I am grateful to you who have come here from other parts of Mpumalanga Province to meet with me and to attend this local government election meeting.

I apologise for the fact that there is only one of me, I wish I could really clone myself to several people, in order to attend meetings like this one, throughout the Country. My Party is also handicapped by the fact that the majority of its members are the poorest of the poor. For this reason we are a party without resources that other parties have in such abundance. I know that our senior leaders have constantly visited Mpumalanga Province because we are conscious of the support that the IFP has in the Province of Mpumalanga. We have ensured that this be the case for this reason.

Since I was last here in Mpumalanga quite a number of unpleasant things have happened to the IFP structures in this Province. I think that the people of Mpumalanga are owed an apology by us as the senior leadership of your Party concerning some of the unpleasant incidents that have occurred in the last three years here in Mpumalanga. Before our 2000 local government elections, I was informed by our Chief Whip in Parliament in Cape Town that the Party had someone whom the Chief Whip recommended in glowing terms as an asset to the Party. I was told that this person should be a good Councillor for us here in Mpumalanga Province. This was Mr Len Joubert. I accepted what the Chief Whip told me.

When the general election was imminent, the National Council decided that no Councillor should aspire to move from Councils to offer themselves as candidates for the general election because they wanted to be either Members of either Provincial Legislatures or of the National Parliament in Cape Town. We felt that the best channel of service delivery was the local government and we needed our best leaders that are serving in Municipal Councils to continue to serve in Municipal Councils. We did not make any exception to this ruling by the National Council. Then again the Chief Whip in the National Parliament approached me and literally begged us in the National Council to break the rule and allow Mr Len Joubert who was a Councillor to go to Parliament. He pleaded with us that Mr Joubert as a former employee of Foreign Affairs abroad had a wealth of experience that the Party needed in Parliament. We had to depart from the Party’s decision to allow Mr Len Joubert to be a candidate for Parliament where he joined those of us who are in Parliament. It is now history that this will always stand out as one of those blunders which our Party made to trust this man on the recommendation of our Chief Whip in Parliament. His betrayal of us and the IFP stands today as history. I want to apologise to the people of Mpumalanga for being deluded by the Chief Whip in Parliament to trust someone that we actually did not know from a bar of soap, only to betray us.

I know that racists amongst some of our members have now been saying that the IFP made a mistake to trust Mr Len Joubert, because in the light of the history of this Country, we should not have trusted him merely because of his white skin. I hasten to correct this perception by stating that traitors in my lifetime and in the lifetime of the IFP, have over the years come in all colours. If I were to count those who have stabbed me and the IFP in the back, the greatest number of these Quislings are black. We are all human beings who are subjects to the same foibles.

As human beings we are far from perfect. But it is actually the ruling Party the ANC, in cahoots with the New National Party and the DA who have led the Country into this sad state of affairs. As you know our Constitution is hailed everywhere as one of the very best in the World. In order to protect it from interference by anyone at the drop of a hat it enshrined in it that it could only be amended by a two-thirds majority of Members of Parliament. The amendment that is today the biggest blemish on our Constitution allows representatives whether in Parliament, or in our Legislatures, or in our Municipalities to defect to any Party of their choice with the seat of the Party to which they belong was passed before the ANC had the two-thirds majority in Parliament. As I have indicated, the ANC was aided and abetted in making the amendment that makes this possible by the New National Party and the Democratic Alliance (the DA). We as a Party have not supported this amendment which was made for what were patently expedient reasons by the ruling Party and the two political parties that voted with the ANC to make this immoral amendment.

The pretext that was advanced for making this amendment was that people have a democratic right to change their minds and to leave the parties they belong to, and join others. Were this the case, I would have no quarrel with the idea at all. The trouble is that this amendment which allows floor-crossing is the highest threat to our fledgling democracy. This law is fraught with corruption because as a result of it we are in danger of ending up as a One-Party state. While we as a Party uphold the principle that democracy is about choice, we know that people do not go to the other parties out of exercising that democratic choice. People are victims of cheque-book politics and patronage. The ruling Party is not threatened by this law. The provision in the law that 10 percent of members of a Party have to defect in order for the defection to take place, guarantees that the ruling Party cannot have any defectors. For instance in the National Parliament where the ANC has such a huge majority its 10 percent would be about 27 members of Parliament. So you can appreciate that no one can so easily risk trying to persuade 27 people to leave the ANC in order to make this 10 percent to their defect.

We were shocked and disappointed when M Len Jourbert became one of the turncoats who betrayed me and the IFP. He stole your votes and went with them to join the DA.

In this forthcoming elections we have our Manifesto which we presented at two rallies of the Party in Durban (Emlazi) on the 15th of January and at Thokoza Stadium on the 12th February 2006.

In our Manifesto we make a Pledge of Honour and a pledge of Service and a pledge of Delivery. On the day of these launches our candidates make a pledge in front of the thousands of their Comrades and in front of the top leadership of the Party to abide by the Pledge.

We felt that the pledge of Honour comes first because if we choose people of Mr Len Joubert’s ilk as our candidate, people who are not people of Honour, we can expect anything from people of that kind. We issued our Manifesto before the international watchdog known as Transparency International announced subsequently that corruption in South Africa permeates all levels of our society. This was a revelation to us because we adopted the Manifesto with a pledge of Honour as its core precisely because we are aware that there is endemic corruption in our Country. We have found that in many municipalities that are run by the ANC, there have been riots and protests by members of the ANC who are fed up because of corruption and the general failure to deliver to them by their Councillors. That is the reason why we chose this kind of Manifesto. The ANC has made many promises since 1994, which they have not honoured. Our candidates make a promise in the pledge not to cross-the-floor to another Party as Mr Len Joubert did during the so-called “window-of-opportunity”. The crossing-of-the-floor legislation has become a basis of a lot of Corruption.

Our candidates pledged to work diligently in Councils as well as in Communities in which they are serving. Our candidates make a pledge of service and of Delivery. In other words they undertake to prioritise the needs of the people in the areas where they are standing for elections and also in the Communities in general.

We have just listened to the Minister of Finance’s Budget Speech last Wednesday. He has also emphasised the importance of serving our most vulnerable sections of our Community. These include the aged, the young and the bulk of our people who are today victims of HIV/AIDS pandemic. Our people are victims of crime and rape. They are victims of unemployment. Our candidates are therefore expected to do everything towards poverty alleviation and to contribute however modestly, towards poverty alleviation and to contribute however modestly towards the reduction of such high unemployment in all our Communities.

It is something of a contradiction that whilst the economic climate seems promising in our Country yet our people are trapped in such abject poverty that there is no light as yet at the end of the tunnel in which they find themselves at present.

All the efforts in which even the government is involved, such as the accelerated and shared economic growth initiative are still aimed at achieving 6 percent economic growth. Even when we reach that percentage unemployment will still be one of our highest problems.

It is the duty of our Councillors to ensure delivery of basic services such as water, electricity, roads, sanitation and other services. Local government is the tier of government which is closest to the people. It is the duty of Councillors that people in the Communities they represent are able to acquire all the social grants which include child grants, disability grants, old-age pensions and other grants which the people are entitled to in terms of the Constitution.

The IFP has undertaken to establish a monitoring mechanism to ensure that IFP elected Councillors abide by the Pledge that they have made. At the highest level of the Party we are engaged in ensuring that the monitoring mechanism is made water-tight and that it is an instrument in the hands of the Party that can be used to address any transgression by anyone of our Councillors, effectively and immediately. Through it we expect to expel any Councillor that fails to abide by the Pledge. We want our Councillors not to forget that they are the servants of the people and not the bosses of the Communities that they serve.

These elections provide an opportunity for the people of South Africa to choose a new direction; a fresh start. There is a real chance of a new beginning. These elections provide an opportunity to elect new political leaders in our Councils who want to serve and not be served.

I bring you a simple message today: now is the time to stand and be counted. Do not become a victim of the system. Democracy empowers you with the right to change who governs you.

You have heard that corruption permeates every level of public life in South Africa. Along many successes of our transformation runs a parallel story of corrupt elected representatives and government officials. CORRUPTION IN SOUTH AFRICA STINKS TO HIGH HEAVENS!

The IFP notes that the ruling party has repeatedly condemned corruption verbally, but remains non-committal in practice. Who is exposing the lazy and inept so-called “public servants” who treat you with contempt and who will also, fairly, praise those who go the extra mile to help you?

You have seen that the IFP has pledged in its 2006 local government election manifesto to introduce procedures that will bring corrupt councillors to justice. Our response to corrupt councillors will be their expulsion, as I have indicated.

Our candidates have signed a pledge that if they do not honestly serve you, if they do not root out corruption and if they do not tackle the rotten service delivery in this area, the IFP is entitled to fire them.

We offer you candidates who will seek the delivery of innovative housing which will meet the needs of your families and other essential community amenities.

The candidates before you know that the IFP has set up a system of deployed IFP national and provincial leaders who are not only monitoring the performance of candidates during these elections but will also do so after these elections.

This is more than can be said of the ANC. The IFP wonders why a party so obsessed with intervention and regulation as the ANC should remain silent on graft. This government has its finger stuck in just about every other pie, so why not act against the culture of corruption? There are Mayors and Councillors of the ANC who are appearing in the Courts on allegations of corruption.

The ANC is determined to win more power at the expense of the opposition parties under the guise of seeking consensus across the South African society. The real motivation is to diminish the opposition’s oversight role in exposing government corruption. Never when the IFP is under my watch!

What we see also in the ANC today is a ruling party that is torn between flaunting its large majority and its failure to accept responsibility for much of its legacy. You can see the result of this all around you: crumbling RDP homes, poor sanitation; unsafe roads; spiraling crime; an unchecked HIV/AIDS epidemic; a lack of clinics and indifferent service providers.

So I want the message to go out into this community of Piet Retief that I did not come here today to make you false promises of better housing overnight; promises of the clinics you so desperately need, promises of the emergency services required; promises of the re-establishment of child care crèches cruelly shut down; promises of better policing. All this and much more has been promised by the ANC and our other political competitors.

Others may make you promises, once again, and then election after election not deliver. We will not do this. Our candidates have set out their priorities in their individual manifestos to address crucial issues in this community. We need to hear from you, too. The IFP interacts with, not dictates, to local communities. We did not come here to promise what the IFP cannot give you this year or next year.

Yet we know by now that the ANC likes to interpret its large majority as evidence that it represents broad consensus across South Africa.

It is now time – twelve years into ANC rule – for the majority Party to accept responsibility for the unflattering parts of its legacy such as failure to build enough houses, lack of sanitation and related infrastructure and urban decay.

Our national cabinet takes enormous pride in the fact that it has devoted more than 60 percent of the state budget to local and provincial government. In theory, this augurs a decisive move towards a decentralised administration. But in practice, about half of all municipalities are dysfunctional, Councils at large have failed to collect R40 billion in arrears, and billions of rands are left unspent in provincial coffers each year.

A classic example of "consistent" under-spending which has the potential to shake up the existing relationship between our province and its municipalities are housing grants because of the red tape our municipalities have to deal with when they apply for provincial approvals. This is just one example.

The national government, in response to this particular crisis, has suggested that it should take firmer control over policies affecting housing to ensure greater uniformity and quality control.

But the IFP remains sceptical about the government’s commitment to eradicate shacks by 2014. This may well be yet another broken promise in the making.

Nationally, the number of households in formal structures has risen by 40%, to almost 9-million. But, at the same time, the number of householders living in shacks has risen 119%, to almost 1.4-million.

What we also see are images of shacks being swept away by natural disasters. It is not the natural disasters, but rather the government’s flimsy response to them that has, once again, highlighted the deep crisis of the lack of housing in this province.

The government message has now conspicuously changed from “houses for all” to “access to basic shelter”. And what does “basic shelter” look like? Well, it is an informal settlement with kilometres of “live” electrical wire crisscrossing mangled corrugated sheets.

We in the IFP advocate a more holistic and sustainable approach to government housing that ensures that the individuals who are allocated housing units will be able to afford and maintain them. We also promote wholesale revitalisation of hostels making them more habitable as family units.

It is time for a fresh approach. It is time for the IFP to govern. The IFP, for one, has a proven track-record of service delivery.

The ANC cannot say the same thing for itself. All it can offer us today, after twelve years in government, is yet another plan to make that government work. All this vague rhetoric is supported by an even more vague promise that this time ANC Councillors will behave. And if they don’t? They will stay anyway. Some MPs who were convicted in Courts for their involvement in the TRAVELGATE Scandal are put on top of the lists of the ANC for the forthcoming elections.

The IFP is blowing the whistle to stop all this. We are here to pick up the pieces. We are prepared to govern. We are seeking victory not just in IFP wards and IFP municipalities, but a victory for IFP values.

Today I bring you a message of hope. I present to you our Local Government Pledge of Honour, Service and Delivery. I urge you today to vote for the IFP so that we can build a better South Africa. All we ask for is a chance to serve.

I am asking you to vote on March 1 for change. To vote for people who are standing before you pledging to help you stop the rot of rotten service delivery in this area.

Thank you for coming and thank you for listening to my message to you all.