address Mr ML Filtane MP in the National Assembly

Honourable Speaker and members

Corruption, poverty eradication, job opportunity creation and closing the gap between the poor and the rich, are permanent enemies who cannot share the same bed.

It undermines the people and it renders their freedom unstable and insecure, making it impossible to achievement the kind of society envisaged in the Constitution of the Republic.

A quick account on the effects of corruption over the 20 last years of democracy can be summarised as follows:

In 1994, the ruling party contested the elections under the slogan: “A better life for all”. This was not about a better life for some, who happened to be in government or well connected to politicians or to the ruling party or for those who use the system to line their pockets.

It cannot be a better life for those as Brenda Fassie would say: “Kuyangokuthi ungubani, uphila nobani, udlisa kanjani, ungena kwindawo ezinjani.”

It must be a better life to all, because that is what the struggle was all about. After all this is what many went to jail for, exile with some paying the supreme price, death, killed by apartheid agents or hanged.

In 1999, we were told: “Together fighting for change”. It can only be presumed that this referred to the need to change the lives of the South Africans for better especially those of women, children, youth, rural and urban people across the length and breadth of the country.

Whilst our education and health crumbles, corruption is on the rise. Whilst the fight for the so-called security upgrades in Nkandla is on the high, the rest of the rural communities will leave under the same and sometimes even worse conditions as they were before the dawn of democracy, yet corruption is on the rise.

In 2004, the rallying cry was: “A peoples contract to create work and fight poverty”. The recent census report together with an announcement on made as back on 30 March 2011 by the former head of Asset Forfeiture Unit, Adv Willie Hofmeyr that about R30 billion per annum is lost to corruption on state tenders, speaks volumes. Interesting, today, the reports have not changed.

We thought this was a people’s contract to fight poverty of the people who live in dire conditions, not through food parcels but through building economy that creates jobs especially for young people and women who are hardest hit by poverty and unemployment in the sea of corruption.

In 2009, the sign post read: “Working together we can do more”. More what – Corruption, undermine the Rule of Law, the Constitution, dumping down of health, education and social security? Surely South Africans can’t be part of that togetherness.

In 2014, the posts read: “Together we move South Africa Forward”. What is moving forward – is the looting of public resources by the ruling elite in a speedy faster than that of a Tsunami.

Corruption has reach a point where the people of South Africa must now stand up and reclaim their freedom from the ruling elite. An element of a constituency based electoral system with Participatory Deliberate Model of Democracy, ensures direct accountability of public representatives to the people. It also creates a Democratic Citizenship.

The time to reclaim our freedom is NOW.

I thank you.