Meine sehr verehrten Damen und Herren! Ich eröffne die 128. Sitzung im 45. Tagungsabschnitt des Niedersächsischen Landtages.
Die Einladung und die Tagesordnung für diesen Tagungsabschnitt liegen Ihnen, wie immer, gedruckt vor.
Um Irritationen entgegenzuwirken, sei zu Tagesordnungspunkt 30 an dieser Stelle darauf hingewiesen, dass es sich bei der mit der Drucksache 4124 bekannt gegebenen Zurückziehung des Antrages in der Drucksache 4108 um ein Versehen der Fraktion handelte. Mit der Drucksache 4127 wird klargestellt, dass der Antrag fortbesteht. Dementsprechend soll er, wie vorgesehen, am Freitag zusammen mit dem Antrag unter Tagesordnungspunkt 29 behandelt werden.
Ich bitte unsere Gäste um Entschuldigung dafür, dass ich diese Formalien vorher abwickeln muss. Es handelt sich ja um eine offizielle Plenarsitzung.
Wir werden auf der Basis der im Ältestenrat vereinbarten Redezeiten verfahren. Wenn es keinen Widerspruch gibt, verfahren wir so. - Dann ist das so beschlossen.
Meine Damen und Herren, in der Wandelhalle sind die vom Niedersächsischen Landesamt für Statistik konzipierten Präsentationen „Asien - Aufstieg eines Kontinents“ und „Reformen der Statistik“ zu sehen.
In der Portikushalle sehen Sie die Ausstellung „Art from the Ground Up“, die Sie sicherlich schon beachtet haben.
An die rechtzeitige Rückgabe der Reden an den Stenografischen Dienst bis spätestens morgen Mittag, 12 Uhr, sei an dieser Stelle erinnert.
Für heute haben sich entschuldigt von der Landesregierung der Umweltminister Herr Sander, von der Fraktion der CDU Herr Professor Dr. Brockstedt und von der Fraktion der SPD Frau Krämer, Frau Tinius und Herr Lowin.
Meine Damen und Herren! Sehr geehrte Frau Premierministerin Balindlela! Sehr geehrte Frau Parlamentspräsidentin Kiviet! Ich begrüße Sie und Ihre beiden Delegationen sehr herzlich - wenn ich das einmal so sagen darf - im Herzen der Demokratie unseres Bundeslandes Niedersachsen, nämlich hier im Parlament.
Es freut mich, dass ich heute Morgen gemeinsam mit Ihnen und Kultusminister Busemann die Ausstellung „Art from the Ground Up“ im Leibniz-Saal des Landtages eröffnen konnte.
Junge Künstlerinnen und Künstler aus Colleges und Universitäten von Eastern Cape präsentieren hier ihre besten Exponate. Ich hoffe, dass viele Abgeordnete und die Gäste unseres Hauses diese wirklich bemerkenswerte Ausstellung anschauen werden.
Ich bedanke mich ganz persönlich bei Ihnen für die Überreichung Ihres Geschenkes. Dem Haus darf ich mitteilen: Es ist ein Krückstock, der mit Blick auf meinen Ruhestand von unschätzbarer Bedeutung sein wird - das ist gar keine Frage.
Wir, die Parlamentarier, betrachten es als eine wirklich große Ehre, dass Sie jetzt zu uns sprechen werden. Wir alle sind schon sehr gespannt auf das, was Sie uns sagen wollen.
Mr. President Gansäuer, Minister-President Wulff, Honourable Members of Parliament, ladies and gentlemen, it is a singular honour for me to address the Landtag of Lower Saxony. I bring greetings from the warm people of the Eastern Cape and of my country South Africa.
You all know that my country and yours enjoy a long-standing relationship. And I would like to take you down a memory lane. Remember, 13 years ago, we did not know how we were going to handle our democracy because we had never been in administration before. And I remember the first day when I agonised a lot. We were going to be sworn in as new members of parliament. Each member was given an amount of 10,000 rands to buy a lovely big hat and gloves because we were going to be sworn in. And I remember how the whole evening I agonised over this: “I want to be myself. Is this the only chance I am going to have to ever be myself again? – If so, I cannot wear these gloves and the big hat.” I remember that well. I said, “No, I want to be myself.” So I decided to show the identity of my own people and the identity of the culture that we have also been fighting for.
From that day the media called me “The barefoot Premier”. This is a wonderful title that I carry up to now, and I love it very much. And we are here today, having achieved what we said we would achieve.
So the first thing we thought was, “Who is going to help us?” Our new government knew that of many countries, it had to be Germany. That is because we were appreciating the amount of energy that the German people had shown over a period of 50 years, over so many wars: They made their country again stand up as a beautiful country.
So it was wonderful. You all have to know this because we had a lot of German priests, German nuns, German ministers. One thing is known in our country about the German community. It goes to
the extent that many of our people are named after the name “Germany”. We know Germany or you are “Mrs. Germany” because of hard work. When they mention “Germany”, they mean hard work. They say, “You will not sleep if you are a ‘German’.”
So it was with a wonderful sense of appreciation of what we have reached with this strong leadership in comparison to where we have been 13 years ago. I can remember very well when our first minister came. In fact it was Chancellor Schröder in his capacity then as Minister-President of Lower Saxony. He signed the partnership agreement with our province. I remember some of the members of parliament that were there. I remember, Heidi did not understand the dots in my face. I wanted to kiss her and she ran away.
And I wondered why. Maybe the dots did not represent themselves very well. But later on she explained to me why she was not familiar with the dots.
So it was beautiful. We were still struggling between the administration, the political arm of the government and the legislature which we call parliament in the province. It was very difficult to separate these two roles, because for a long time, as young comrades and young activists, we had thought, “Well, you bring your activism and you are the same.” And now, suddenly, we were being told that the two powers were separate. And indeed, the members of parliament, whether they belong to any party, they are representing also the populace. Therefore we had to shape ways not to become activists in a manner that was distinguishing ourselves from other members. So it was a good learning curve for us to know that it is very important to respect therefore the power of the legislature and also to respect and build a union among the other members of parliament that were in opposition to us. I must say that is - till now - still like that, because of what we also learned.
I am therefore particularly so happy about the fact that this partnership has been sustained, obviously also by all the members of parliament here. I also would like to underline that the impetus of our programme and the increase in the number of fields of cooperation has significantly grown under the leadership of my colleague Mr. Christian Wulff. I
would like to thank him sincerely for having built a wonderful way of cooperating with other countries. With Lower Saxony we have the strongest of the strongest partnerships that we ever have had with any of the other countries.
One thing we have learned from the government of Lower Saxony was that you have to make sure that firstly you are very efficient in your government. Secondly you take quick decisions. Thirdly you make sure that your turnaround time is short. Fourthly you make sure that the responses are quick to come. We have learned that the hard way, because when you deal with Minister-President Wulff you cannot wait for two weeks without responding to the letter: then you get a reminder.
So we knew that we have to be very careful. It sharpened our way of looking at how things are. I also would like to say with the turnaround time we knew that if we want to be a good government under the Honourable Speaker, Mrs. Kiviet, we have to answer the other side in parliament. They are not always friendly. It is always hard. You wonder why your comrades are siding with the opposition party against you. But you learn it is what they have to do to represent the other side of things. So as a result the Eastern Cape Province has been voted the best province in the last two years, beating all the other provinces because of what it has done.
So it was good for us to know that we are No. 1, again the No. 1. They said, “Oh well, it means that we are learning from other people.”
Therefore I am very thankful for the support we have got also from the NiLS Institute. After all, our network project with Fujitsu Siemens Computers and the GTZ links up all our further education and training colleges and is very costly. How I wish the members of parliament could know how difficult it has been to make information accessible to the rural poor. It has been very hard. We had to see to it that the partnership that we develop will help us, through the further education and training colleges, to really get to the rural areas. You could think that the seven million people that we have in our province get the information quickly, but I want you to know that many times they do not know what gov
ernment is doing. They still need more information. Now that we have said that further education must lead to opening the community centres for the people to get access to information, it is going to be easy for us. For me, as I am standing here, it has been very hard to learn the technology, and many times the Honourable Speaker has said: “What a funny Premier you are, you cannot even type your name in the computer.” So I am learning now and I am going to be a technologically wiser Premier because of the relationship that we have.