Exactly, bbc one taken over for three hours. The only thing we would ever have in common withjoe rogan. Serious subject first. We have an inquiry out today, or the first part of an inquiry, that was looking at how Wayne Couzens, the serving metropolitan Police Officer who murdered Sarah Everard in 2021 in london, could ever have been a metropolitan Police Officer. What was it like for you, as somebody who has got political oversight of that force, reading that report . Because in every single page there was something really bad that had gone wrong over decades . Can i begin the conversation by speaking about sarah, Sarah Everard and her family, her parents and her siblings . It is important to remember her in the context of this conversation. I remember vividly the days after sarah disappeared because i live not far from where sarah disappeared from, and it was during the pandemic and my wife and daughters would go regularly for walks in and around that area. So it brings it all back,
because we must not tolerate the casual disregard for truth that has become the hallmark of this government. it should shame us all. we are honourable members of parliament. it isn tjust a title. it is something we should hold dear. we should be honourable in what we do in this place. we should be honourable to the people we serve because they have elected us. and democracy demands honourable conduct and we haven t seen much of that over the last few years. and if we allow lies to go unchecked and deceit to become the norm, then our democracy begins to crumble and that s what s been happening. we sit here time and time again, we see ministers coming to the dispatch box and we say, that s not true and then they say, we aren t allowed to say it isn t true. we have to say that they inadvertently misled the house and they will correct the record, and they will correct the record, and they will correct the record, and they never come back. they tell and they never come back. they
it s just a matter of how fast, did you really believe that? of course i believed it then. i think it s a fair assessment about where the anc find themselves in the last local government elections, in 2021, they, for the first time in post democratic south africa, lost their majority and fell below 50%. this obviously allied with the fact that our economy s not growing, we ve got 30 million people living in poverty, 12 million people unemployed, and loadshedding, rolling blackouts, which have reached into every home and switched off the lights, switched off our factories, and switched off our economy. south africans are realising that if they don t change the way they vote, south africa is going to end up in a very, very dark place, and it s going to be poverty and inequality deepening. well, in that bleak context that you ve just outlined, with the unemployment, what they call here loadshedding , the rolling power cuts, the massive economic problems, how is it that the m
of the guard coming in south africa, the anc s decline is terminal. it s just a matter of how fast, did you really believe that? of course i believed it then. i think it s a fair assessment about where the anc find themselves in the last local government elections, in 2021, they, for the first time in post democratic south africa, lost their majority and fell below 50%. this obviously allied with the fact that our economy s not growing, we ve got 30 million people living in poverty, 12 million people unemployed, and loadshedding, rolling blackouts, which have reached into every home and switched off the lights, switched off our factories, and switched off our economy. south africans are realising that if they don t change the way they vote, south africa is going to end up in a very, very dark place, and it s going to be poverty and inequality deepening. well, in that bleak context that you ve just outlined, with the unemployment, what they call here loadshedding , the rol
the anc has been damaged by economic stagnation, a protracted energy crisis, and massive inequality. my guest today is the leader of the biggest opposition party, the democratic alliance, john steenhuisen. could he become south africa s first white leader since apartheid? john steenhuisen, welcome to hardtalk. great to be with you, stephen. well, it s great to be here in cape town. let s start with a very simple question. when you said not so long ago, there is a changing of the guard coming in south africa, the anc s decline is terminal. it s just a matter of how fast, did you really believe that? of course i believed it then. i think it s a fair assessment about where the anc find themselves in the last local government elections, in 2021, they, for the first time in post democratic south africa, lost their majority and fell below 50%. this obviously allied with the fact that our economy s not growing, we ve got 30 million people living in poverty, 12 million people une