for the mediocre to rise, but is the arena for noble pursuits and just causes.

In politics today, we need the best brains and talent we can lay our hands on. The challenges of South Africa are too great for politics to be a mission left till ‘later in life'. We need to draw talent from every walk of life, every age group, and every community. 

Tertiary institutions, like this, are repositories of the nation's best and brightest. The present and future are yours. This is why it important that DASO win this election on this campus. I believe this can be a famous and game-changing victory at UWC.

Issued by the DA, October 1 2012

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