We have come today to Gauteng to launch a new beginning for South Africa. Gauteng is the pulsating heart of our country and one of the major powerhouses of our continent. Here is where it all happens. This is the economic powerhouse of South Africa.  For a long time Gauteng has been the theatre of our liberation struggle. Today we are here meeting in the hometown of that great  African patriot, Oliver Tambo, who lived here and this is where his mortal remains lie buried. You may remember that he was such a distinguished unifying figure that we all gathered here for the unveiling of his tombstone. 

We, therefore, stake our claim to provide South Africa with a new hope. We do not do so out of arrogance, but because we know that there are many people in this Province, like elsewhere in the country, who are longing for a change for the better in their lives. They are expecting something substantially better in their lives 

We know  that people in this Province are deeply aware of the tragic problems confronting South Africa. The South African people know that these problems are not tragic natural occurrences like droughts or floods which are regarded as Acts of God.They are man-created problems which could be solved by a competent and effective government and which remain tragically unresolved because of an element of neglect and ineffective policies and actions. 

Let me not be misunderstood to mean that nothing has happened in the people’s lives. All I am saying is that what we have done has not been sufficient to solve our country’s problems. 

The agenda for the next elections has not been set out by the political parties. The issues which control the political debate in the electoral campaign have been determined by the people of South Africa. Directly, or indirectly, these issues affect every one of us and they are well-known to all our families. 

South Africans do not need to be told about the issues of these elections. South Africans want to understand why these problems have been allowed to grow into their present dimensions and want to choose those who can be trusted to match the gravity of these problems with adequate and reliable solutions.   

The problems which are affecting all our families are those of HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, corruption and poverty.  Directly, or indirectly, everyone is being affected by either HIV/AIDS, or crime, or unemployment, or poverty, or corruption.  

I know very few people who have not been victims of crime in the past ten years, and I know an even fewer number of people who do not fear becoming victims of crime in the future. None of us is protected from crime and we are all exposed in a situation which makes us defenceless and impotent. I, myself, have been a victim of several crimes such as theft of several cattle, and I know that in the present situation of generalised lawlessness, neither a Minister of State nor the humblest of our ordinary citizens can feel safe from being a victim of crime.  

In responding to the State of the Nation Address by the President in Parliament, I drew his attention to the hopelessness of our criminal justice system. Most crimes are never resolved. Even where there are suspects who are charged, cases hardly ever get concluded. All sorts of things happen, such as the sudden loss of dockets for example. 

For too long the reality of the problems relating to crime have been first denied and then under-estimated.  For too long too little has been done to deal with the problem of crime.  Crime is a problem which can, and must, be solved. In the IFP Manifesto which we are launching today in this Province, the IFP puts forward its proposals to solve the problem of crime.  Our plan is coherent, adequate and will, undoubtedly, provide the problem of crime with its matching solution. 

Those who read the IFP Manifesto will realise that if implemented, our proposals can eradicate the problem of crime because they deal with all sides of the issue.  They aim at developing programmes of civic education to eradicate crime where it originates, which is in the hearts and minds of many of our people and out of abject and dehumanised social and economic conditions. Our proposals deal with law enforcement realizing that crime can be defeated if the State is sufficiently serious  to doing so. 

Thus far there has not been sufficient political will to deal with crime. It is required that the State moves massive budgetary allocations to provide the police with more staff which have greater resources and more equipment and is better paid and trained. We need more resources for the judiciary. We also need to change how policing is conducted in our country to give more power over policing to Provinces and Municipalities.  

Throughout the world the most effective police departments are run by cities, not by the central Government. I am convinced that the metro of this area would be more capable of dealing with criminal phenomena in this area than the presently centralised police structure, and that the Province of Gauteng could co-ordinate policing in its territory much better than is presently the case.  I know that we do have a metro police in Johannesburg.  My Party tried to suggest during the time of the World Trade Centre negotiations, that we needed a decentralisation of policing powers. Our suggestions were not heeded. 

Too little has been done to deal with these problems, and often what has been done has been far too late, almost as if it was done to be seen to be doing something on the eve of the elections.  The much spoken of and yet not seen distribution of anti-retroviral drugs for all those who are infected with HIV/AIDS,  is a clear example of what could have been done, and should have been done, a long time ago, and has not yet been done, in spite of much talk about doing it.   

We cannot trust those who have failed us in the past. From past experiences the South African people find it difficult to rely on promises that are made to them. We need to have a new beginning which expresses the trust of the South African people in a new and better leadership. We need a leadership with the guts, backbone and all other required appertainments necessary to muster the political will to do what it takes to solve our problems.  This is the time for strength, and not weakness. It is almost a dereliction of duty to spend time debating, while the flames of HIV/AIDS, crime and poverty are consuming our people daily. 

We must declare a political emergency within South Africa. Our people are dying by the hundreds of thousands because of crime and HIV/AIDS, and are suffering by the millions as these problems are compounded by the scourge of unemployment and poverty. We need a leadership capable of dealing with an emergency in the way emergencies are dealt with, which is not through words and proposals, but actual deeds and tangible delivery.  

South Africa needs an IFP-led Government. This might seem impossible even to many people who would consider it desirable. However, we are here in the Province of Gauteng where the word “impossibility” is not part of the vocabulary of that which expresses the spirit of this Province.  he people of Gauteng know very well that they have the power to make anything possible if they want it hard enough. Politics is the only field of human endeavour in which people may will what they wish.  If enough people wish for a new and better government to take over the reins of South Africa, and to solve its many problems, this can and will happen, merely by virtue of the fact that the South African people have so willed it. This is the time for the South African people to have the courage to hope and give all of us the hope of a new beginning, and the courage of knowing that we can do better than just  remaining impotent as our people die and suffer. 

For too long the problems of HIV/AIDS and unemployment have been discussed in summits, conferences and workshops, while our people have died and suffered by the millions. These problems are not going to be solved if we have five more years of the same. They can only be solved if we empower a leadership which recognises their magnitude and has the guts to do what it takes. South Africans need a leadership they can trust. 

South Africans need the IFP leadership. I have spent all my life amongst South African people from all walks of life, ethnic backgrounds, social classes and segments of our population. I have had the pleasure of breaking bread with hundreds of thousands of South Africans from the very rich to the very poor, from urban areas to rural areas, from the southern most tip of our country to our northern frontiers, from ocean to ocean, from mountain to valley and from mansion to hut. I have shared the tears of millions of South Africans.   

Over the past fifty years in which I have carried the burden of being a servant of the people, I have gone to hundreds of funerals.  However, I have never seen so much sorrow and pain as I have now. Our people are dying of HIV/AIDS.  I know of many, many South Africans who are infected with HIV and are dying of AIDS. I have buried many children of our nation whose lives were cut short at the prime of their life, because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Our Government has not done enough to respond to the greatest challenge which has ever confronted our people.  It took a Constitutional Court order to convince the ANC to provide mothers with a simple, available, harmless and inexpensive treatment, which could save their newborn babies, preventing them from becoming infected from their mothers HIV. I think that was one of the darkest pages of our national history which still cries in the memory of all our children who were not saved, when in fact they could have, and should have, not died. You will all remember that our National Chairman, Dr Mtshali, in his capacity as Premier of the Province of KwaZulu Natal, had to take the National Government to the Constitutional Court, on the issue of supplying Nevirapine to pregnant mothers. 

It is time to turn our country around. We must deal with HIV/AIDS as if we were in a war. This is an emergency. It is not something to hold academic discussions about. 

The IFP Manifesto has the full list of concrete proposals which spell out what needs to be done immediately to win this war.  Those who read those proposals will see that they not only make sense, but many of them are not new and have been talked about for far too long.  It is now up to the South African people to enable this war to be won. We are all either infected or somehow affected by HIV/AIDS. No South African with any conscience can stand on the sideline of this war. It is up to the South African people to empower a political leadership which can lead the country out of this nightmare and forge a new nation by tempering it in the discipline, social solidarity and humanity called for by the war on HIV/AIDS.  We must come together as a nation to fight this war together, recognising that we must support one another across any existing social, economic, racial or cultural divides.  Not only will this war then be won but a new, more humane, more compassionate and more caring nations will be forged in the effort.  We need to create a new beginning here and now.  The next elections are the opportunity for South Africans to turn over a new leaf and begin a new chapter in our history, marked  by the confidence of courage and the hope of a more caring and compassionate society.   

For the past ten years our people have suffered because of unemployment.  The reality of unemployment was first denied.  Then the argument was put forward that unemployment has not increased but that it is merely larger because there are more people to be employed.  The South African people were then told that the problem of unemployment would be solved by employing people to do the jobs which would otherwise be performed by machines.  This is not how this problem ought to be dealt with.  This is not how the South African people should be spoken to.  This is not how the sufferings of our unemployed youth and the cries of those who cannot support their families, should be answered.  Over and again the rightful expectations of our people are met with empty promises.  South Africans deserve better than empty promises.   

Throughout fifty years in politics, I have never promised that which I knew could not be delivered.  I have never painted a rosy future when I knew that there were difficulties waiting ahead.  I have never insulted the intelligence of my fellow South Africans because I know that even those who, by virtue of circumstances, may be amongst the poorest of the poor are, nonetheless, not stupid.   For two decades my fellow South Africans have heard me saying that the road ahead remains hard and uphill.  I have said so not because I enjoyed it, but because it was, and it remains, the truth of the matter.  One does not become popular by telling the truth and it is sometimes easier to resort to empty promises.  However, I have more respect than that for my fellow South Africans.  It is in the name of that respect, which I owe to South Africa, that I must say again that employment is not going to be generated by virtue of public relations operations, empty promises or unsustainable shortcuts, such as that of trying to employ people in place of machines.  

There is one path, and one path only, to creating long-term sustainable and growing employment generation, and that is the path which goes through the acceleration of our economic growth.  The IFP Manifesto clearly spells out how economic growth can be accelerated.  It is not an easy road to walk.  It requires short-term sacrifices to achieve long-term gains.  I know that the South African people are willing to walk this road.  South African people want to invest in our future and are willing to make our country work.  The problem is not with the South African people, but with our current political leadership and the time has come to finally correct this problem.  We need to create the political will to adopt unpopular policies which can produce results.  The South African people are tired of empty promises and demand a leader who can walk with them on the hard and uphill path towards prosperity.   

The IFP Manifesto spells out what can and must be done to promote accelerated economic growth and generate employment.  We have plans which can generate employment almost overnight and in large scale, such as the plan relating to the re-conversion of our agricultural basis so that we can move from low-added value land intensive agriculture, to high-added value labour intensive produce, to be marketed internationally with the assistance of the State.  We have short-term proposals and long-term proposals to solve our unemployment crisis.  We must privatise our economy and liberalise the hidden potential of our market forces.  We must have a long-term plan to create an industrial basis for South Africa.  Our proposals are serious, well considered and capable of providing critical scrutiny of economies and businessmen alike.  However, our proposals are also not new.  Proposals such as the need to privatise our economy has been on my list for twelve years, during which time I have not heard any serious objection to their merits.  

However, in spite of the intrinsic merits of this policy and the fact that five years ago Government announced that it would pursue it with energy, very little has been done about it. Once again it is clear that the most important thing that South Africa needs is a leadership capable of pushing through and following through good proposals and ideas.  It can no longer rely on things to fix themselves, because it will not happen. It is time to empower those who have the right solutions with the responsibility of implementing them.  

It is time to empower the IFP. For too long we have been advising the ANC on what to do. We moved the ANC from its original centralistic vision to the present degree of limited and highly insufficient provincial autonomy.  We moved the ANC from its position cast in the discredited ideology of socialism, to its present lukewarm and ambivalent endorsement of the fundamental rules of a free-market society in the age of globalisation. However, South Africa can no longer afford the luxury of having the people with the right ideas, in an advisory capacity, and the people with the wrong attitude and perspective, in power.  The time has come to bring the right ideas to power. 

To the credit of our government we saw the announcement of the Government’s macro-economic strategy of ‘Growth Employment and Redistribution’ [GEAR] as a Damascus experience. We all hailed it and yet so little progress has taken place because the ANC’s other allies, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party have opposed GEAR from the beginning.  What do we now see?  All the predictions that were made for economic growth in the past few years have not taken place. This is the economic stagnation that the country faces and the margin of our international debt is widening as a result.   

I have said it over and over again that the IFP wishes to be that which brings together all the people of goodwill. I have no delusion that we may emerge from the next elections with a 51% majority, even though that would be the best thing that could happen to South Africa. However, I have sufficient hope in the South African people to be tempted by the dream that the ANC may be cut down to a size which is good for democracy and good for South Africa, which would be below the 50% threshold. 

It is essential that no one in South Africa has enough power to rule by itself, so that it will be necessary for anyone to create a coalition with others to provide the best possible government for South Africa.  We need to overcome the present politics of division to promote the politics of national unity. I have often said that if I were the new President of South Africa I would undoubtedly invite into my Cabinet both the Leader of the Opposition, as well as willing representatives of the ANC because South Africa needs both their contributions to succeed.  

However, South Africa needs for its democracy to work before any progress can be achieved.  Our democracy cannot work for as long as the ANC has the power to change and tamper with our Constitution at will and at whim.  The ANC has given ample evidence of its willingness to bend, twist and corrupt our Constitution to pursue its own political goals when it amended the Constitution to allow political representatives to cross the floor, Political representatives were allowed to take with them and steal their seats and votes in spite of the fact that they were elected on the basis of a contract with the voters which did not allow them to do so.  This is final proof that the ANC cannot be trusted with our Constitution.  Nobody should be trusted with the power to change the rules of the game. 

Our democracy is in great peril. The spectre of a one-party State is clearly looming on the horizon. It is for the South African people to stop this from happening.  If it happens, our country will be placed on a course of no-return. It takes a long time for any government to turn a country around by means of good policies, and often there are limits to even what good politics can do. However, it takes very little time for bad policies to ruin a country, and there are no limits to the magnitude of damage which a bad government can cause to its people and nation. 

One needs not travel far from our own borders to see the type of devastation which was caused by bad governments and bad policies. It is the responsibility of the South African people to ensure that at the next elections the result is produced which enables the South African people to retain control of our democracy. If we have a one-party State, the people will have lost the power to choose, and will be stuck with one option, and one option only, whether they like it or not. A one-party State takes place when people do not have the power to fire the Government and replace it with another one of its choice.   

For this reason I have dedicated my utmost efforts to providing the country I love and the democracy to which I have dedicated my entire life with what it needs the most, namely the hope of a democratic alternative. I have come together with the Democratic Alliance to forge the Coalition for Change in the hope that South Africa may have a democratic alternative and that all voters will forever be endowed with the right to choose from between at least two political parties which are capable of becoming the Government of the future. It is for this reason that here, in Gauteng, where the will to succeed defines what is possible, that we assert before all South Africans, our desire to be the government- in-waiting of the future.  We are doing so not for our own sake, but because we know that unless things change in our country, the crisis we are now confronting will take away all the gains of our liberation. 

Unless we empower a leadership capable of dealing effectively with HIV/AIDS, crime, corruption, unemployment and poverty all that we have achieved in the past ten years will be in great jeopardy.  Unless a democratic alternative exists, no government will ever have the necessary incentive to walk the uphill road towards success, and South Africa will continue to be led on a downhill leisurely ride, towards decay and mediocrity.  

We do not want South Africa to be a tale of mediocrity.  We are committed to turning it into a success story.  We have pledged our honour and hopes to this great dream of ours.  I am here in  Gauteng to share my dream with the people of this great Province because I know that no dream is too big, no dream is too large, and that no dream is too impossible, for the people of Gauteng.  Together, under the protection of God Almighty we will turn our country around and give it a new beginning.  Together we will succeed.  It is now or never.  

Now is the time to change. Now is the time to move from bad to better. Now is the time to have the courage to hope.  Now is the time for the IFP. Now is the time for a leadership that South Africa can trust. Now is the time for us to rely on the protection and guidance of God Almighty and firmly believe that we shall overcome and succeed in giving South Africa a dream as large as its God-given potentials.   

May God bless all of you.