Honourable Speaker,
Honourable Deputy Speaker,
Honourable Members of the Provincial Legislature,
Madame Premier,
Colleagues in the Executive Council,
Chairpersons and CEOs of the Boards,
Distinguished guests,
People of the Northern Cape,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Honourable Speaker
Sixty years ago (1955) at the end of the Congress of the People, while facing the might of the Apartheid Regime, our leaders, armed only with the God-ordained desire for liberty, pledged: "These freedoms we will fight for; side by side, throughout our lives, until we have won our liberty".
This diabolical regime contrived to destroy this desire by soaking the African soil with the blood of the martyrs, but instead of disheartening us, it served to galvanise us and strengthen our resolve.
On 15 October 1985, on Thornton Road in Athlone, Cape Town, the Apartheid regime sunk to a new low. They loaded a truck with crates, leaving a space in the centre. This they filled with armed policemen. They drove the truck into the middle of a peaceful protest and opened fire on the protestors, killing three. This infamous incident became known as “The Trojan Horse Massacre.”
Today we have three Trojan horses produced by Apartheid policies, namely, inequality, poverty and unemployment. They prance around in our midst and seek to trample upon the blood-bought freedoms of the martyrs of democracy, a democracy that is entrenched in the Freedom Charter.
We are committed to making the structural and systemic changes that are necessary for a political and economic landscape which is conducive to radical economic transformation to effectively slay these Trojan horses. We have designed plans to ensure inclusive economic growth, increased employment opportunities and improvement of the skills levels in this Province, aimed at alleviating poverty and thereby creating a better life for all the people of our beloved province.
Honourable Speaker, when confronting the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment, I alluded to the fact in my previous budget speech that an initial budget of R 235, 601 million which was adjusted to R279, 028 million for the department to deliver on the targets outlined in our Annual Performance Plan (APP). The department spent R276, 731 million (99.18%) of the allocated budget for the 2014/15 financial year to achieve the set targets. I will briefly highlight some of the more significant achievements of the previous financial year.
I am pleased to report that the department achieved an unqualified report, thus a clean audit, from the Auditor General (AG) in the 2013/14 financial year. I would like to commend the staff and leadership of the Department for this outstanding effort.
