South Africa stands on the threshold of a new beginning, facing a time of great importance. Each of us, as South Africans, are in the same position. In about a month from today each of us will be called upon making a decision at the ballot box, which will be fundamental to shape the future of South Africa. The next elections are going to be more important for each of us than any one we held before, since the time of our liberation ten years ago. For the first time in our history, the elections will have the responsibility of giving guidance to the next government on how to solve the many problems now confronting South Africa. As people go to the next election, they will be confronted with an alternative. South Africans may either continue to vote the way they did in the past, or can seize this opportunity to actually think about what is in their best interest.

I urge all South Africans to use the next thirty days which now separate us from election to think, think and think. Voting once every five years should not be an action of habit. Many people are inclined to vote the same way they did five years ago, just because they are not willing to spend the time to think about what they really want and what they really need. The opportunity of voting comes once every five years and should not be lost. I urge South Africans to consider clearly the consequences of their vote. They must consider what it will be like if in our communities, families and workplaces, things do not change for the better in the next five years. If people do not think and do not reflect on how to change our country for the better, South Africa will be convicted to five more years of the same.

If people think about it carefully, five more years of the same could spell out a major setback in South Africa's ambition to become a country of extraordinary potential and great promises for all its citizens. There are serious problems in our country which have not been attended to in the past five years and, in all likelihood, will not be attended to in the next five years unless, out of this election, a powerful message emerges that things must change and must change for the better. The next elections are about change versus continuity.

Those who are satisfied with the present status of affairs in respect of HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption may choose continuity. I do not challenge their right to be satisfied with the way they things are. I am not, and neither are the thousands of South African who have been speaking to me in the past five years. If people are satisfied with the way they are, they should not be here. I do not expect that everyone is to support me and those who are happy with the way things are may support someone else. If people are satisfied with how things have been conducted in the past five years, they should not come to the IFP for help and assistance. However, if people feel as I do that South Africa deserves better and that we should deal differently with problems such as HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, poverty and corruption, then they must seek the assistance of the IFP and its partners to bring about a change for the better in the next five years.

The next elections are about a single issue which the South African people must answer. Each of us has the responsibility of providing that answer. The issue is whether the next election will be a turning point or whether things should continue to move in the direction as they have in the past five years. Some people feel that things could go well if they continue to move in the same direction. They are those who in the past five years have not been affected by the rising problems HIV/AIDS has created in all our communities. There people who want to maintain things the way they are, as they are those who have never been victims of crime and believe that they are so protected that they will never become one. There are people who are satisfied on how our society functions because they have no concern about the rising levels of poverty in rural areas. There are also many who are satisfied with the present levels of corruption, which is benefitting them. All these people have reason to let things continue in the way they have for the past ten years. I know that they will not be with us and they will not vote IFP.

However, we ordinary people feel differently. We are all infected or affected by HIV/AIDS. We all know many who are suffering of HIV/AIDS and have not received the necessary assistance from the government, to the point that they have been prevented from receiving anti-retroviral drugs which could improve on the quality of their lives and its expected length. We ordinary people have all been victims of crime or are in fear of becoming one. I myself have been a victim of many crimes and things have been stolen even from my home. I live among ordinary people. I have lived in South Africa all my life and never left this country to go abroad for extended periods of times. I have lived amongst the poorest of the poor all my life. For me, unemployment is a very real phenomenon. It affects me because it affects those I love and those I know. I can see families suffering because they have no income. I can see people being humiliated because they have not reached the dignity which comes with employment. I have seen unemployment rising throughout the country. I have seen poverty increasing in rural areas because of the breakdown in subsistence agriculture and the lack of food security. These are things which are very concerning for me. It is for this reason that I have decided to lead the Coalition for Change because I believe that South Africa deserves better and must now change. I feel that it is my responsibility to ensure that I do what I can to produce this change.

For fifteen years the IFP has had policies and strategies which can make South Africa better. However, our policies and strategies have not been adopted in the full measure of what is required. Time and again the ANC has accepted that many of our suggestions were valid and beneficial but adopted them only partially, almost as if they wanted to mitigate that which in ANC policy could not work with the little portion of what which in IFP proposals could work for South Africa. South Africa no longer needs a little of this and a little of that. We need to have drastic solutions to our problems, which are based on a comprehensive vision which adopts the full measure of what is good and necessary.

Time and again the IFP and I have placed before South Africa a comprehensive vision which can accelerate economic growth and ensure that more jobs are created in a context in which our economy grows, producing wealth for everyone. Only by accelerating economic growth will our country be able to produce all the jobs its needs along with the wealth necessary to redress our many social and economic imbalances. Our plan calls for measures which are no necessarily popular, but I know that the South African people are willing to make short-term sacrifices if we can all see a long-term benefit ahead of us. The road ahead remains arduous and uphill but I know that the South African people are willing to walk it, if they know that at its end there is a sufficient reward for everyone. For this reason, we have constantly proposed that our rate of economic growth should be accelerated by means of extensive privatisation of the entire parastatal and by liberalising all our market forces which are still constrained by extensive cartels, monopoly and protectionist measures.

We all pay too much for our telecommunications, including telephones, which are some of the most expensive in the world. This is because our country continues to maintain monopolies in this field. We all pay too much in bank charges because of a lack of international competition with banks which could provide much better services at lower costs. We all pay too much for the petrol we use in our cars, which is far too expensive because of an obsolete system of road accident insurance which ought to have been privatised a long ago by means obligatory private insurance. The examples could be varied and endless, but what remains constant is that the poor people pay more than they should for what they receive, while the rich become richer in an economy which does not grow. Too many people are becoming too rich because our economy is not growing fast enough and creates internal areas of lack of efficiency and competition, which benefit a few while damaging the rest of us.

Over and again the IFP has voiced the need of promoting the maximum degree of flexibility in all markets, including the maximum fluidity of our labour market. Our labour market is too rigid and has resulted in lack of employment and many workers being fired in a preemptive manner. Greater flexibility in the labour market would create employment amongst all those who are now unwilling to hire additional people because they fear that our labour legislation is far too rigid.

For many years the IFP has pointed out the need of developing a proper industrial basis for our country. The world does not owe us a living and in the age of globalization we need to identify now how our country is going to earn its money by virtue of the products it will be bringing into the global market in twenty years. The ANC does not have a long-term vision which identifies how South Africa can grow into a prosperous country. These are major shortcomings in redressing fundamental issues such as unemployment. In the IFP we always dealt with these issues in a serious manner because we care. I care about the people of South Africa. I have met South African people from all walks of life. I have been in all communities in this province and in almost all communities across South Africa, in what has been a long-term commitment for the South African people. I have been in politics for sixty years and for about half a century I have carried the heavy responsibility of governing people. For me government has always been service of the people.

I care about the South African people. I have no other care in my life other than the South African people. It is because I care and because the IFP cares that we cannot accept to be ideologists. We are pragmatists. We do what is right for the people, not what we like. We do what pleases the South African people, not what pleases ourselves. As Minister of Home Affairs, I have formulated and taken through Parliament one of the most liberal systems of migration control in the world, which enables anyone who can make a contribution to South Africa to come here and receive a work permit. However, I cannot endorse the notion of allowing any type of foreigners from basically all over the world, to come to South Africa without visas for example.

I cannot promote any proposal that would enable people from almost the whole of Africa, the whole of China, the whole of Russia and the whole of India, to come to South Africa without any screening mechanism testing whether such foreigners are in any way needed, or whether their intention is really that of coming here only as a tourist, and for a short period of time. If we allow people from so many countries to come to South Africa without visas, amongst them there are bound to be a number of people who intend to move to South Africa, seeking opportunities for themselves without giving anything back to our country. In our situation of high unemployment it was difficult for me to agree to such a proposal because I care about the people of South Africa.

It is not right for any foreigner to take away indiscriminately jobs which can be taken up by our own people. After the Constitutional Court judgement of two weeks ago, it became clear that foreigners who are in the country are entitled to social grants. This means that the little resources that we have available to take care of the suffering people of our own country will need to be shared with those who come here in a context in which there are no screening mechanisms of safeguards in place. This would be to leave the backdoor to illegal immigration wide open. I cannot agree to this kind of policy because I care about the jobs of our people. I care about the conditions of living of the South African people. I care about the quality of life in our communities. I cannot allow our country to be overflown, overrun and flooded with people who do not make a contribution.

Throughout my life I have always conceived politics as an exercise in serving people and ensuring that through my work other people can have a better life. I have never considered politics a tool to make my life better and, indeed, in the past fifty years in which I have been a servant to the people, my life has been nothing short of a nightmare. I have known nothing but work, work and work. I feel that any leader who is worth that name should act in the same manner. However, it seems that some people feel that the work to which they were called upon by our liberation struggle is now finished and complete. They feel that they no longer need to serve the people and no longer need to push forward our liberation struggle to liberate all South Africans enslaved by poverty and unemployment. They feel that the struggle is over just because they themselves have arrived to a position of comfort and power. It is time that the South African people rescue our betrayed revolution and understand that the challenge ahead is even greater than the one we were confronting when we were fighting against apartheid.

We must now overcome the problems of unemployment, poverty and insufficient economic growth and to do so we must pull our strength together to work harder, more productively and better under a new and better government which is dedicated to making our country work and succeed. Unfortunately, there are people that feel South Africa is bound and destined to remain a mediocrity amongst the countries of the world. I beg to differ. I think South Africa has the potential of becoming a country of excellence and should indeed become such. There are people who feel that South Africa is bound and destined for ever to remain afflicted by the problems of what they see as the unsolvable HIV/AIDS pandemic, the chronic wave of crime, the endemic corruption, the constant unemployment and our ancestral and persistent poverty. I do not believe in such pessimism. I optimistically think that our country has the potential, capacity and resources to solve all these problems and must do so. What has thus far lacked has been the will power and the political will to do so. These problems have reached the level they have because of the neglect with which they have been dealt with in the past five years by our ANC-led government. It is now the role and responsibility of the South African voters to change this fundamental problem of lack of political will which at is the root cause of all our problems.

It is essential that at the next elections a message emerges loud and clear, that the South African people wish to empower a new political class which believes in South Africa and wants to make it a country of excellence by solving the chronic problems of HIV/AIDS, crime, unemployment, corruption and poverty. I do not believe that these problems we have inherited from the past ought to remain as our legacy for a future we bequeath onto our children and their children's children. We must free our children from the legacy of HIV/AIDS, crime, corruption, poverty and unemployment. If we are serous about doing so we cannot rely on the efforts of those who have thus far let the South African people down. It is time for a new beginning.

We need to have a change for the better. We need to turn the page. For this reason, the IFP has created a democratic alternative to enable the South African people to have, for the first time, a real right to choose between at least two political parties which are sufficiently viable to become the government of the future. Our democracy is in great jeopardy. There cannot be democratic evolution when a political party has exclusive control over the reins of government and power. Time and again, we have seen how the ANC exercises overwhelming power to adopt policies which are not in the interest of the South African people and the South African people would not wish to have adopted. They do so because that is what the ANC wants, not because of what the South African people want and the ANC has reached a position of power that enables it just not to care about what the South African people really want.

South African people did not want to have the type of disastrous HIV/AIDS policies which the ANC has foisted on South Africa. The South African did not wish to have the crossing of the floor legislation which has enabled their chosen political representative to betray their mandates and steal the votes the people gave them to take them to another political party. The South African people do not want to open up their country to all sorts of foreigners who are not needed and will take their jobs away while draining our very scarce financial resources. The South African people do not want a situation in which our police force is under-staffed and our policemen are not paid well, not trained adequately and are in a number which is outrageously insufficient to fight crime. The South African people do not wish to see corruption having become so common that it seems to be accompanied by impunity. The South African people do not want more empty promises. The South African people do not want the problem of unemployment to be dealt only through seminars, workshops, talk shows and summits but with no actions.

There is so much more that the South African people do not want and what the ANC has been foisting on us day in and day out. For this reason, April 14 must be the time in which the South African people rule the country and make their needs, wants and aspirations heard. April 14 must be a day forever to be remembered as the day of the South African people and not the day of the ANC! For this reason, it is essential that on April 14 the South African people cut the ANC down to a size which is no longer a threat to our democracy. The South African people must become the rulers of the country and in order to do so they must ensure that no political party has such a majority which enables it to ignore the will and aspirations of the South African people. The IFP can provide the necessary alternative to make the voice of the South African people heard and respected. The stronger the IFP, the stronger democracy. The stronger the IFP, the more the voice of the South African people will be heard. The stronger the IFP the more will the crises of HIV/AIDS, unemployment, crime, corruption and poverty become addressed by adequate solutions.

We have forged a solid coalition with the Democratic Alliance because together we can solve many of the problems of South Africa, not with words, not with promises but with real actions and solutions. We have all seen how much this Coalition has been able to deliver in KwaZulu Natal in the short period of two years, in spite of the many hindrances which the ANC has continued to create in the functioning and working of the KwaZulu Natal Government. The truth of the matter is that the DA is committed to the success of the KwaZulu Natal Government while the ANC has been committed to ensuring its failure. Nonetheless and in spite of all difficulties, the IFP has done miracles in this provinces and placed KwaZulu Natal as the leading Province of South Africa in a variety of respects.

The South African people must now think about what the IFP and the DA could do together if they were tasked with the great responsibility of providing greater and better leadership to the whole of South Africa. What we have achieved in KwaZulu Natal where we have no powers, little resources, no real autonomy could be multiplied a thousand times over in terms of what we could together and achieve for the whole of the country at the national level. We do not want to have any confrontation with the ANC. I say it time and again that I wish to lead a revolution of goodwill in which I see the ANC being part of the solution, not part of the problem. However, I am also deeply aware that South Africa needs new and better leadership. For this reason, time and again I have stated that if I were the next President of South Africa, I would undoubtably have in my Cabinet, not only the Leader of the Opposition, but also those ANC leaders who are willing and able to make a contribution towards my government's success.

This is the type of new social contract South Africa needs in order to place itself in on a course towards excellence. We need to have a fundamental agreement amongst all the people of South Africa to begin promoting development, development and development at all costs, in all ways and with all means. Development must be the priority which overrides all others, because we must be committed to build a new country which will free our children from the legacy of poverty, social inequality, underdevelopment, crime, corruption and HIV/AIDS. For fifty years, I have been engaged in a struggle for liberation which I know is far from being finished.

With the help of God, the IFP will be able to fulfill the destiny it has to provide leadership for this new stage of our history. I pray to God Almighty to give us the strength and inspiration to pursue this dream of ours without hesitation. This is the time in which South African people must have faith and believe that, with the help of God and the sacrifices of all, no dream is beyond our reach. We believe in this dream of ours that one day the whole of South Africa will be a country of great social stability and economic prosperity. We are dedicated to pursue this dream because we know that it is the desire of the South African people. With the help of God, we shall pursue this dream for as long as the South African people ask us to do so.

April 14, is when we need to turn it all around and makes it so that out dream may begin turning into reality. Each of you must become an engine of action to make this dream a reality. The IFP cannot count on large financial resources. We have less money than our opponents or allies. The IFP must count on you. I must count on each of you, asking each of you to spend the next thirty days asking anyone you know and even those whom you do not know to think and think hard about our present problems and our future. Our future hangs in the balance. You must become the billboards, posters and advertisements the IFP cannot afford to buy. We have a message the South African people are eagerly waiting to receive. Each of you must become the messenger, ensuring that in the next thirty days the South African people think about politics as the work, play, worship and even when they sleep. Now is the time to think and seek God's inspiration in doing what is right for South Africa on April 14.

May God Almighty inspire the South African people on April 14. May God protect the South African people. May God protect South Africa. May God protect all of you.