Steenhuisen taunts ANC with Tintswalo’s reality
Two realities collided in the National Assembly on Tuesday as ANC and opposition party MPs debated President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address delivered on Thursday last week.
ANC MPs, following in Ramaphosa’s footsteps, focused on the transformation that had occurred under ANC rule since apartheid, while opposition MPs pointed to the prevailing situation in the country characterised by high unemployment, load-shedding, low economic growth and high levels of crime and corruption.
With the national and provincial elections coming up, the speeches were also a rallying cry by the parties for voters to vote for them. EFF MPs did not participate in the debate after the suspension by the National Assembly of its leader, Julius Malema, and six others.
DA leader John Steenhuisen presented a different picture to the analogy of Tintswalo — a child born at the dawn of SA’s democracy in 1994 who benefited from the ANC government’s policies. Ramaphosa had painted in glowing terms how Tintswalo benefited from education and having a house and a job.
Steenhuisen said the SA that Ramaphosa described no longer existed.
Instead, Steenhuisen said, Tintswalo was now without a job and living in a shack after having lost her job due to loadshedding. Her hopes and dreams had been crushed over the past decade and under the Ramaphosa presidency.
“Over the past decade, she has watched with growing horror as the dream of her childhood was betrayed,” Steenhuisen said.
“Her SA dream lay in ruins. “You see, Mr President, like millions of other South Africans, Tintswalo cannot afford to live in the past. She must survive in the reality of what SA is in 2024, not in the memory of what SA was in 1994,” Steenhuisen said.
“The people of SA understand that, in 2024, the single greatest threat to our democracy, to our freedom, and to the SA dream, is the ANC.”
Mineral resources & energy minister and ANC chair Gwede Mantashe was the first to bat for the ruling party and dealt with transformation in the mining industry.
He gave the undertaking that the ANC would abide by the Constitutional Court ruling on Tuesday that compels the party to hand over all records of its cadre deployment committee from January 1 2013.
Mantashe said the ANC’s cadre deployment policy had ensured that directors-general, judges and mayors were no longer only white males.
“Cadre deployment has changed that reality.
“So run to court, do everything, but the reality of the matter is that we will do it. You will get your report but we will continue deploying people who are capable. That’s it.”
Steenhuisen warned that if the ANC did not abide by the court judgment the DA would not hesitate “to send its leaders to prison for contempt of court, using the very same precedent created when [former president Jacob Zuma] was sent to prison for the same offence”.
Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Groenewald also highlighted the poor legacy of Ramaphosa since he took office, pointing to the decline in the economic growth rate and the rand-dollar exchange rate, as well as the increase in unemployment and in the murder rate. It was time, he said, for Ramaphosa to go.
Human settlements minister Mmamoloko Kubayi detailed the gains made in the provision of houses since 1996, while social development minister Lindiwe Zulu gave a breakdown of the social grants provided by the ANC government, which had risen from 2.4-million in 1994 to 28-million now.
ANC chief whip Pemmy Majodina said the party had done everything it could despite the Covid-19 pandemic and it would take the country forward to a better future. Under the opposition, wealth would continue to be held by a few.