The leader of the opposition and I stand together on this podium today because we, today, stand together on the threshold of history.  We have launched a great challenge to the people of South Africa, who will meet their appointment with destiny in ten days at the election polls, on April 14.  For several months we have campaigned across the length and width of South Africa, to hear the voice of the South African people.  From the valleys of the north of KwaZulu to the planes of the Northern Cape, from the fields of the southern tip of the Western Cape to the flat-lands of Mpumalanga, and from the breadth and length of this country, we have heard the same message being repeated by all South Africans.  Across existing social, economic, cultural and ethnic divides, South Africans are now expressing a common view about their concerns and our future.

The rich and the poor, the black and the white, the Zulus and the Sothos, the Indians and the Xhosas, the Coloureds, the Tswanas, the Vendas, the Swazis, the Pedis, the Shangaans, the educated and the uneducated, the employed and the unemployed, the old and the young, and men and women alike, are all equally concerned about five fundamental issues, which affect all of them.  We are all constantly directly or indirectly affected by the problems of HIV/Aids, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption.  We heard the South African people expressing their concerns about HIV/Aids, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption.  These are the five issues which the South African people have determined, should be the basis of the election issues of the forthcoming elections.  We identified these five issues as being important but we, as politicians and political parties, did not choose them.  They were chosen by the South African people.  This election is indeed an historical one because its themes, issues and concerns have been set on the Agenda directly by the South African people, in a manner which commands the attention of the politicians.  The South African people are looking for answers to their pressing questions.

Today we are all either infected or directly or indirectly affected by HIV/Aids.  We are all going to pay the enormous price which HIV/Aids is going to exact on our economy, on our society, on our communities and on our families and groups of friends.  Today we are all victims of crime, because in my long`journey throughout the land I have not met a single South African who has not been a victim of crime in recent times, or does not live under the apprehension of becoming one. Today we are all part of a country’s population which, in its totality is unemployed, because our country cannot provide the dignity and security of work to 50% of its daughters and sons.  In a society with such high levels of ever rising unemployment, no-one can count on long-term security and prosperity.

Today, everyone in South Africa is paying the price that corruption is imposing on our society.  Corruption is becoming widespread not only within Government, but also within all building blocks of our civil society.  Corruption is a cancer which is eating away at our society from inside out, taking money away from the poorest of the poor and placing it in the pockets of people who do not deserve it.  We are all paying the price of their corruption.

We are also all equally affected by the rising levels of poverty in rural areas.  The collapse of social structures, and subsistence economy in rural areas, affects all of us, even if people do not realise it, because there cannot be any prosperity in South Africa for urban areas, for as long as there is so much poverty in rural areas.  These are the issues which, throughout the country, the people of South Africa have raised with me and the leader of the opposition. These are the issues which brought the leader of the opposition and I together.  Together we can create the many jobs that South Africa needs, to begin the cycle of development, development and development.  Together we can place our economy on an accelerated rate of growth, where more wealth can be produced for all, so that we can increase the size of the cake, so that it may be sliced in more numerous and larger pieces for redistribution.

I do not think that he can do this by himself.  I do not think that I can do this by myself.  However, if we receive enough support from the South African people, together we can do it.  Together we can bring back sanity in our HIV policies, to ensure that the plight of those who suffer, becomes a priority to which Government must respond.  It is time to take politics out of the policies on HIV/Aids and regard this as the medical emergency it is.  Our country must declare war on HIV/Aids and deploy all its resources to ensure that no more people die of it, and that those who are suffering, receive the full measure of treatment that medicine may provide, and the full measure of social assistance which the state can supply.  With the support of the South African people, together the leader of the opposition and I can make this happen.  We care. We represent what the next Government of South Africa should be, namely a caring Government, which responds to the call of need of the South African people. 

For too long the needs of the South African people have been ignored and overruled by politicians, who have grown too detached from the grassroots.  April 14 is the time when the voice of the South African people must be heard.  If the voice of the South African people is not heard on this occasion, it might never be heard again, because the ANC will grow to believe that they may rule without listening to the South African people.  The only way for the South African people to make their voice heard, is to cut the ANC down to a size where it can no longer rule the country by itself, and without the South African people. 

Even during this election campaign, the ANC has chosen not to listen to the voice of the South African people.  We have voiced the concerns of the South African people about HIV/Aids, crime, unemployment, corruption and poverty.  For each problem we have designed a solution.  We have identified how South Africa can become better because both the leader of the opposition and I believe that South Africa deserves better.  We have spent months listening to the South African people talking about real issues, and we have engaged the political debate about real solutions.  We engaged public debate on how to create jobs and make our economy grow.  We put forward plans to put food in the stomachs of those who are hungry.  I know what poverty is.  No-one should talk to me about poverty.  I have lived in this country amongst the poorest of the poor all my life.  I do not need anyone lecturing me about poverty.

The leader of the opposition and I have worked together to ensure that there is a plan, which one day can fulfill the dream that no-one in this country will ever again go to sleep on an empty stomach, after a day of idleness, because of being unemployed.  These are things I care about because all my life has been in this Country, amongst the poorest of the poor, whom I have served day-in and day-out with the hardest work I have been capable of expressing, and at enormous personal sacrifice, for fifty years.

For fifty years I have fought the struggle to bring prosperity and security to all South Africans.  The IFP and the DA have come together, because we want to produce solutions to problems.  We have engaged the ANC in this debate.  However, the ANC has not been willing to talk to us about issues.  Instead it has chosen to talk about ideology.  We are not in Europe.  We are not on an American university campus, where people go around disputing ideological issues.  We are not in the Red Square of Moscow.  We are in South Africa, where real people have real problems, which require real solutions.  We do not need ideology.  We do not need to debate who is right-wing and who is left-wing.  The President attacked me, saying that Mr Leon and I are right-wingers.  I do not give a left foot about being right-wing, as I do not give a right foot about being left-wing.  I am no wing and I am not winger.  I am a pragmatist, who is only concerned about giving to the people of South Africa the solution, that answers the problems they have and perceive. 

There is crime in this Country, which is killing our people by the hundreds of thousands every year.  This is a problem which ought to be solved because it can be solved.  We need to divert resources away from other purposes to prioritise the fight against crime, because, like HIV/Aids, crime is killing our people across all cultural, economic, social and ethnic divides.  The problem can and must be solved.  The leader of the opposition and I know how to solve it.  We need many more policemen who are better trained, better equipped and with better resources, who are backed by a much larger, more competent and effective judiciary.  We need a profound reform of our judicial system, both in terms of procedures and in terms of structures, to make our system of justice more precise, more effective and more efficient.  However, we must also eradicate crime from the hearts and minds of people.  Crime does not exist in abstract.  It is the conduct of real people with real feelings who are our brothers and sisters, no matter how misguided they are.  We cannot fight crime through repression alone. 

We must invest in civic education programmes, which can change people’s attitudes at all levels, so as to transform as many of our people as possible into competent and respectable citizens.  We need civic education programmes to be delivered at all levels of our society, not only schools, ranging from communities, to workplaces, associations, churches and any other building block of our society.  Together we can solve the problem of crime.  By myself I do not think that I could do it.  I do not think that the leader of the opposition would himself have the presumption of saying that he can solve the problem by himself.  However, together, with the support of the South African people, we can and we shall solve this problem. 

As we stand together on this podium, our respective strengths are not just compounded, but they are indeed multiplied.  Today, one plus one does not make two, but makes three, and we need to bring the added value of this coalition into an electoral victory on April 14, not for our sake, but to give substance to the hope that the South African people now have, for a new beginning.  Today we are giving South Africa the courage to hope for a new and better beginning.  This is not the South Africa for which I have struggled for all my life.  I did not struggle for ideology, but for results.  I did not struggle for fifty years to see the success of an ideological viewpoint over another, but to see the day in which all South Africans could finally be free from the enslavement of poverty, underdevelopment, crime, and ignorance for lack of education, exposure and knowledge.

Certain people feel that we have arrived, just because they have reached a position of comfort and power.  I know that our struggle is far from having been completed.  We are all ready to celebrate the tenth anniversary of our liberation on April 27, but before we do so, we must look towards the future on April 14.  Let us not look at the past ten years.  April 14 is the time when we must look at the future, because as it now stands, the future of South Africa is bleak.  We will celebrate the past achievements on April 27, as we consider the past ten years of liberation, but before we do so, on April 14 we must celebrate the beginning of a new hope which will be able to rectify, in the next ten years, the problems affecting the South African people, namely those of HIV/Aids, crime, unemployment, corruption and poverty. 

The ANC wanted to run this election on the same euphoria of liberation, which characterized the elections in 1999 and 1994.  The ANC wanted the South African people to focus on the past, and see how much has been done in the past ten years.  However, the South African people have chosen to focus on something else which is HIV/Aids, crime, unemployment, corruption and poverty.  The IFP and the DA have joined forces together to provide the South African people with a vehicle with which these problems can be solved.  We do not want them to be ignored again.  We have given the South African people the option of a democratic alternative.

The ANC is now driven by ideology.  There have been many instances, while I was in Cabinet, in which I tried to bring a pragmatic approach to what were ideological discussions.  Many of these will remain secret until Cabinet records are finally disclosed.  However, by virtue of an accident of history, one of them has been brought out into the opening, for everyone to see.  The relevant documents are now before a court of law and have become public.  As the Minister of Home Affairs, I developed a very liberal reform of our system of migration control, to enable South Africa to receive any foreigner who can make a contribution, as a tourist or as a worker.  However, I maintained a screening mechanism to ensure that we would not receive people who come to South Africa and cannot make a contribution, but merely draw on our resources and become a burden to the South African people and the State.

I adopted the policy of making the front door to positive immigration wide open, while trying to shut the back door to illegal immigration.

The leader of the opposition and I have done our part.  On April 14 it will be up to the South African people to do theirs.  They will need to decide whether they wish to have five more years of the same, or whether they are ready to give South Africa something better.  I believe that our country deserves to walk the path towards excellence.  I do not want South Africa to remain a country of mediocrity.  I do not want to bequeath to my children and grand children, a legacy of HIV/Aids, crime, unemployment, corruption and poverty.  These elements should not become endemic in our society.  They must be eradicated here and now, or they will become permanent features of what South Africa is all about, condemning our country to remain a mediocrity rather than becoming a place of excellence. 

We shall build a new South Africa in which HIV/Aids, crime, unemployment, corruption and poverty will become as much bad memories of an idle and distant past, as oppression and apartheid are now bad memories of an equally ugly and distant past.  When I was young it seemed impossible that we could ever defeat apartheid and oppression, and yet we considered it to be a dream, which was greater than our own horizons at the time.  Today we have conceived a dream which is equally greater than our present horizons, which is a dream of a South Africa which will forever be free from HIV/Aids, crime, unemployment, corruption and poverty.  The South African people must mobilize in the pursuance of that dream, with the same strength and determination with which they mobilized for our struggle for liberation.