IFP MEETING WITH THE COMMUNITY OF MITCHELL’S PLAIN AHEAD OF THE 2014 ELECTIONS REMARKS BY PRINCE MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI MP PRESIDRENT OF THE INKATHA FREEDOM PARTY Colorado Hall: 31 January 2014 It is truly an honour for me to visit Colorado Hall this morning, to spend time with the community of Mitchell’s Plain and surrounding areas. I am no stranger to Cape Town. I have been a serving Member of Parliament for twenty years. Since 1994, when President Nelson Mandela appointed me to his Cabinet as Minister of Home Affairs, I have been coming to Cape Town almost every week to attend to our parliamentary duties of passing legislation, representing constituency interests and engaging our country’s most challenging issues. For twenty years I have served in a democratic South Africa, leading the IFP’s contribution to building our nation and navigating a course towards a better, safer, more prosperous future. I have witnessed first-hand the achievements, and the failures, of our democratic government, and have done all I can to ensure that the needs of our people are served first and foremost. So when I visit communities across South Africa, I am not surprised to hear the repeated statement that we have come a long way in twenty years, but we have not come far enough. South Africa has not lived up to the hopes of 1994. We should, by now, have been much further along the path towards equality, security and economic growth. But something went wrong. I speak to people of goodwill every day; ordinary people who want the best for their families and are working hard to achieve it. Every single one of them tells me about the struggle they face to make ends meet, to secure a good education for their children, to find a good job that pays well, to keep their families safe from gangs and crime, and to get that one good break that will allow them to rise above their present circumstances. This is the story of most South Africans. It’s one I hear often, and it still breaks my heart. I have worked for more than sixty years to achieve my vision of freedom in my country. It’s not just political freedom; the right to vote. It’s freedom from want and need and fear, freedom from inequality, hardship, divisions and ignorance. I dream of a liberated South Africa in which opportunities for a better life abound, and in which each and every citizen is empowered to grasp those opportunities. I believe in hard work, self-help and self-reliance. But I also recognise that government has a very real responsibility to shape the kind of society in which hard work, self-help and self-reliance pay dividends. Government has a responsibility to shape a fair and just society. That is at the heart of our Constitution. Thus when I consider the state of our country and the challenges our society faces twenty years into democracy, I know how to answer the question, “What went wrong?” Government has reneged on its responsibility to ensure justice, security, equality and freedom. This happened when they took the focus off the pursuit of these values, and chose instead the wide and easy path towards self-interest, self-promotion and self-enrichment. In short, corruption entered our government. Now instead of reading in the papers about families receiving long-awaited homes, we read about the millions of Rands government must spend to fix up shoddy RDP houses built by fly-by-night contractors and politically connected tenderpreneurs. Instead of seeing on the news how schools with laboratories and libraries are being built, we see the pit toilet in which a six-year old learner drowned. Or we mourn for a child killed in the crossfire of gang violence on his first day of school. None of this is because there is no money to do better. If R206 million could be found to upgrade one house, surely enough can be found to tackle crime, substance abuse and gangsterism. Where do the millions go that are set aside for development projects and service delivery?The Auditor-General and the Public Protector have answered that question for us. They go into someone’s pocket, or down the drain through mismanagement, waste and incompetence. I have not come to Mitchell’s Plain to rile up anger against government. I have come here with a simple message of truth; that the power to change the way things are is firmly in your hands. In just a few months’ time, South Africa will hold its fifth democratic election and you will be asked to go to the polls and choose the leadership you want for the next five years. With your vote, you can change the future.The power is yours. In the coming elections, we, the people of goodwill, need to send a strong and unequivocal message to government that things are about to change. Elections are the performance review of public representatives. If a party has not been serving you, has not been meeting your needs, or is not trustworthy, elections are the time to fire them. It is also the time to bring in new leaders who operate on the principles of honesty, integrity, democratic partnership and servant leadership. What I am describing is the kind of leadership offered by the IFP. It’s who we are. The IFP was founded on the principles of self-help and self-reliance, integrity, servant leadership and federalism. Federalism is a system of government that recognisesthat different communities have different needs, which means that policies and solutions should be tailor-made at local level by the people themselves, rather than forcing everyone into one mould designed by a handful of people in the highest echelons of government – people who may never have been to Mitchell’s Plain or ever struggled to make ends meet. The IFP believes in federalism because we believe that true democracy brings the power of governance closer to the people. Democratic governance should happen from the ground up, not from the top down. We have championed this principle for almost forty years. The IFP’s steadfast fight for federalism during the constitutional negotiations is the only reason why South Africa has provinces today. We halted the grand plan to centralise all the power at the top, in the hands of the few, and we gave to provinces the power to design their own legislation on a myriad of issues, including education and housing. Twenty years into democracy, South Africa’s provinces are yet to use their power properly. Provinces have the capacity to change the way things are done at a national level. Let me give you one example. When the IFP administered KwaZulu Natal in the first ten years of democracy, we set the example for national government in many areas. Under our IFP Premier, we rolled out anti-retrovirals at clinics across KwaZulu Natal to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV/Aids. National government refused to follow suit. When they were taken to the Constitutional Court, in an attempt to get them to fulfil their constitutional duty of saving lives, they averred that it could not be done. Rolling out anti-retrovirals, they said, was impossible. The IFP joined that court case as a friend of the court, and set out facts and figures of how it could be done and how we were doing it, cheaply and easily. Because we intervened, the Constitutional Court was able to order government to roll out anti-retrovirals in clinics across South Africa. The IFP saved thousands of lives. Babieswho would have been consigned to a short life, were instead born HIV negative and are today in school, dreaming of the future. That is the kind of difference the IFP can make. That is the kind of difference you can give to your children and your future by strengthening the IFP in the coming elections. I want to ask, unashamedly, for your vote in 2014. I want you to examine the track-record of the IFP, not only during our nineteen years at the helm of KwaZulu when we built more than 6000 schools and countless homes, clinics and training colleges; but during our time in opposition, when we have held government accountable and served the real needs of our people. Throughout those nineteen years in government in KwaZulu, never once was a single allegation of corruption ever levelled at my administration. The IFP stands firmly on the side of honest, accountable leadership. In the last Local Government Elections, when people choose the representatives they want to work with at the closest level of governance, voters put the IFP back in the position of third largest political party in South Africa. The IFP is a national party with a strong voice in Parliament. We have experience and integrity, and we know how to get the job done. So, as we approach the 2014 elections and politicians make all sorts of promises, don’t be fooled into thinking that this is a two horse race. Here in the Western Cape, there is a party that operates above the mudslinging and accusations. There is a party that does more than pointing out failures and lack of delivery. There is a party of action, integrity and experience; and it’s asking you to partner with us to change the future. We need to get strong values back into leadership, so that government will take up the responsibility to shape a just, equal and safe society, the way it is instructed to do by our Constitution. You know me. You know the kind of party I lead. You know that the IFP is a party you can trust. I ask you now to consider that the IFP is a real alternative in the Western Cape, because you have the power to put us in governance. Your vote will choose the leadership of the Western Cape, and the leadership of our country. Flowing out of our belief in federalism, the IFP believes strongly in partnerships. We don’t tell you what to do for five years, and then ask you to vote for us again. We are inviting you into a relationship of trust and mutual respect, in which we build together and work together every day, finding solutions that meet the challenges of Mitchell’s Plain. The IFP believes in listening and serving. We believe in partnering with people of goodwill. As we approach the 2014 elections, I encourage you to join us and to sound the call to all people of goodwill in your family and your neighbourhood that there is an alternative, and it offers real hope for real change. The IFP asks you for your vote and your support. We ask you to take up membership of the IFP and to speak about the IFP, encouraging others to catch the vision of a truly free South Africa led by a party of integrity. That is my dream for our country, and it is a dream we can achieve. Your vote can create it. The power is yours.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 14:10:21 +0000
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