In his state of the nation address, the President has portrayed a picture of South Africa which is promising and reassuring. Undoubtedly, enormous progress has been achieved in a multiplicity of fields and endeavors undertaken by our Government. Our Government has performed well across the board of many line functions. Delivery has increased and this year we are doing better than last year and are set to see next year improving on today's results. Therefore, there is much call for satisfaction and comfort.

However, at times such as this, one is to step back from one's own achievements and focus on the home conflicts and difficulties and on our immediate backyard, rather than reaching out for distant places, taking stock of where the country is, and where it is going, in the medium and long-term.

We have been working hard to produce positive results. Focused as we are on our job of governing the country, we can take pride in the outcome of our endeavours. Yet, we must question whether what has been achieved is good enough and meets our own people's needs and demands as well as those rising out of our country's long-term interests.

I have a number of concerns which I voice to focus attention on the work ahead which must now reach out for the proverbial extra mile. I am not the type of person who recriminates or gratuitously criticizes, but rather the type who speaks to motivate and stimulate progress in the right direction. I am concerned and it is my duty to share my concerns with my Colleagues and with the nation.

My greatest concern is about employment generation. Employment levels are not rising, even though our economy is doing better. This means that it is necessary for our economy to do even better and we should not be satisfied with what has been achieved. For many years you have heard me making drastic proposals in this Parliament to foster economic growth beyond its present limits. Today, I do not wish to reiterate what I have stated over and again, but merely to stress the need to muster the political will to tackle the economy with much greater courage and determination. Our Government has adopted stringent fiscal discipline which means that the State is run properly from a financial viewpoint and conducts its finances responsibly.

However, that by itself has not been sufficient to attract foreign investments and broaden our country's economic bases. I also expressed this concern last year particularly as I said then that we are lucky to have the best Minister of Finance ever, whose performance is internationally recognised.

The President's speech dealt at great length with the major issue of poverty and with the various ways which Government is employing to reduce the levels of poverty.

I am also concerned about the rising levels of poverty. I have no doubt that there is much greater poverty today than there was in 1994. One of the elements which is not sufficiently considered in the equation employed to measure poverty is the rapid disintegration of the subsistence economy which existed then. I see this problem throughout the rural areas of our country.

I come from a rural area and I pride myself on representing the unheard voice of rural people, who are now becoming the poorest of the poor. Before 1994 people in our rural areas in South Africa were able to feed themselves and their families every day because of the existence of a culture which prompted them to produce their own food. Before 1994, many were keen to promote subsistence agriculture and I, as the Chief Minister of the erstwhile KwaZulu Government, ensured that my Government did its best to allow every family to have enough food on the table everyday. We applaud the decision of Government to extend the Child social grants to the age of 14 years. But as long as we are unable to feed ourselves this will be no more than just palliatives.

Malnutrition is now increasing in rural areas. The progressive disintegration of rural areas spells the downfall of urban areas and economies as people are forced to migrate towards cities where the local economies cannot accommodate them and they are bound to join an ever-growing army of the urban proletariat. This can cause unforeseeable social evils and instability. We must focus greater attention on rural areas and make it a priority of our Government to ensure that anyone can grow enough food and have enough livestock to be able to eat twice a day and have the benefits of a balanced and healthy diet.

Especially in the dark age of HIV/AIDS, a healthy diet is essential to support our ailing population. I was disappointed that our President did not mention HIV/AIDS by name in his State of the Nation address, which ought to be our main concern. Every day I cannot think of anything but HIV/AIDS and my conscience is torn to pieces because I know that we are not doing enough to deal with this issue. Our people are dying, not by the hundreds or the thousands, but by the tens of thousands. Soon they will be dying by the hundreds of thousands. As a Minister in Government I know how much our government is doing to face up to this pandemic. But I feel that we need to see it as one of the major challenges that we face at this time. We need to go that extra mile.

We must provide treatment to our HIV infected population and ensure that our Government has the capacity to utilize international donor funding made available for this purpose. I do not know how to express to my Colleagues my sense of horror and frustration in learning that we, as a Government, might not have the capacity of spending money which is available for the war against HIV/AIDS. We must thank all international donors for what they are doing to help South Africa and Africa in its war against HIV/AIDS. A special word of gratitude should go to the President of the United States, the Honourable George W. Bush, who committed US Dollars 1,5 billion to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa. I find it remarkable that while the United States is involved in the type of conflicts and concerns now troubling it, it still finds the time and has the care in making such an enormous amount of money available for the ailing people of Africa.

It is saddening for me that foreign countries may be more concerned about the war on HIV/AIDS than some of our own local representatives. We need to make more of our own money available for the war on HIV/AIDS and develop the capacity to spend it. It is beyond my comprehension that the citizens of South Africa including allies of the ruling party should have to march against their own Government to request and obtain treatment for HIV/AIDS, which is something that should be provided in due course as a function of governing and caring for people.

I am also concerned about another scourge which is killing our people and depriving them of their property, freedom and security across the country.

This is another enemy which is present and real and towards which we need to direct the necessary resources. The scourge of crime has not been cured, in spite of major improvements in the overall system of policing in our country. Improvement on the side of safety and security have not been accompanied by equal and sufficient improvements in the criminal justice system. Too often suspected perpetrators of crime are apprehended, but not tried and convicted. The criminal justice system has become the bottleneck of our fight against crime and it becomes increasingly necessary that one looks at radical reforms to give it a complete overhaul, to ensure that it can rise up to the challenges confronting it. I am not understanding the efforts that we are making as government and I speak as a member of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Security, which meets weekly looking for ways and means of measuring up to the scourge of crime, in our country.

However, also in this respect we should make the political commitment to divert more resources to direct them towards the police and the judiciary. 

This requires communities to become agents of propagation of legality, and to isolate those who become criminals. A culture of respect for human rights and dignity, must finally permeate all our families and communities eradicating the scourges of child abuse and violence against women. 

I am concerned that too little has been done for traditional leaders. The President's indication that matters relating to traditional leadership will be dealt with by means of provincial legislation this year may be a grim omen, as it may exclude any resolution of the two crucial issues relating to traditional leadership; namely local government powers and the land administration powers of traditional authorities, which are not provincial competencies. One hopes that the President's words can be interpreted as a promise that the national legislation will enable provincial laws also to deal with these two fundamental aspects of traditional leadership, which are the core of this issue, otherwise the entire exercise will be futile and a further measure to avoid rather than solve the problem.

I am also concerned about how we understand and fulfill our international responsibilities. We cannot separate our commitment to freedom and democracy at home from how we conduct ourselves abroad. We should also be more concerned about our own backyard before assisting tyrants who blackmail the world with weapons of mass destruction to find a way out of the corner in which they have painted themselves. Within our continent, people are dying of malnutrition and suffering under tyrannic regimes which have destroyed what should have been Africa's most prosperous countries. Across our own borders some people are cursing the name of South Africa because of our failure to respond to their suffering and the systematic violation of their rights. We must make it our responsibility to promote and, if necessary, force democracy and freedom in our own region, condemning without reservation any human rights abuse, the breakdown of the rule of law and tyranny taking place beyond our own boundaries. Silence and inaction are complicity. We have this obligation facing us even more at this time when our President is the Chairman of the African Union. Expectations of Africa from us as a country that is perceived to be leading Africa, are enormous.

The final concern I want to raise is that of corruption. There are different levels of corruption, and we must have the courage to look at all of them. I think it is necessary that this year, in this House, we have a long, full and detailed debate to discuss and understand what we all mean about black empowerment. We must show a difference between black empowerment and black enrichment. We must ensure that black empowerment does not become a generalized licence to skim off the top of the economic productive cycle to benefit a new class of parasitic rich people. Black empowerment should be about broadening the economic bases to bring into their fold those who were previously disadvantaged and marginalised. Black empowerment should be about strengthening and rewarding black entrepreneurship, and should aim at enabling the great economic potential, ingenuity and industriousness of black people. Black empowerment should not be about funding political parties in a covert fashion, nor about creating a new coalition of fat cats, which feeds off existing economic structures, without producing new ones.

I am concerned that our country is confronted with allegations of corruption and scandals which would rock any established democracy, and that we are perceived as facing them with indifference and complacency as if corruption were to be expected from those in power. Unless corrected, this perceived complacency in the face of corruption will cause the downfall of our new Republic. We must ensure that each allegation is investigated and that a culture of bringing "corruptor" and "corrupted" to book becomes the trademark of South Africa.

I have these and many other concerns. Over and above all of them, I am concerned about the capacity and willingness of this House to deal with such concerns. We need to come together as people of goodwill and representatives of our people, irrespective of political divisions or allegiances. We need to enhance our critical thinking and question ourselves. As we sit in this House not only as different Parties but also as different members, we need to think as individuals, not as herds who passively follow a leader unquestioningly. We need to continue the process of our individual and collective liberation in this direction. We need to ask ourselves whether what has been achieved is indeed good enough. We need to question whether what we are doing is indeed good for South Africa and for the long-term interests of our children and grandchildren.

Some decisions might be emotionally rewarding, and may aptly translate the way we feel about domestic problems, or international issues, but might not necessarily be what is in the best long-term interests of our country and our prosperity. They may also not be the real product of the democratic values we have embraced. We need to develop the type of leadership which can tackle concerns with a long-term perspective and in accordance with our democratic values.

We fully support the leadership of our President as Head of State and as Head of Government.