Brits - The African National Congress (ANC) has failed the education system of the country, the Democratic Alliance said on Saturday.
“The ANC’s greatest failure is not Nkandla. The greatest failure is the education system. We want a system that produces learners who can compete everywhere in the world. A school in Mamelodi must be the same as in Waterkloof,” party leader Mmusi Maimane said in his address at the party’s North West provincial congress.
“The non-building of schools is not an apartheid legacy but, it is because the ANC have mispent the money.”
He said the DA was pushing for the building of a non-racial society.
“If the DA fails, South Africa fails. The truth must be told. The only race that matters should be the human race, not the colour of your skin or the shape of your nose.”
He said the DA acknowledged that apartheid was the worse thing to have happened in SA, and it was important to address the injustice of apartheid which affected mostly black people.
“Out of the ashes of apartheid, rises one nation, one South Africa,” he said.
Maimane added that President Jacob Zuma should pay back R52 million for non-security features at his Nkandla home in KwaZulu-Natal.
Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko on Thursday announced that Zuma would not have to pay back any money for the security upgrade at his private residence.
Public Protector Thuli Madonsela had earlier recommended that Zuma pay back a portion of the money used for non-security features at Nkandla.
Maimane said they would use all available avenues at their disposal to force Zuma to pay back R52 million which they believe is what Zuma should pay back for the upgrades to his private homestead. One option was the courts, Maimane said, while the other was to mobilise people around the issue.
On the Marikana report, Maimane said he feared Zuma was shielding people who might be implicated in the report into the violence in the platinum sector in 2012 which left more than 40 people dead.
“The report was supposed to have been tabled before parliament, once [retired] judge Ian Farlam handed it to the presidency,” Maimane said.
Judge Farlam chaired a commission probing the shooting incidents in Marikana near Rustenburg in August 2012.
Forty-four people were killed during a wage strike at Lonmin platinum mines in Marikana.
Thirty four miners were shot dead by police on August 16, 2012, while ten people, including two policemen and two security guards, were killed a week earlier.
ANA