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Premier's reply to the debate on the State of the Province address
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 EASTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT
REPLY  BY PREMIER STOFILE TO
 THE DEBATE ON THE STATE OF THE PROVINCE ADDRESS
21 FEBRUARY 2001


The big problems that this house must face, in my view, are the following:

* Work out what it should understand by "accountability." There is no such thing, for instance, like the Government must account to the 
opposite. Governments account to Legislative assemblies.
* This House must also accept that line function details do not form part of the opening address. The members get these from policy 
speeches. On the basis of these members then decide how much to allocate to programmes.

The people of South Africa have a horrible experience when there is a change of ruling Parties. A classical example of this is what 
happened in the advent of the 20th Century. The Anglo-Boer War has recently been confirmed to have been responsible for 120,000 and 80,000 
white and Black women and children, respectively, dying in the concentration camps. Our people experienced the tribulations of the scorched 
earth policy and of being shot on sight for daring to bear arms against white people.

Our people have experienced Milner’s enforced Anglicisation. They have experienced their humiliation for daring to speak their native 
languages: African languages or Dutch. There were no political rights for non-whites after the Treaty of Vereeniging. When liberals 
attempted to address this, they opted for a qualified franchise in the Cape and Natal. I will explain later why they did so.

Mr Speaker, the ploy of the Treaty of Vereeniging to hoodwink Afrikaner parents to believe they had the freedom of using their language at 
school was exposed for what it is by C.S. van den Heever : "a dangerous ploy to cheat ignorant parents." Our people had been indoctrinated 
into self-hate, despising their own culture and language. Many Afrikaners preferred English even in their own churches.

We must agree that nation-building and reconciliation were not on the agenda of these governments. Even the United Party could only focus 
on white tribes when J.C. Smuts tried to deal with this problem. As such, the ANC government is the first government in this country, 
indeed in the whole world, to consciously constitutionalise and to enforce non-racialism.

Mr Speaker, the liberty and fraternity of North American and European politicians failed to deal with the question of past slaves and 
disenfranchised black people and women. Look at the histories of countries like the USA, France, UK etc. On the 16/01/1919 the Nationalist 
Party’s "Independence Conference" declared that freedom and peace between the Dutch and the English depended on "&#133;redistribution, 
justice and equality." We agree with this. But we add prosperity and peace on a non-racist, non-sexist and democratic basis.

To achieve the above, the state must intervene in favour of the poor. We are not apologetic for this. The flaw of the National Party and of 
the UP before it was to intervene only in favour of the poor whites. The weakness of the Bantustans was to look after "beautiful Ciskeians" 
or Transkeians. We are bigger than that. Our services go where they are needed irrespective of who voted for who. Our Constitution and our 
Acts make sure there is no discrimination.

Our Province has always been reliant on migratory labour for jobs. This prompted the Prime Minister of the Transkei at the time in 1967 to 
say : "&#133;we want our people to work in towns because we have no work in the Transkei." Our government is not only canvassing investors 
from abroad, motivating our citizens to contribute in job-creation themselves, we also create some jobs as all those who are sane, matured 
or honest will confirm.

The reconstruction and development of our society is on track. Schools are opened to all our children, people live where they chose, 
clinics have been built where they never existed before. This goes on for schools, electricity, telephones eleven languages are equal 
before the law. Again, only those with serious handicaps in comprehending facts will dispute this. We are not saying this is enough. We 
work within available resources.

As all adults know, control of the economy goes a long way in what can be done. The National Party learned this bitter lesson after 1948. 
It was not until 1960 before they could gain a small entry in the Mining industry for the Federale Mynbou. They also had to create SANLAM, 
SANTAM, AVBOB etc. to try and secure such control. Until today that economy is still in the hands of those who support and sustain the DP. 
Even the farming economy had to be sustained by state funds to help the NP government. We do not want to create state institutions to 
sustain the ANC. On the contrary we facilitate economic growth. It is in this vain that we initiated Coega in 1996 and continued to lobby 
for years at home and abroad for its realisation. Once more, we call on all would-be entrepreneurs in this programme to buy into this 
economic opportunity.

We have also completed our planning for an Integrated Sustainable Rural Development, in spite and despite being criticised for not planning 
and then for planning. We will not be sidetracked by those who are envious of our success rate.

The ANC is not about to do an ideological surrender, like the Suid Afrikaanse Party in 1911 or the NNP in 2000. We know that the 
"samesmelting" of the NNP and the DP in the DA will go bust like that of the S.A.P. which could not survive 5 years. These are the reasons:

The DP is a Liberal Party which neither believes in nor trusts nationalism. You can’t have a lasting marriage between distrustful partners. 
The gap between the DP and the ANC is borne of two issues:

The DP sees liberalism as "the only viable barrier between apartheid and Communism" (A speech made on 15/05/1991 in Pietermaritzburg).

All political scientists and theoreticians know that this is as nonsensical as it is unscientific.

Liberalism is a system founded on individual rights. They believe that collective goals sacrifice individual goals. They also believe that 
collective goals are antagonistic to individual rights. Lastly, they believe that democracy is only possible where power is tamed and 
opposed by counterveiling power. This informs the DP’s approach to democracy and freedom. That is : everyone for him/herself and the rest 
will be taken care of by the market forces.

The History of liberation and the democratisation of previously racially and economically segregated communities bears contrary evidence. 
The notion of individual liberty is as foreign to Africa as is the notion of individualism. In a country with a sad history of racially-
based disparities, the notion of individual liberty is not different from the trickery of the Treaty of Vereeniging as seen by van den 
Heever.

The ANC is a National Liberation Movement. The Alliance between ourselves and COSATU and the SACP is not based on convenience. It is a 
principled Alliance based on our strategic objectives : to free South Africa from all forms of discrimination. Our focus is the Black 
people in general, and the Africans in particular. Within this broad bracket falls the rural women, youth and disabled. This is what 
informs our Development Strategies. Nothing will derail us from this route.

The public service, organs of state, labour and the organs of civil society are important agents in our programme. We agree that there are 
problems in the Civil Service. We, however, do not agree that our Civil Service is useless rags as Mr Nel alluded. We have good men and 
women out there. We reject the generalised condemnation which, we argue, is based on prejudice as cited in our speech on Friday last week.

These are serious political matters. Let us deal with them rather than sink into an intellectual slum. Again, we are the only government 
now. We must lead the whole pack.

Thank you

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