Honourable Speaker,
Honourable Premier, Acting,
Honourable Members.
Comrades leadership, the bedrock of the War against Poverty is premised on our singular purpose of enhancing a real possibility of “A Better Life for All”.Making advances on the Social Transformatory Programme is a pre-condition in realising this A Better Life for All. We would not move closer to an egalitarian society, if the conceptual note on the construction of our National Democratic Society has not as a key feature the task of social transformation.
Honourable Speaker,
The proportion of adults with the lowest living standards has decreased by 77% over the last ten years according to the latest South Africa Survey, published by the South African Institute of Race Relations.
Using Living Standards Measures, a marketing tool developed by the South African Advertising Research Foundation, the Survey shows that in 2001, one in ten (11%) adults were in LSM 1, the lowest living standard category. By 2010 this had fallen to only 2%.
Simply put, out of an estimated 600 000 Northern Cape adult populace, only 12 000 adults continues to live within the lowest living standard category, up from 66 000 adults who lived within the lowest living standard category, in 2001. In a short period of ten year, a decade, the Northern Cape government has uplifted 54 000 adults, from the lowest living standard category!
Over the same period, the proportion of adults in the top three Living Standards Measures categories, LSMs 8 to 10, has increased by 25%. In 2001, 16% of adults were in LSMs 8 to 10, while by 2010 this had increased to 20%, or one in five adults. A significant improvement in the livelihood of 120 000 adults has been realised, meaning that 24 000 more adults than ten years back, has an improved living condition!
The research manager at the Institute, Ms Lucy Holborn, said that despite high unemployment and shortcomings in service delivery, living standards have actually improved significantly over the past decade.
Honourable Speaker,
Let me repeat what Ms Lucy Holborn, of the South African Institute of Race Relations said and I quote “despite high unemployment and shortcomings in service delivery, living standards have actually improved significantly over the past decade” Unquote… I trust because it’s Ms Lucy Holborn that said it, members which is honourable, will do the honourable thing and applauds her.
I hope honourable members of the opposition comprehend that to applaud her is to applaud the good work of the African National Congress (ANC)?
When the Northern Cape government was elected in 2009 with a firm mandate to drastically change the lives of our people, we vouched to ensure that confidence of the people in the ANC is being translated into improved conditions of living. We are doing just that in believing that Today must be Better than Yesterday, and Tomorrow must be Better than Today.
The People’s Movement, the African National Congress is elated that the Acting premier has encapsulated Social Delivery as bedrock of her State of the Province Address. The view of the ANC has always been that our strategies for social transformation must seek to empower people to lift themselves out of poverty while creating adequate social nets to protect the most vulnerable in our society.
We, in the ANC and of the ANC, has held firm to the believe that a developmental state, such as the one which you are leading Acting Premier, has placed the needs of the poor in the area of health care, education, safety, social cohesion and sports development, including social development at the top of the agenda in the province.
Acting Premier, you have publicly taken the people into confidence during the State of the Province Address that the African National Congress has been pre-occupied with the central task of social transformation in confronting the challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality.
Honourable Acting Premier, you have indeed attempted to raise to prominence our Census 2011 outcomes, I will for ease of memory once again attempt to comprehensively detail our social transformatory afavancements, and I quote. Honourable Speaker, I say I quote the Census 2011 results on Northern Cape delivery acceleration.
Can I quote, Honourable Speaker?
Honourable Speaker, I quote:
- The official unemployment rate for the Northern Cape has declined from a high of 35.7% in 2001 to 27.4% in 2011,
- the average household income more than doubled over the same period;
- 82.4% of households reside in formal structures; the percentage of persons 20 years or older with no schooling has decreased from 22.7% in 1996 to 11.3% in 2011,
- the percentage of persons with matric or higher more than doubled from 11.1% in 1996 to 23% in 2011
- The percentage of households without access to piped water from 6% in 2001 to 2.6% in 2011.
- more than 90% of households have access to water inside their dwellings or in their yards;
- More than 85% of households use electricity as a power source; and
- Two thirds of our households have access to flush toilets.
- the percentage of households using the bucket system has significantly decreased from 10% in 2001 to 4% in 2011,
- 7.2 % has had access to Higher Education, as opposed to 6.9% in 1996.
Honourable Speaker, is that not progress?
Honourable Acting Premier,
We were confident as a province that we over-achieved in almost all aspects of the Millennium Development Goals, as outlined by the United Nations. Equally so, the National Development Plan and our Vision 2030 raise to prominence the triple-troika challenge namely poverty, inequality and unemployment that are at the core of our social transformation and development agenda.
When we say that education ranks as an Apex Priority, we mean just that.
Honourable Speaker, my apologies, I presuppose all members known what an Apex priority means? For the benefit of those, in particular sitting on your left, Speaker, let me define an Apex priority.
An apex is the highest possible point of convergence, in lay man’s terms an apex is the vertex… the pinnacle of achievement. It is the point on the celestial sphere, lying in the constellation Hercules, towards which the sun appears to move at a velocity of 20 kilometres per second relative to the nearest stars.
When we look at Education, we see that our basic education intervention is bearing fruit. On Early Childhood Development (ECD), we are pleased that the government has developed an Integrated ECD Strategy, with all partner NGO’s and NPO’s, surely this will enabled the realisation of Grade R being universal next year.
Also, we are pleased that government funds almost 400 ECD centres, and have increased its allocation to R15 per child per day. The Maphalane Trust, NC FET and the Kolomela Mine has partner with government to train almost 300 ECD practitioners.
On making Education Free and Compulsory, we see that over 10 000 learners fall in the no-fee school category. In addition, an Integrated ECD Strategy, involving all stakeholder departments, was developed in 2012.
This strategy and all our collective efforts are aimed at ensuring that Grade R will be universal by 2014. However, the task of improving the quality of pre Grade R and Grade R generally is a task that will extend beyond 2014.
On quality education, are extremely proud about the Matric pass rate of 2012, to 74%. Some members here know that matric is no child’s play, which is why some here, some sitting here, could not pass matric!
On Higher education, Acting Premier, you have responded massively to swell the ranks of higher education graduates, by providing bursaries to the tune of R6 million. I am particular pleased that you our youth has once again surprise and disappointed the representatives of Henrik Verwoerd, by opting to compete in the studies of Microbiology, Biochemistry, Electrical, Mechanical, Aeronautical and Chemical Engineering.
Acting Premier, now for the big one, you have brought R4.2 billion to our province. The construction of the university can be directly attributed to the resilience and tenacity of the ANC’s vision of making education accessible to all, in accordance with the Freedom Charter doctrines.
Honourable Speaker,
The Psychology of Revolution, by Gustave Le Bon, highlight the scientific factor that some acts by revolutionary movements could be regarded as mere illusions, yet the effect upon the life of the peoples has been considerable.
Honourable Speaker, like Gustave Le Bon and his teachings in the Psychology of Revolution, I submit that the provision of Quality Education has been regarded by some as an illusion, but I submit that that vision of the ANC, which has been confused with an illusion, had a considerable effect on the life of the people, and in particular on our youth within the education fraternity.
Honourable Speaker,
We you have real people, genuine revolutionaries in charge of people’s health, then you don’t get a Mental Health Hospital. What you get is a completed Upington Hospital. What you get is the construction stage of the De Aar Hospital. If real revolutionaries have long been given this task more people would have come to the Northern Cape to use our quality health care facilities.
Hiv and Aids as a virus is being confronted and are being subdued, and our TB prevention and Cure has resulted in a 71.7% treatment success rate. The implementation of the 1st phase of the National Health Insurance has cemented the ANC’s commitment in the 2009 Elections Manifesto.
The Balelapa Profiling has instructed us to focus on the 63 War on Poverty Wards and our efforts to enhance food security through the Integrated Food Security and Nutrition Programme and the establishment of the first ever Food bank in the Northern Cape province, should be directed to these wards where people live in chronic poverty.
We can report here today that research on the Status of the Northern Cape youth is currently underway in the province. We are doing so, because we believe in the old age Egyptian adage which says that “In youth a tree bears fruit. Our young people are fruit-bearing trees.”
Honourable Speaker,
We cannot agree to continue not to accelerate our efforts to protect our women and children. But then again with the best will and resolve to act, government cannot do it alone. These heinous crimes happen within communities, within homes, within our schools! This implies that we need individual and collective activism of communities, families, friends, school communities, everybody in fighting this scourge.
This coming, on Friday the 8th of March we will be celebrating International Women’s Day, under the theme “A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women”. Need I say more?
Our efforts against criminals have witness a decline in overall crime being committed. We remain concern with the prevalence of sexual crime in particular, and trust that the Anti-Rape strategy will take the fight against those who behaves worse than animals to greater heights.
The victory over rape is a victory we should not postpone.
Honourable Speaker,
Unfortunately money meant for new housing projects had to be redirected to rectify sloppy contracting building jobs. We are particularly pleased that the Acting premier has indicated that almost R400 million will be put aside to clean 200 poorly built houses. Never again must we have fake revolutionary in charge of a people’s project, located in a people’s movement.
Honourable Acting Premier,
Can we be less apologetic on honouring our struggle veterans? The programme on the naming of new streets and existing buildings must be taken to greater heights. But can I appeal, that no traitors of the people’s struggle must ever be honoured?
Honourable Speaker,
In concluding, I have been trying to make a diagnostic analysis on the causes of popularity outburst by the anti-revolutionary forces, led by the liberal DA and the shameful Copers. Fortunately, in the Psychology of Revolution, Gustave Le Bon said in all revolutionary environments, you get a hypochondriac by temperament, a person of mediocre intelligence, incapable of grasping realities, confined to abstractions, crafty and dissimulating, with a prevailing note of excessive pride, which increased until his last day.
Honourable Speaker,
I hope the opposition benches appreciate that I am bestowing an honour unto them by referring to them as being hypochondria. In political terms being a hypochondria refers to an opposition with excessive pre occupancy or worry about having a serious illness. This debilitating condition is the result of an inaccurate perception of the body’s condition despite the absence of an actual medical condition. They are convinced that they have or are about to be diagnosed with a serious illness.
Honourable Acting Premier,
Comrade President Samora Machel said and I quote “Every step towards the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle, the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. I unquote. You are such individual.
Honourable Speaker,
The Northern Cape Government is doing well, the lives of people is on the improved, more jobs are created than yesteryear and poverty is in the decline.
Keitumetse.
