INKATHA FREEDOM PARTY RALLY - VULINDLA

ADDRESS BY
MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI, MP 
PRESIDENT OF THE INKATHA FREEDOM PARTY

QOKOLOLO STADIUM : PIETERMARITZBURG : MARCH 7, 2004

In forty days, the South African people will be called to speak up at one of the most important events in our country's history. 

I am sure that the elections of April 14, 2004 are going to be remembered as having been more important than the ones we held in 1994 or in 1999. In fact, the 1994 elections were about our liberation and were not intended to give specific directions to the country for the following five years. They ran on the euphoria of liberation which lasted throughout the subsequent ten years. The elections held in 1999 too, were not about any real issues and did not express a clear message from the South African people to their leaders. 

However, at these elections, the South African people are being called upon to give a message to their leaders which can define their mandate for the next five years.

I have travelled the length and breadth of South Africa and spoken to thousands of our people. Throughout the country I have heard questions which, thus far, have remained unanswered. The next elections are about empowering the South African people to answer the questions they are asking. South Africans have seen how much has been done in the past ten years which has, indeed, been a period of great miracles. We have passed hundreds of pieces of legislation which have reformed most of the fields of government and our society in a very profound and significant manner. We have extended government services to people who, until then, did not have the opportunity of receiving water, electricity, sanitation, housing and social grants.

Indeed, the past ten years have been a season of many miracles performed not only by government, but by the South African people themselves. Our country has in many respects boomed and we have witnessed industrial, residential and commercial developments of proportions and features never before seen in our country, which are a result of the political emancipation of our people rather than a product of government action.

However, the South African people are now asking themselves why in a situation of growth and development such as the one we have had in the past five years, major problems have developed which seem to have been denied, unattended to and ignored. The South African people are asking why our country and our families are engulfed in five major crises relating to HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, corruption and poverty. These are the questions which the South African people must debate for the next forty days now separating us from election day. Our people must be able to answer these questions with their votes on election day. 

All South Africans know that the crises of HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, corruption and poverty are of enormous proportions and can undermine our society to its very foundations. They all know that each of these crises can offset most of the gains of our liberation, and that in their composite and compounded effect, they can get our country on its knees.

Directly or indirectly, all of our families and communities have experienced the bite of HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption. The South African people must now decide whether these problems are here to stay, as part and parcel of the future of our country, as if they were a chronic disease which we cannot fight off, or whether there is hope for a change for the better. If the South African people want to have the opportunity of a change for the better, it is for them to make their voice heard on April 14 and vote for the forces of change, and vote for the IFP. The stronger the IFP is after April 14, the more intense will be the positive change in solving these problems. However, if South Africans feel that these problems are to remain a part of our society forever, then they can effectively leave things the way they are, and may choose five more years of the same, rather than having the courage to call for five years of something better.

The next elections ought to be a referendum between resignation and hope. Those who want to leave things the way they are, have resigned to make South Africa remain a mediocrity amongst the countries of the world, and will thus be convicted to a future characterised by HIV/AIDS, poverty, unemployment, crime and corruption. Those who, like me, believe that South Africa must be a success story, must have the courage to hope for something better and take a leap forward, demanding and producing a change for the better. Those who want South Africa to be better, must change things around at the next elections, because it might be the last opportunity we have to do so.

Those who have questions to be answered need to discuss them now, and make their answers heard on election day. There are people throughout South Africa who see the ever- increasing levels of corruption, not only within Government but within our society and our communities. The South African people see those who should be the servants of the people and should be in power to help others, doing whatever they can to enrich themselves and feathering their own nests. South African people see their leaders becoming corrupt. The past five years has been characterised by a variety of allegations of corruption, which have fuelled the front pages of newspapers day in and day out. There is a feeling of impunity, which almost suggests that corruption is acceptable.

South Africans are asking themselves whether this is what South Africa is meant to become and whether corruption is here to stay and ever increase. Those who wish to have a negative answer and want corruption to stop, must say so at the next elections. The question is before the South African people, the answer must be given on April 14. If corruption is to stay, let things remain the way they have been, and let us allow for five more years of the same to continue. However, if corruption is to stop on April 14, the South African people must produce a resounding victory for the IFP.

Corruption is taking place not only at the top levels of our society, but as a cancer which is spreading throughout our communities eating them up from the inside out. There is the corruption when community leaders and taxi drivers oppress ordinary people. There is the corruption of rotten and abusive foremen and workplace managers who take advantage of the defenceless workers. There is the corruption of all those who take advantage of ordinary consumers to give them an uneven deal or rip them off. We have become a society where everyone is taking advantage of others, in a situation in which the rule of law and the fairness of dealings are progressively disintegrating. This may remain a constant feature of our society unless, on April 14, South African people stand up and turn the tide around. 

Many questions are being asked to which only the South African people can provide an answer on April 14. There is no doubt that our democracy is ailing and that there are powerful centralistic, totalitarian and autocratic forces at play. No democracy can be healthy or survive, when a single political party has the power to change the Constitution not only at will, but even at whim. 

The ANC has shown over and again its willingness to change the Constitution, to suit its political agenda. On the occasion of the crossing of the floor legislation, the ANC had no qualms about tampering with the Constitution, in a manner which was contrary to the most fundamental prescripts of democracy and constitutionalism. It is repugnant to the notion of democracy that a constitutional amendment allows those elected under one type of electoral system, to change the terms and conditions of their mandate, to all of a sudden become entitled to cross the floor and take with them, not only their seat, but also the votes with which they were elected. It is different when the law is changed to apply for the future so that the electorate knows beforehand that their political representatives are allowed to betray them and walk from one Party to the other, which enables the electorate to choose beforehand people who they can trust. 

It is obvious that the Constitution was tampered with to enable people to cross the floor for one reason, and one reason only, which was that of gaining political control of KwaZulu Natal, not through elections, but through cheque-book politics applied to those who have become known as the "crosstitutes", who are the political prostitutes who cross the floor. The autonomy of KwaZulu Natal, as a Government beheld only to its people and not part of the system of ANC power, is the only stumbling block now standing between true democracy and the rapid consolidation of a one-party state. To a great extent, the next elections are going to be about whether our democracy should move forward and make our country one of the greatest democracies of the world or whether we are destined to a fate of democratic mediocrity, possibly following the path of other half-democratic successes and half-democratic failures which we can witness throughout the African continent and in other parts of the world. I do not think that our country should be a half success and a half failure.

For this reason, it is so important that, correctly, these elections are not as focussed on the much which has been done in the past ten years, but on all that which the Government has failed to do. There is consensus among all political parties that the issues on which the South African people must pronounce themselves at the next elections are, indeed, those of HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption. All political parties are campaigning on these issues, which are the very issues in respect of which the Government has not delivered to the extent that people expected it to do so. The next elections are correctly not about the portion of the glass which is half-full, but that which has remained half-empty and the reason why it has been so when, indeed, the glass should have, and could have, been filled. I believe that South Africa can become something more than a mediocrity and may rise to the status of one of the great countries in its continent and in the world. However, in order to achieve that result we need a leadership capable of pulling and motivating the country to walk the uphill and hard road towards prosperity.

When I embarked on the struggle for liberation almost sixty years ago, I had one dream which I have pursued relentlessly all this time. For fifty years, I served in the government the people of KwaZulu Natal and those of South Africa day in, and day out. I have known nothing but work, work and work. I have paid enormous personal sacrifices in dedicating my entire life to the struggle and in the service of the people whom I represent. Whoever knows me, knows well that in my life there has been nothing but dedication to the struggle and to my work. I have done all of this in pursuance of the dream that one day the whole of South Africa could be as socially prosperous and economically stable as the affluent segment of our white population was before 1994.

I have not struggled this long to believe that South Africa should reach a position of mediocrity and stop there, allowing our people to exist in mediocrity living side by side with the problems of HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, corruption and poverty. I have not struggled thus far to allow our democracy to become a second-grade one which only functions partially. Let us be clear and blunt. It is very difficult for any government, anywhere in the world to produce substantial improvements in the social and economic conditions of any given nation within a short time. There are limits to the good which any government can do. However, over a short time, a government which does not respect the rule of democracy and stifles democratic growth can produce enormous setbacks in the social and economic growth of any given country, as we see plenty of examples beyond our borders. There are effectively no limits to the evil which a bad government can bring about.

Therefore, I shall not settle for an imperfect democracy and I strongly feel that in these elections the people must ask themselves why South Africa should have anything less than a properly functioning democracy. It is in the spirit of this dream of mine, that I have promoted the Coalition for Change with the Democratic Alliance. I want to give to our democracy the dream and opportunity of a democratic alternative in which the electorate will have the real power to choose between at least two political parties which have the capacity of becoming a viable government in the future. Unless the electorate has the power to choose between two alternatives, elections will be about an empty ritual which cannot give any direction to the future government.

The coming together of the Inkatha Freedom Party and the Democratic Alliance has not been by chance. It has not been in a reactive mode, but a proactive one. For many years we have shared many policies. For many years we have identified the same solutions to South Africa's problems. Together we have the solutions required to redress the problem of unemployment and generate the jobs which are necessary to put South Africa to work and push back the frontiers of poverty and under-development. Together we can solve the problem of crime. Together we can promote a new national social contract for development, development and development. South Africa needs a long-term vision of development. Together we can promote in South Africa the construction of an industrial basis which may enable our country to succeed in the age of globalization. Together we do not accept that South Africa may be a mediocrity, but are committed to making of it a great success story in the world.

Let us make no mistakes. The world does not owe us a living. To succeed In the age of globalization, any country needs to identify what type of products or services it brings in the global market. Today South Africa has neither identified nor begun to develop an industrial basis which may enable it to survive and prosper in the future. We do not know what products South Africa will be producing for the global market in twenty years. This is a major shortcoming of our government policies. We are living day by day, without making any plans for the future. While the plans for the future do not exist, the present is disintegrating before our eyes as the situation of unemployment suggests. According to certain figures unemployment has risen from twenty-nine percent in 1994 to almost forty percent now. Unemployment can be solved with adequate policies if there is the political will to take the necessary actions to place our economy in an accelerated rate of growth.

In order for our economy to grow, we need to embrace the full measure of the proposals which the IFP has been making for ten years, ranging from privatisation to increasing the flexibility of the labour market and unleashing the hidden potential of our economy by liberalising market forces, both on the domestic and international basis. The road of economic development that we are proposing is not easy and, undoubtedly, requires short-term sacrifices in order to achieve long-term gains. However, I am convinced that the people of South Africa are willing to accept short-term sacrifices if they know that a plan exists for the present situation to be redressed and improved upon. We know that a half full glass is bound to become more and more empty by the day. We need to have a plan to fill the glass up with all the best that our country is capable of.

The IFP wants to bring about change because we have the strength to dream of a better future and a better South Africa. We want the next elections to be the time in which the courage to hope triumphs once again. In 1994 we held the hope of a new beginning and a better future. Now, this hope has somehow dimmed away, because some leaders felt that we have arrived at our destination only because they, themselves, have reached a positions of power and comfort. The country has not arrived. The suffering masses have not arrived. South Africa has just begun its long, arduous and uphill journey towards prosperity and stability. We need to continue the struggle for liberation which is now fought on the grounds of development, development and development. We cannot allow our revolution to be betrayed and we need to replace it now with the revolution of goodwill which places our economy in an overdrive of activities. We need to increase productivity by enabling greater competition within the market place.

It is time to stop just a few people making huge profits through cartels, monopolies and positions which abuse consumers. There is no reason why, in our country, all our people should pay some of the highest rates anywhere in the world for our telephones and telecommunications, just because we wish to maintain monopolies. There is no reason why in our country we all need to pay outrageous bank fees, which are not charged to citizens of many other countries, just because we do not allow our banking system to be opened up to international competition which would enable all of us to have more money available for productive purposes, rather than continuing to finance an obsolete and inefficient banking system. We do not need to pay high petrol prices at the pumps to continue to finance an obsolete, inefficient and bankrupt road accident fund. These examples could be multiplied by the hundreds to point out how, in the end, it is always the consumer and the least protected person who pays for everyone. We are a society in which the poor always pays more than the rich. We are a society in which the levels of poverty are constantly growing. All this needs to be changed. Too many people are becoming too rich too fast, whilst too many are increasingly becoming more and more poor. We must realise that unless the plight of the poor is solved there is no long-term survival and prosperity for the rich in South Africa.

For this reason, we need to create a new economic vision which the IFP and the DA have jointly formulated, which enables the plight of the poor to be addressed in an environment in which an ever-growing number of people may prosper. We need to have a new social contract between the rich and the poor to bridge existing social gaps and make South Africa a richer, wealthier and more prosperous country for all. This is my dream. This is the dream of the IFP. This is the dream for which I have created the Coalition for Change to enable South Africa to have a long-term vision which can make a success of our country and save it from a destiny of mediocrity. I am not a man who can stand mediocrity. All my life I have sought and pursued excellence. I want my country to be excellent. For this reason, I have brought together the people of excellence to lead a coalition of excellence which strives towards excellency to make South Africa excellent. This is the last opportunity we have to point South Africa on the uphill and arduous path towards excellence, which is the only one which will enable all of us, and our children, and our children's children to have a future worth living and a hope which can make them stand tall as citizens of the world and on the same level as anyone else on this planet.

In order to do so, we must for once and for all solve the problems which are holding us back and which can put our country on its knees forever. Unless the problems of crime and HIV/AIDS are solved once and for all, our country will be on its knees and in a position from which it will never fully recover. There is no reason for crime to have developed as widely as it has. People must ask themselves why this has been allowed. The answer must come from the ballot box. For years Government has ignored the very existence of the problem of crime and then tried to deny its magnitude and implications, in spite of my echoing warnings. I do not need to describe the problem of crime to the South African people, because I have heard from the many thousand South Africans I have met that no one today can say that he or she has not been a victim of crime in the past ten years, or does not live in fear of becoming one.

Time and again, I have heard the South African people asking why they should live in fear of crime. The answer must come through the election box and must be one which states that we must no longer have to live in fear of crime. There are standard solutions to the problem of crime, which include providing more policemen who are better trained, better paid and supplied with better equipment. We need a stronger, more competent and more effective judiciary. We need to have extensive programmes of civic education to eradicate crime from the hearts and minds of our people and enable our communities to isolate criminal conduct without condoning it. All this and much more can be done, and ought to be done by a country like ours, which does not wish to see crime becoming an endemic and chronic problem within its society. However, none of this has been done in the measure required by the circumstances, because what has been lacking has been the political will to turn South Africa into a real success story and out of its condition of mediocrity. We want to bring excellence into the fight against crime, to make South Africa excellent.

The same is to be said about HIV/AIDS. All South Africans are asking themselves why the HIV/AIDS pandemic has been allowed to develop into the situation of national disaster in which we now find ourselves. Today, everyone is either infected or directly affected by HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS has become a problem for each and every South African and has the potential of placing both our economy and social structure into a situation of total disintegration. It should never have reached this point. In spite of all this, and in spite of many promises, we still do not see anti-retroviral drugs being distributed throughout the country to everyone who needs them, in spite of our Government having the capacity to do so. Again, what is lacking is the political will to do what is necessary. The South African people are asking themselves how it is possible that a Government would, with such neglect, not attend to matters of life and death of its citizens. It is with unmitigated neglect that crime has been allowed to flourish the way it has.

It has been with almost criminal neglect that the HIV/AIDS crisis has remained unattended to in our country. A government which stands by in complacent neglect while the lives of its people are threatened by crime and HIV/AIDS is a government which has failed its most basis obligations. History will continue to ask questions about how it has been possible for a Government like ours to allow the HIV/AIDS crisis to developed they way it has. However, the most immediate answer must now emerge from the South African people, as they speak up at the next election. The electoral box is the place where the answer must be found to provide direction to the new Government. There is but one answer, if people wish not to have five more years of the same. That answer is about empowering the IFP and its partners to provide South Africa with a new leadership. I have spent fifty years struggling for our liberation and, yet, I feel that the most important contribution I can make to the country I love, will be in the future. I have done my part. I am ready to continue doing my part. It is now for the South African people to do their part on April 14, and make their voice heard.

In looking at this year's elections I wish to express the following concerns. On the 11th of January the ANC leadership launched their Election manifesto here in Pitermarizburg. We as IFP did nothing to hinder or interfere their launch. But on the eve of the launch of our own Manifesto at Lindelani in Durban on the 17th of January to be exact, the car of Mr Thomas Shabalala an IFP member of Parliament which was announcing that our launch was taking place in Lindelani the following day was shot at and the screen was smashed. The suspect that is out on bail is an ANC Councillor in Clermont. Then on the day of the launch members who were boarding a bus at Kwadabeka were attacked allegedly by members of the ANC. On the day of the launch ANC meetings were arranged near the venue of our launch on the 18th of January ostensibly as an effort to sabotage our launch. I was very upset to see the billboard of the KwaZulu Natal Minister of Transport Mr Sbu Ndebele in Ulundi defaced with some black paint or tar. I think any reasonable person would conclude that the assumption could be made that this must have been done by a member of the opposition parties and probably an IFP member. Because of the possibility of such a conclusion being drawn I have been very upset to see the defacing of this billboard because in the first place it is the official billboard of the Minister of Transport. Also because Mr Ndebele is the leader of the ANC in this Province. I have inquired whether as a gesture of place there is any substance that can be used to remove the stuff that was splashed on the billboard.

Then again the IFP had a function at Wembezi when some people presumed to be ANC members shot at people, some of whom were injured to the extent that they were taken to the hospital for treatment.

Then there have been reports that here in Pietermarizburg hundreds of our election posters have been removed. I have received similar reports in Cape Town and a few other places.

All these things and others too numerous to mention here have really caused me many sleepless nights because both President Mbeki the President of the ANC and I as the President of the IFP have made statements appealing to our followers to ensure that the elections on the 14th of April be free and fare, free from intimidation and violence.

Leaders of the various political parties in the Province have signed a Code of Conduct committing themselves to a free and fare election. All political leaders participating in the forth coming elections have also signed a Code of Conduct on the 1st of March in Pretoria before the Commissioners of the IEC. The ceremony was presided over by the Rt Rev. Jo Seoka, Anglican Bishop of Pretoria.

On the 6th of March, which was yesterday, the IFP had organised a Rally at Muden in Msinga district. The Rev. Celani Mtetwa reported to me that prior to the commencement of the meeting ANC members came carrying hundreds of posters of the ANC. He had to ask the police to ask them to leave before IFP members in great numbers arrived for fear of a possible incident.

I really do not know what can be done to ensure that these kinds of things stop at once, regardless of which ever party they come from for they can ignite a conflagration that can mar our elections if they are not stopped at once. It has never been the policy of the IFP to interfere with meetings of the ANC. Even the incident in Magwaveni which was so publicised by the SABC TV as an IFP's effort to obstruct ANC members who wanted to hold a meeting, I was told arose because of the organisers not getting permission to hold the meeting. At Gamalakhe in September 2003, I attended a cultural event in my official capacity as the Chairman of the House of Traditional Leaders and Minister of Home Affairs. Before the meeting took place ANC Councillors refused that the function be held at the Stadium on the pretext that it was still in the process of renovation. When officials of the Department of Education and Culture decided to hold the function at a soccer stadium, ANC members flooded the stadium in T-shirts on the pretext that they were campaigning for voter registration. There was almost a clash between them and members who came to attend the cultural event of school children.

I want to repeat that no member of the IFP should be involved in any acts of sabotage or violence against members of any other members of any other party. I recommit myself to do all that is possible to ensure that elections be peaceful and that they are free, fare and free from intimidation and violence. I do so quite aware that as in the past low-intensity civil war that took place before 1994, and after, it takes 2 to tango. I know that I personally have no control over individual members of my party that are provoked by other people to engage in conflict. I abhor violence and that is why I rejected the so-called armed struggle which some of our liberation movement engaged in against the apartheid regime. I was vilified and my very life was threatened merely because I would not embrace the so-called armed struggle. I rejected violence then and I reject violence now from which ever quarter it comes from. But I recognise that it is a principle in our jurisprudence that one has an inalienable right to defend himself or herself and one's loved ones from any attacks.

Because of the acts of frauds that we encountered in the 1994, 1999 elections and the 2000 local government elections I appeal to our members to be vigilant this time. Let us ensure that we have Party agents at every polling station and that where the DA has no Party agents that our Party agents be also their Party agents and visa-versa. Where there are special votes either for people who are ill or aged, let us make sure that our agents be present each and every time that happens.

Let us all of us who registered that on the 14th of April we go to polling stations with our bar-coded ID's to vote. Let us make sure that we begin now arranging for our members who are unable to go to polling stations that we line-up transport now. It will not help us to the IFP supporters or members if on the 14th of April we cannot reach the polling station in order to vote.

I, and the IFP and its partners, stand ready to take charge of the problems. We stand ready to lead the next stage of our struggle for liberation which shall be aimed at making South Africa a place of excellence, and a country which succeeds. However, it is now for all of you to become engines of a revolution of goodwill. We have forty days to get the message out. Because of lack of funding the IFP cannot rely on posters and advertisements in the same measure as our opponents do. Each of you must become the walking billboard of the IFP.

We must rely on word of mouth. We must ensure that between now and election day, the South African people eat politics, sleep politics, walk politics and talk politics whenever it is possible.

We have forty days to tune into the real problems of South Africa, ask questions and be prepared to give the answers South Africa expects of us on April 14. April 14 must be the day of the answer. If April 14 is not the day with the answer, we shall convict South Africa to five more years of problems and unanswered questions, whilst the country will continue to go down on the downhill leisurely path towards mediocrity. Let us give the answer.

The IFP is the answer to drive South Africa on the uphill path towards excellence, prosperity and stability. I am ready to walk that path, ahead of all South Africans. I am ready to lead the revolution of goodwill to make South Africa succeed.

The question I put to the South African people is whether they are ready to make South Africa all it can be? Are the South African people ready for a new beginning?

Are the South African people ready to have the courage to hope? Are the South African people ready for a change? Do our people believe that South Africa deserves better?

If the answer is YES, then the answer is the IFP.

If you are ready, I am ready. If together we are ready, the dream shall succeed.

Our dream shall overcome, and together we shall give South Africa the hope of a new beginning. With the help of God, we shall be inspired to give South Africa the hope of a new beginning.

May God bless you and preserve you.