Three years ago, my life found the most special new meaning, when my wife and I embarked on the journey of parenthood. From the moment I held my new-born daughter in my arms, my perspective on life changed. Suddenly my own dreams and ambitions gave way to my drive to ensure the best for my daughter. Like any other parent, I have hopes and dreams for my children and I want them to grow into successful adults. However, as is true for all other parents, there are personal variables in my approach to ensuring the success of my children, which are guided by my own life experiences. Interestingly, much the same can be said of government.

On a national level, government is, in a sense, a parent that is charged with ensuring the well-being of its people. As parents, we provide our children with the tools that they need to seek out as many opportunities in life as possible. To do this we try to make sure that our children have nourishment to sustain them, that they are safe from harm and that they get a good education in order to obtain a job one day. Our goal as parents is not to make our children reliant on us forever, but rather to ensure that our children will one day be able to stand on their own two feet and provide for themselves.

In government, the goal should naturally be to ensure that citizens can stand on their own two feet; to ensure that they have the tools and an enabling environment that will give them the ability to provide for themselves. Loosely speaking, this is the liberal ideal espoused by the DA. However, what becomes increasingly clear as we assess the past 20 years of ANC governance is that this view is not shared by the ANC; instead what emerges is an ANC preference toward a more social welfare culture which creates absolute reliance on the state.

The ANC government’s economic policies are not growing our economy at the levels needed to turn the rising tide of unemployment in South Africa. Their solution is not to create an enabling environment that will stimulate economic growth and create real jobs. Instead, the ANC seeks to regulate existing industry and be the provider of “work opportunities” through the already bloated public service. While such “work opportunities” play an important role in immediate poverty relief, they are no substitute for real jobs in a growing economy.

And this plays out through quarter-on-quarter economic decline, and the very real threat of recession taking hold, youth employment figures this week that should shock us all, and rapidly increasing labour unrest that threatens to throw this economy into immediate turmoil.

Alongside the ANC, even the EFF’s radical proposals, which seemed to be just radical enough to get them a handful of seats in Parliament, only seek to keep South Africans in overalls and gumboots by making their present situation more tolerable, not allowing them to advance out of it. Their policies are not only unsustainable but leave South Africans without any hope of ever taking charge of their destiny.

They bring to Parliament yet another voice for keeping poor South Africans under the spell of state control, rather than rising above it.

But with a markedly increased presence in Parliament, filling the opposition benches, the DA is now the sole voice in Parliament fighting for the liberal ideals of our Constitution, most importantly a market-driven economy that can provide real jobs and truly uplift South Africans out of poverty. Our vision is to ensure that each individual South African is able to take charge of their own life and is then truly free to live the life of their choice. To do this, our government must empower individuals in the same way that a good parent would, by giving South Africans the tools needed to make our own lives successful.

Consider how far removed the ANC’s election promises are from its actions in government. In education, the ANC government sides with teacher unions who go on protracted strikes and refuse to be subjected to performance standards. Meanwhile, South African children are deprived of an education and, one day, a job.

Many of our schools are in an appalling condition. Thousands of children continue to be taught in mud schools. High rates of teacher absenteeism remain prevalent with little to no government intervention. And so the cycle of oppression in South Africa continues where so many children are not only unable to catch up with their international peers but are also completely ill-equipped to compete in the global knowledge economy. We need only refer to last week’s international maths and science benchmarking placing us as the worst performers on the entire planet.

Of course then, after school, millions of young South Africans cannot find a job because not only are they ill-equipped, but the ANC government is failing the South African economy too. This past week, StatsSA released figures that show that South Africa’s youth unemployment rate has risen to over 36% since 2008.

At the same time, foreign investors in the US have started lobbying their government to reconsider the benefits accrued to South African exports entering the US if the controversial Private Security Industry Regulation Amendment Bill is signed into law by President Jacob Zuma. The ANC’s lack of economic leadership and over-regulation of business is taking its toll on our economy and has brought us to the brink of a recession.

The ANC government is committed to controlling industry and society when our government should be empowering South Africans. We need to empower South Africans so that there is a growing base of black entrepreneurs and black business people, like Herman Mashaba, who become captains of industry in South Africa through their own business acumen.

The reality is, however, that despite broken promises in the last 20 years, the ANC has again received a mandate from the South African people to lead the government of our nation. However, South Africa stands right now at the crossroad between prosperity and despair. If we see more of the same from the ANC – the same inability to properly diagnose South Africa’s problems, the same lack of economic and policy uncertainty, and the same lapdog approach to militant trade unions that threaten the livelihoods of the workers that they represent as well as the jobs of both employed and unemployed South Africans – then the ANC is sure to lead South Africa down the path of despair.

The DA in Parliament will be there to oppose such action by government, and to steadfastly propose concrete and tangible alternative solutions. The DA must and will be the voice of opportunity, while those on opposite benches in Parliament speak in the voice of handouts.

So while some espouse politics of gumboots and overalls, and others the paternal politics of growing welfare and social dependence, we will use the mandate that was given to the DA by over four million South African voters to ensure that our government places power and control of South Africa in our collective hands through real opportunity.

This is our vision for the South African people, and it is one that we will use the platform of Parliament to achieve. DM