Madam Speaker,

Since the ANC refuses to honestly review the performance of this Poverty Cabinet, allow me to conduct a quick performance assessment for them.

Let’s start with Deputy President Mabuza, who is buried deeper into the Russian regime than the layers of a nesting doll. Next are Ministers Dlamini-Zuma and Patel, who must have had a terrible encounter with a chainsmoking, flip-flop wearing alcoholic chicken, because they used the entire lockdown to settle this vendetta. Similarly, the only war being waged by Defence Minister Modise is against the innocent pigs on her farm.

That’s when she isn’t busy popping champagne with the invaders of Ukraine at the Russian Embassy. Coming in at number four is a true all-rounder of uselessness, Minister Dlodlo. She both oversaw the failure of our intelligence services to prevent last year’s violent looting and granted illegal salary increases to ANC cadres. Minister Sisulu attacks our Constitution in designer shoes while tourism businesses fold and more people than ever are homeless and without running water.

While our railways collapse and potholes gobble up our roads, Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula tweets about his dream of going to the moon. South Africans would gladly pay for the trip as long as it is a one-way ticket, and luckily the Minister is so full of hot air that we’d probably save a fortune on rocket fuel. Speaking of fuel, what about Energy Minister Mantashe? He’s the last living member of a species of Fossil Fuel Dinosaur previously thought extinct, and boy is he making it count.

He spends his days fighting against renewable energy and taxing us to death at the petrol pump, and in his spare time, he defies the Zondo Commission over Bosasa corruption. Then there’s the Mad Hatter himself.

Police Minister Cele spends R8 million to protect every ANC VIP while slashing the police budget for ordinary South Africans by nearly R4 billion. And who can forget Minister Zulu, who rides around in armoured vehicles shooting the pensioners and poor people she’s supposed to protect with water cannons? Bad old Minister De Lille hung South Africans out to dry to the tune of R37 million on her washing line, and she forgot to open the sprinkler valves that could have prevented Parliament from burning to the ground.

Instead of fixing our education system, Minister Blade Nzimande tries to rewrite history to classify Afrikaans as well as Khoi-San languages as “foreign”, while Minister Motshekga is trying to carry out a coup against the powers of school governing bodies. 

Amidst a worsening public healthcare crisis, the health minister is desperately trying to make the state of disaster permanent by giving himself the power to lock us all down at a whim.

Minister Ndabeni-Abrahams is somehow both employed and unemployed at the same time, as she has been completely replaced by Sipho Nkosi in the President’s parallel Cabinet.

Minister Mthethwa is paid R2.5 million a year to issue condolences during the brief flashes when he is not asleep in Parliament. Ministers Motsoaledi and Nxesi are busy resurrecting apartheid-era job reservation and scapegoating foreigners for their own failures.

Minister Gordhan continues to flush taxpayer money down the SOE-drain faster than Tom Moyane flushed Zuma’s tax records.

The metaphorical hole in Minister Nkoana-Mashabane’s head has clearly still not healed. If this Poverty Cabinet had to go back to school, not one of them would even each the pathetic 30% pass requirement they set for our children. It’s time to put them all out to pasture. Thank you.