Note to Editors: This speech was delivered by Roy Jankielsohn MPL in the Free State Legislature during the 2025 Free State SOPA Debate at the 4th Raadsaal Bloemfontein
It is important from the outset of this debate to demystify the arrogance of the ANC as a governing party in the Free State.
The ANC in the Free State lost a staggering 30% in the two decades between 2004 and 2024. At national level, the ANC lost its majority as it’s percentage of votes fell to 40% and recent independent polls indicate a further drop in support to 32%.
One would have thought that the ANC would have done an analysis of why it experienced this dismal performance and attempted to correct this, but no, their blindness to the current realities facing our people in the country and province is evident in their blind obsession with an outdated and destructive ideological pipedream.
The ANC’s National Democratic Revolution is on the wrong side of history and, through democratic centralism, the cadre deployment strategy has entrenched corruption, mediocrity and decapitated our country, province’s and municipal administrations. Roads infrastructure, healthcare, education, local governments and everything else that the ANC has touched in the Free State has been decimated as cadre deployment became the instrument for factional state capture by corrupt criminal networks in our provincial and municipal governments.
After thirty years of destructive policies that weaponised race and history to hide the blatant plundering and channelling of our resources to political elites and cronies, our people have become impoverished, hopeless and conditioned to accept mediocrity as the new normal. The ANC, like the Colonial and Apartheid governments before them, treat us all like incompetent children.
What we have learnt from the past 30 years is that giving power and the budget to the ANC in the Free State has been like giving a bottle of whiskey and the car keys to a teenager.
Seeing the country crash, and ANC politicians incoherently stumbling around the carnage they have caused to innocent people, is painful.
The 2024 SOPA led us to believe that the Free State would get a new beginning, but instead we got the “New Beginnings Projects Pty Ltd” scandal implicating the Premier and her family in corruption.
The ANC has become the vaccine-resistant Covid strain of Free State politics and has shown that it will never, and can never, self-correct.
Thirty years of ANC wins in the Free State are the root cause of corruption, service delivery decay, economic freefall, and job losses in the province.
What people in large numbers are eventually realising is that for our province to live, the ANC must die.
The current circumstances which many of our people find themselves in is unfortunately the result of their past electoral decisions. But fortunately we saw in last year’s elections that voters in the Free State are starting to realise this.
We have a good province and we have good, albeit too trusting people, who deserve a good and caring government.
Let us look at the real state of the province.
I will start with education by thanking the teachers, parents and learners in the Free State who contributed to our record of the highest pass rate for a number of years. But let us also reflect on what is to become of the 40% of learners who fell out of the system between grades 10 and 12. These former learners are now on the streets without options of alternative vocational training which the ANC stopped after 1994. Every year their numbers grow along with out of control increases in child pregnancy, gangsterism and drug abuse.
Even those who do pass matric face bleak futures in a society that cannot accommodate the oversupply of grade 12 and social science graduates.
We must focus on teaching practical skills and entrepreneurship at schools and decreasing the drop-out rate. Mediocrity in education, in most instances a 30% pass requirement, is the greatest injustice that we can inflict on our youth and will haunt us for generations into the future.
Linked to this, is a failure to rebuild family structures that were destroyed by pre-1994 policies of separate development and pass laws. Nothing in society can replace the support of strong family structures to ground young people. Successful groups of people all over the world focus on solid family structures that establish strong morals to instil basic values that are crucial for their success as adults.
A healthy population is a prerequisite for growing a healthy economy. In this respect our hospitals and clinics that force people to lose their livelihoods, and live in constant pain because of years of waiting for basic surgeries such as hip replacements, are violating their human rights. Similarly, our medical facilities are running out of basic medication which is life threatening for many people.
We believe in quality universal healthcare and our country budgets more than the international average per capita to achieve this. National Health Insurance in its current form will further bankrupt our dwindling economy and will not achieve its intended objectives. The NDR and affordable quality universal healthcare are not conducive to each other.
A sound roads infrastructure is the lifeline for our provincial and local economies. We will struggle to grow our provincial economy with 6% of our roads network in good, 27% in fair, 33% in poor and 33% in very poor conditions.
We will not fix this situation as long as we employ multiple contractors to rebuild one road, leaving it more dangerous than before they were appointed. We will not fix our roads while contracts are allocated to incompetent contractors in exchange for vehicles, money and other favours.
We must root out corruption, and the only way to do this is to ensure that we have an effective criminal justice system in which the fear of justice is greater than the greed of corrupt politicians and their cronies.
Let me now focus some time on failing local governments. I have travelled the length and breadth of the Free State and I can assure you that whatever the average Free Stater’s opinions are of our municipalities’ abilities to deliver basic services, it is much worse than they comprehend.
In August 2024 during her post-election SOPA this Premier said: “People have access to water, electricity and housing”
Last week the same Premier said: “We are deeply concerned by the state of some of our municipalities. Their failure to deliver services such as water, electricity and refuse removal is worrisome”.
Which is it Hon Premier? The South African Human Rights Commission gave the answer last year by indicating that poor municipal service delivery are human rights violations. provincial government and municipal buildings and other facilities in our towns already look like war zones.
This provincial government cannot offer delivery, so the Premier delivers more contradictory rhetoric. You cannot expect honesty from people who lie to themselves.
Years of unskilled cadre deployments at both administrative and political levels have decimated our local governments. But what is worse, is how the responsible Provincial Department and this Legislature have failed to give guidance and carry out meaningful oversight and consequence management. Deliberately overlooking incompetence, corruption and mismanagement makes you complicit in the downfall of this province and municipalities.
The DA’s pleading since 2000 for meaningful interventions and oversight have been met with insults, racial abuse and deliberate side-lining.
Our agricultural sector was also misrepresented during this year’s SOPA. The agricultural sector punches far above its weight than the 6% contribution to the provincial economy in terms of employment and socio-economic contributions to our rural areas. The Agri Hubs mentioned by the Premier have mostly collapsed and it is only commercial agriculture and their thousands of employees and supporting industries who ensure our food security and sustain the few South African owned businesses left in our rural towns.
The Premier took a line from the DA’s rural safety policy when she indicated: “We will invest in crime intelligence, use of technology, provide more resources, strengthen multi-sectoral collaborations and enhance rapid response capabilities.”
My question is when will this be done, with what money and by which sphere of government?
I indicated in the beginning of my speech, and explained throughout, that ANC arrogance and blindness to its own ideologically-driven policy failures has caused the suffering of our people. The ANC suffer from a rare form of political deficit which is the gap between ego and capacity.
By turning their backs on the suffering of our people, the ANC have turned their backs on their own humanity.
The Free State has all the characteristics to be a wealthy and prosperous province:
- We only have 2,9 million people, fewer than most Metros in South Africa.
- We are the central province that borders on seven others.
- We have the second largest agricultural sector after the Western Cape and a mining industry that should include natural gas.
- We have an innovative tourism industry with much potential for further growth.
- We have many educational and public and private research institutions.
Why do we have such a large unemployment rate and a third, 1,1 million, of our people dependent on social grants? The answer is because the ANC have, through investment deterrent policies and political decisions at national and provincial levels, chosen to keep our people dependent, poor and under-developed.
Like the abused families in the references the Premier made to Gender-Based Violence in her speech, our people have been made to think that they are dependent on an abusive ANC-run government in the Free State.
In a democracy you get what you vote for, and you deserve what you vote for. We are confident that voters in the Free State will vote responsibly to lift themselves out of unemployment and poverty in 2026 and 2029.