Honourable Speaker,
Over the past few weeks, I have been encouraged to see the President promoting the DA’s
long-held view on building a capable state.
As someone who deliberately chose to build his multimillion Rand mansion in the DA-run City of Cape Town, he was obviously mightily impressed by the quality of service delivery in
this city.
So, inspired by our success, the President started talking about the DA’s capable state.
However, he quickly realised that he could never actually build a capable state like we have, because that would mean choosing the country over the corruption of his own party.
Per slot van rekening beteken die bou van ‘n bekwame staat juis dat korrupsie en kader ontplooiing uitgeroei moet word, en dat individuele landsburgers bemagtig moet word in plaas van ‘n allesoorheersende staat.
Om te verwag dat die ANC dít sal doen, is soos om ‘n jakkals aan te stel om ‘n ogie te hou oor die hoenderhok.
Dit is die rede waarom ons sit met ‘n President wat blykbaar glo dat deur bloot die woorde “bekwame staat” te sê, sy woorde outomaties waar word.
This year’s State of the Nation Address was a grotesque example of just how out-of-touch this President truly is.
On the day of SONA, Eskom desperately scrambled to keep the lights on at all costs to enable the annual presidential delusion about a capable state, smart cities and bullet trains.
But as soon as the president was comfortably back at his generator-powered mansion, the rest of the country was immediately plunged right back into darkness.
If the honourable President stepped outside his bubble for a moment, he would see an urgent message from the real-world: the incapable ANC state is collapsing all around us.
So, beyond hollow rhetoric, what is the President actually doing about our collapsing state?
Honourable Speaker, let’s see what kind of example he is setting.
• Mr President, why haven’t you fired your health minister, who appointed his niece
as chief of staff despite a cloud of corruption hanging over her?
En tog verwag U dat Suid-Afrikaners hierdie minister moet vertrou met hul lewens,
sowel as met honderde miljarde Rande, as deel van U waansinnige plan om
gesondheidsorg te nasionaliseer.
• Mr President, what have you done about your water and sanitation minister, who
appointed the disgraced Menzi Simelane and Mo Schaik as special advisers?
Their only experience with sanitation came when they flushed hundreds of millions of taxpayer Rands down the toilet.
• Mr President, when are you firing your communications minister for abusing
taxpayer funds to pay for her wedding anniversary celebrations in New York and
Geneva?
• Mr President, what is a Hazenile addict still doing in the ministry of energy when he refuses to free citizens from the tyranny Eskom?
When the citizens of this country look around them, they see every single day that the honourable President is nothing more than the incapable talking-head of an incapable state.
As die President werklik ‘n duit omgegee het oor die bou van ‘n bekwame staat soos in sy nuwe DA-beheerde tuisdorp, sou hy onmiddellik tot aksie oorgaan om ons staatsdiens te red van finale ineenstorting.
Instead of insulting South Africans by calling them “negative,” he would do his job and give them reasons to be positive.
To prevent fiscal implosion, his government would grow a backbone and cut the wage bill.
To save basic services like education, health and social protection, the state would hang “for sale” signs on state-owned looting enterprises.
And if there was any real interest in building a truly capable state, the government would support the DA’s Professional Public Service Bill to root out cadre deployment and ensure that public servants are appointed on the basis of skill and merit.
But the President and his incapable state does none of this, because it would require them to choose country over party.
There’s at least one bit of good news though, honourable President. The DA remains
absolutely committed to bring the same capable state that convinced you to move to Cape Town, to the whole of South Africa.
Until that day comes and with apologies to Shakespeare:
“The capable state struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by a hollow man, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”