We are just nine days away from the moment of truth before the South African people. On April 14, the South African people will reveal who we really are as a country. Until a few weeks ago, this electoral campaign has been conducted by all political parties, exclusively on real and substantive issues which were chosen by the South African people, because these are issues by which we are all affected. Until a few weeks ago, the electoral campaign had been run by all political parties, exclusively on the issues of HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption. These are the issues that the South African people chose to place on the agenda of this electoral campaign, because they embody the most essential needs and aspirations of all our people.

However, on the eve elections the ANC chose to run away from debating these issues, and resorted first to ideology and then to smear tactics, to the point of resuscitating the old campaign of lies and vilification against me. On April 14, the South African people will decide many things, not least whether they want the rulers and leaders to be people who deal with the real issues and win elections, because they care about the needs and wants of the South African people, or whether they will listen to those that talk the language of ideology. The last days of this election campaign have shown the true colours of the ANC. It is now the time for the South African people to show their own true colours and on April 14 prove that we are not a type of people who will vote for those who are trying to deceive us, and pull the wool over our eyes.

The ANC has refused to address the issues of this campaign, which are those of HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption. Instead of addressing the issues of this campaign ,the ANC has indicated that it believes it can win these elections by means of false promises, ideology and by discrediting its opponents with lies and vilification. During these elections, the ANC has failed to take responsibility for its many past short comings in dealing with the issues of HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption. The ANC has refused to face up to its responsibilities and engage the other political parties of this electoral campaign in a real debate about the real issues. Because the ANC has not accepted that in the past five years the problems of HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption have been fundamentally mishandled, it gives no guarantees that it will be able to do much better in the next five years and solve these problems. 

The ANC has a track record of denial in respect of these problems. They started with denying the very existence of the problems of HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption. The fact that they denied the connection between HIV and AIDS, and that HIV causes AIDS, was absurd. They originally denied the ever growing phenomenon of crime, and that it affects all the segments of our population. When they could no longer deny these two problems, they started to down-play their significance, magnitude and importance. They dealt with unemployment as if it did not exist. Originally, the ANC denied that unemployment was growing by leaps and bounds and then when they could no longer deny it, they dealt with it as if it were something that would go away by itself or just by talking about it. To this day, the ANC denies the magnitude of the problem of corruption, which has become endemic in many sectors of our Government as well as civil society.

A few weeks ago, when I last spoke in Parliament, the ANC attacked me because I indicated that poverty has grown in rural areas, because of the collapse of subsistence agriculture and food security. To this day the ANC is denying the extent and dimension of the problems of poverty. During this election, the ANC has denied that not enough has been done about these problems and it has continued to deny its own responsibilities. For this reason, the South African people cannot trust the ANC in acting differently in the next five years.

If the ANC were to deal with the problem of HIV/AIDS for the next five years, it is not going to go away because the ANC has not yet indicated to us how it intends to deal with it. Thus far we have seen nothing but promises of things to come. Even anti-retroviral drugs have still not been fully rolled out, and all we have now are these pilot projects, when anti-retroviral drugs should have been available in all health facilities several years ago and should have already been rolled out in clinics of all major workplaces. All we have seen are some minor steps taken in this direction, on the eve of elections, which has been sensationalised by newspapers, to imply that the ANC, at the last moment, has decided to deal with something which they have neglected for ten years.

The same goes for crime. The ANC still has not indicated its willingness to do what it takes to deal with the problem of crime, which requires deploying a much larger number of policemen who are better paid, better trained and better equipped, because it requires a major reform of the judiciary, so as to ensure much greater capacity, efficiency and competence in our court rooms. The ANC also has no plan to generate employment within South Africa, or to promote the long-term creation of an industrial basis for our country. The IFP has made constant proposals in this sense, which will enable South Africa to create employment and become self-sufficient in terms of producing its own products and services, in the new age of globalisation. In the age of globalisation, each country needs to produce enough to be able to support its own living, and we need to know today what type of products we will be producing for the global market in twenty years, which the ANC has not prepared us to do.

The ANC also has no effective plan to deal with poverty in rural areas, and continues to deny the great plight of rural people. It also has no plan to deal with corruption, which at times seems to be too close to home for them to do what it takes to get rid of it. These are the real issues of South Africa, but the ANC has denied the South African people the opportunity of discussing them.

Instead of answering why not enough has been done about HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption, and why there are no plans to effectively deal with these problems in the next five years, the ANC has chosen to attack me. On the first wave of attacks they called me right-winger and then went to the outlandish measure of vilification, to portray me as someone who is interested in protecting the interests of white people only. The people of this region know how stupid such a notion really is. I have protected the interests of all South Africans. I have never looked at South Africans on the basis of the colour of their skin, or their ethnic or cultural groupings. I have always believed in a country in which everyone has an equal right to live and prosper. However, I have made special efforts to assist the poorest of the poor because they deserve it the most.

I have special efforts to assist people in rural areas, because they have been neglected for so long. The people in this region know how ludicrous it is to state that I have in any way placed the interests of whites above those of the black people of this country. But this shows how desperate the ANC is, and how incapable it appears in answering the real needs and concerns of the South African people. By insulting me, they are insulting the South African people. By not answering to my concerns and my challenges, they are neglecting to respond to the South African people.

For this reason, on April 14, the South African people must call the ANC to order and cut it down to a size where it may be forced to listen to their voices. The attack on me was launched by President Mbeki himself. I have never attacked President Mbeki. I have always respected him because he is the President of the country, and the President of the ANC. I have walked the full path of reconciliation and I have avoided attacking him even, when the entire world was ridiculing him. I have always dealt with issues, not with people. I have always played the ball, not the player. My concern has always been dealing with HIV/AIDS, and ensuring that people would receive the treatment they need and deserve.

I did not attack the President for his bizarre idea that HIV does not cause AIDS, which paralyzed Government action for about three years, causing uncalled for human sufferings, and many unnecessary deaths of our people. The world was ridiculing him and because of his position, was ridiculing our country, but I did the honourable thing and kept my mouth shut. Similarly, I did not attack the President when he took his stand about Zimbabwe, where he embraced the so-called diplomacy of silence which forced all of us to be silent, while Zimbabwe crumbled under our own eyes, because of the strangling of its democracy piece by piece. We saw the disintegration of democracy by means of a totalitarian law, after the order and autocratic action followed by a worse one, day by day, month after month. We witnessed in silence and did nothing.

Time and again, I expressed a different view about Zimbabwe from that of the President, but I respected his view point. I rang alarm bells to warn that what was happening in Zimbabwe, was unacceptable and a threat to democracy in our region. The IFP sent its own observers, who did not agree with the assessment of the ANC, and our own Independent Electoral Commission, that the elections held there were in any way free and fair. We have been outspoken and clear in our position about Zimbabwe. However, I stopped short of attacking the President, and ridiculing him, as the rest of the world has done in respect of Zimbabwe. Many people felt that we were responsible for what was happening in Zimbabwe, because of our silence and our failure to criticise. However, I respected the President, because I did not want to undermine the leadership of our country.

The president of any given country needs laws to operate, and needs respect from those who hold the highest office of the land. Moral leadership is very important to ensure that our people can work together in building a better future for our country. For this reason, even though I felt it necessary to do so, I never attacked the President of South Africa and I prevented many of our members on the National Council from doing so. For five years, many members of our National Council would liked to have gone public to tell the world what they thought of him, but I prevented them from doing so.

The President went to court to sue me and I did not even oppose him. I intervened in the litigation in which he was indirectly suing me, but I made the commitment to keep my intervention short of being a natural opposition, because I respected him as the President of the country. I can mention another thousand other occasions in which I held back expressing my criticism of the President. I was critical of our employment policies and our economic strategies, which have caused our unemployment to rise from 29% in 1994 to 40% at present. I was critical of the fact that the ANC did not do what it could have done to make our economy grow, and produce more employment such as pursuing the process of privatisation, which the IFP has over and again advocated, or promoting greater flexibility in the labour market.

I am very critical of the way the macro-economic strategy of Government, GEAR has been stopped in its tracks by the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU), who are allies of the ANC. Even when Government took a decision to amend our rigid labour law the SACP/COSATU alliance threatened to roll mass action. That is why hardly any investment is coming into the country, in spite of our magnificent fiscal policy. It is high time the whole country awakened to the fact that this is one of the reasons why our economy growth is so low. It will not improve as long as the whole macro-economic strategy of Government is stuck in its tracks because of the objections of COSATU and the SACP. 

The truth of the matter is that the unemployment problem can only get worse. The amount of the public relations on the part of the ruling Party can create jobs. The truth of the matter is that joblessness can only worsen in these circumstances. When the ANC launched their Manifesto on the 11th of January the ANC announced that they are going to create a million jobs through the Expanded Public Works Strategy. As a member of Government I have supported these projects, but the truth of the matter is that these are only temporary jobs. There will be more of palliatives than real solutions. We are in serious trouble as long as our young people are going to be without jobs even those who have gone through Grade 12 or through our tertiary institutions. When these policies were agreed upon but were stopped by the South African Communist Party and COSATU. I was appalled when this happened, I could have criticised the President. He should have been held responsible for the fact that our economy has betrayed its promises to the poorest of the poor. However, I did not attack the President even though he should have been held accountable for the shambles in which our hopes for industrial growth really are, due to a lack of long-term vision.

For this reason, I was flabbergasted when the President himself went out there for no rhyme or reason, to attack me personally in order to discredit the IFP. I could not understand why he would do a thing like that. Finally, I understood why he did it. He did it to move the attention of the South African people away from the real issues, which are those of HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption. After having attacked me on ideological grounds, the President himself resorted to the most outrageous lies of the discredited era in which the campaign of propaganda and vilification was waged against me. The people of this area know me very well, and they know that it is nonsense to call me a right-winger. My only concerns is that of protecting the interests of the poorest of the poor, and I am not concerned about ideological connotations.

The President wants to speak ideology in terms of European characterizations of right-wing, left-wing. I want to speak of bread and butter issues, because ideology does not buy bread, pay for our children's education or put petrol in out cars. I am concerned about food, jobs, housing, education and welfare, not ideology. When I replied to the President that I had no intention to engage him on ideological grounds, the President of the ANC ran even further away from the real issues of this electoral campaign, and what the South African people want to hear. He went back to the book of lies and from the book of lies he launched a personal attack on me.

Obviously, he was not in the country when it was all happening here, and we were suffering here because of the armed struggle wedged against us by the ANC. However, the people of this region were in this country. The people in this region know what the President of the ANC does not know, or what he knows he has chosen to ignore. The President of the ANC attacked me because of the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which, he has obviously made his own and has ratified. He attacked me as the person who presided over the Inkatha Movement, which was identified by the ANC as the major perpetrator of human rights abuse. The ANC held me politically accountable for such human rights abuses.

I will not be dragged into responding to such lies, which belong to an age which we should have long forgotten and buried. The people of this region know that they are lies and that we were the victims of the ANC violence. The people of this region knows that the ANC was the main perpetrator of violence. Perhaps the President does not know because he was not here suffering with us, as we went through the terrible period of our history. The people of this region know that my conscience is clear, and at no point in my life have I ever spoken the language of violence or have I ever authorised, ordered, condoned or ratified any human rights violations. I have only spoken the language of non-violence and reconciliation, even when we were under the total onslaught of ANC violence fueled by the massive financial assistance they had from the West, and massive military assistance they had from the Eastern block. We took the TRC to Court, and we forced them to change their findings and publish a statement in which it is clearly said that the TRC did not have the methodology to investigate the dynamics, origin and scope of the black-on-black conflict. In plain language, this means that the TRC was clueless to deal with the black-on-black conflict, and that its findings are nothing but a collection of the propaganda and vilification, in which the ANC itself launched against me at the time.

However, the President of the ANC, His Excellency Thabo Mbeki has chosen to make those statements his own, as he repeated them in the press and in other venues. We will not follow him on that path. We remain focused on the real issues of South Africa because that is what South Africa wants. I only wonder how he can be such a hypocrite because if I was the man the TRC portrayed me to be then how could he have kept me for five years in his own Cabinet. We walked together the path of reconciliation, to ensure that our people would never be divided again by violence and intimidation, but when push came to shove he undermined what we have done in the past five years, because he could not address me in respect of the issues which are concerning the South African people which are HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption.

He rather chose to resort to unpick in this credited campaign and discredit propaganda and vilification, to try to discredit me rather than addressing the issues. It is very sad and almost pathetic. We worked together for five years and we pursued a path of reconciliation together. This is not the time to abandon the path of reconciliation. We must address the issues that the South African people are raising. We must address the issues that the people of this region are so concerned about. Unfortunately, the ANC is blinded by its desire of seizing control over KwaZulu Natal. There is no doubt that a one-party state is rapidly consolidating. The ANC will not rest until it has consolidated in its hands the totality of power in South Africa.

The totalitarian Government is one which has the power of controlling any aspect of Government and civil society. We are now on the edge of a totalitarian government and only the IFP stands on its path. This is the very reason why the President is attacking me in the way he is doing, and he is ignoring the issues which concern the South African people. We will not allow that. We must ensure that in the next nine days, we continue to mobilise as much as we can, to make sure to allow the voice of the South African people to be heard on April 14. The next elections cannot be about the past. They must be about the future. The next elections cannot be won with the lies of the past, but must be the expressions of the hopes of the future. The ANC has tried to run this election the same way it did in 1994 and 1999. They resorted to the euphoria of liberation and tried to make it coincide as close it could with the celebration of the 10th anniversary of our liberation.

We are ready and eager to celebrate the 10th anniversary of our liberation on April 27, but April 14 comes before April 27, which highlights in an emblematic manner that we must first look towards the future, before we can celebrate the past. April 14 cannot be run on the euphoria of liberation, and because of the celebration of April 27. April 14 must be run thinking about the future. Our future requires solving the problems of HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption, which the ANC has proven to be unable and unwilling to do. They lack the political will to deal with these problems. I have formed the Coalition for Change with the DA because together we can solve these problems. We can begin solving these problems in our Province of KwaZulu Natal and, depending on the strength we have, we will provide our contribution to these problems being solved at the national level. The stronger the IFP, the more effective the solution to these problems will be after April 14.

The ANC is running this election also on the basis of empty promises as it has done in the past. This time around, the South African people do not wish to rely on empty promises. I have never promised that which I cannot deliver. I have always told the people of this region that the road ahead remains long, hard and uphill. However, I am willing to walk that road, and lead the South African people on it as it is the only road which leads to success. The next elections must show the commitment of the South African people to choose a type of leadership which can lead them in walking that difficult road. Only in this way will we be able to provide our children and grandchildren with a future which is free from HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption.

That will not be done with promises but only with action, action and action. I am a man of action. The IFP is the Party of action. We have forged a coalition with the DA because we are not concerned about ideology, but we believe in joining forces together to bring about action, action and action. The Government of KwaZulu Natal was not producing for as long as the ANC was undermining our IFP Premier. However, when we brought the DA on board, we had much greater strength to bring about effective policies and good governance. We need to do more after April 14. The KwaZulu Natal Government must be stronger, so that we can eliminate the constant undermining by the ANC. We need to empower the Premier of KwaZulu Natal under the direction of the IFP leadership, to deliver more to the people of this area and the people of our Province. We are about actions, not promises, and we have joined hands with the DA because they have shown their commitment to bring actions to the fore, and tangible deliveries to the people of this area.

Together we can bring about a better future because we all deserve better than what the ANC has to offer. For this reason, it is essential that between now and April 14 everyone becomes an agent of transformation and progress. Everyone can make a difference in the next nine days. We need to organise transport for everyone to go voting on April 14. We need to ensure that everyone votes for the IFP. We cannot lose one single vote. Everyone in this area must ensure not only that he or she votes, but that everyone else goes voting. We need to motivate people to go voting and to motivate them to motivate others to go voting. If there are people who have problems going to vote on April 14, they must be helped in any way possible.