Cape Town - South Africans must wait for the findings of the Commission of Inquiry on Marikana before making any judgment on how the shooting had taken place, President Jacob Zuma said today.
Responding to questions raised by MPs in the National Assembly today, Zuma advised South Africans to be patient and wait for the results of the commission.
"It is absolutely important to note that a very big tragedy happened and that we don't know the actual details and it is important therefore to wait for the commission to establish facts and the commission must give a report and recommendations," Zuma said.
The terms of reference for the commission were gazetted yesterday and work is continuing to sort out the logistical arrangements to enable the commission to begin its work.
He said the government continues to support the families of all 44 people who were killed in Marikana through the Inter-Ministerial Committee led by the Minister of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, Collins Chabane.
He said the Marikana tragedy had further highlighted the deepening levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality in South Africa.
The tragedy had also emphasised the need to accelerate the transformation of the mining sector.
South Africans must also put the country first and defend it from the opportunism that will set the nation back by many years, he said.
In reply to a question about what progress the country had made in improving education, Zuma said there were more and better facilities in schools than there were at other times and more children were at schools than before.
The country was also on track to meet its target of 100% of children in Grade R by 2014 - with Grade R having increased from 300 000 in 2003 to more than 700 000 by last year.
He said government had identified and classified several schools as no-fee schools and that over eight million children were now in no-fee schools.
The implementation of the Annual National Assessment tests for the first time last year would help the country to more objectively assess the health of the education system, he said.
He said he had received a report from the Presidential Task Team, led by Deputy Minister of Finance Nhlanhla Nene, on the problems around delivery of textbooks in Limpopo.
He said he was considering the report and would indicate his response in due course.
In reply to a question from the Parliamentary leader of the opposition, Lindiwe Mazibuko, on whether he had instructed his minister to provide funding for the Nkandla-Mlalazi Smart Growth Centre, Zuma said he had not instructed ministers to provide funding for the centre.
"The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform is, however, supporting the Masibambisane Rural Development Initiative with the detailed planning of the Nkandla initative," he said.
Zuma said it was a pity that only Nkandla and the construction of the centre there had generated interest because Nkandla was not the only rural district being developed by the government.
In all, 23 rural districts across various provinces were receiving interventions to combat deep poverty, including the construction of recreational areas, creches, schools, clinics, community halls, shopping centres and other facilities to assist rural communities.
These projects, he said, were the same size as that of the Nkandla project.
Among the projects detailed by Zuma are those Dysseldorp in the Western Cape, where 10 sandbag houses are being built, 90 rainwater harvesting tanks set up, solar water geysers supplied to homes, while a creche and old-age home is being built and five schools are being renovated.
In Diyatalawa and Makholokoeng in the Free State, the government was building schools, creches, a community hall, solar geysers, housing, two clinics and a dairy.
On a question on how the government intended to continue its support to the AU, Zuma said the AU Commission's new chairperson, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, had identified several priorities for Africa that she would tackle during her chairmanship.
The priorities are: eradication of poverty and wars; rolling out infrastructure to boost trade on the continent; consolidation of democracy; creation of jobs and promotion of health, shelter and education; accelerating integration on the continent and advancing and defending the interests of Africa in global affairs.
The DA's Ian Davidson said the budget of the AU needed to be reconfigured with caution, particularly as only 40% of the AU budget comes from African nations, EU, China and US contribute the remainder of the budget.
Zuma said this limited the independence of the AU in making its own decision, which he hoped Dlamini Zuma would address during her term.
He said donors could hold the AU to ransom when it came to Africa making decisions that went contrary to their decisions.
