'Govt must salvage SA'

Thu, 12 Jun 2008

United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa on Wednesday urged government to initiate strategies to "salvage" the country from the current economic turmoil.

"The current escalation of prices in food, fuel, including paraffin, electricity and interest rates, will undermine all the initiatives undertaken since 1994 to uplift the poorest of the poor," he told the National Assembly during debate on the presidency budget vote.

Therefore, President Thabo Mbeki's office and his Cabinet needed to "devise strategies to salvage the country from this unfolding crisis".

"For instance, when the former minister of minerals and energy Penuell Maduna sold our oil reserves he rebuffed concerns with the statement that we need not worry because the world is awash with oil.

"Today those reserves could have been used to intervene on behalf of South Africans," Holomisa said.

Equally so, it would be in the people's interest to review the instruments used by the SA Reserve Bank under Governor Tito Mboweni.

Instead of using inflation as the overwhelming measurement, he should rather include factors such as unemployment.

"This way we can halt this practice of beating consumers and the economy over the head with high interest rates for imported inflation.

"Indeed, if these monetary instruments are not reviewed it will hit hard the majority of the citizens who have for decades been locked out of the economic mainstream.

"Yes, in other countries you have an interest rate dispensation that protects those who invest in property, because shelter is a basic human right," he said.

Holomisa also had words of praise for Mbeki, during what would probably be the president's last budget vote in parliament.

"This country has to thank you for the job you have done, and in particular the institutions you have put in place.

"I'm thinking specifically of the manner in which you have placed South Africa on the map of the continent and the world," he said.

However, the recent spate of violent xenophobic attacks had done much damage to SA's image.

"While the architects of this violence are yet to be exposed, one might be tempted to think that it was a campaign designed to slap you in the face and undermine your legacy on the continent.

"During your term of office it is a pity that some of your colleagues entrusted with delivery could not live up to the legitimate expectations of the nation.

"We see now that some of them are masquerading all over, trying to portray failures and unpopular decisions as belonging to the President only, while the public knows that these have been the ANC's collective decisions."

This did not address the inherent problems in the Tripartite Alliance's thinking and policies and therefore, when these "newly recycled leaders come into power, nothing will change.

"They should stop misleading the nation by claiming differently."