Programme director
Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Leadership, Sicelo Shiceka
President of SALGA, Amos Masondo
The Executive Committee of SALGA
MECs responsible for co-operative governance
Members of Parliament
Mayors, Councillors and officials from various spheres of government
Representatives from non-governmental organisation (NGOs) and community based organisation (CBOs)
Ladies and gentlemen
It is an honour for me to address this august occasion of the National Members’ Assembly (NMA) of SALGA.
I am pleased that the National Members Assembly of SALGA is taking place just after the State of the Nation Address, in which the President enunciated policy priorities which will guide government in the next five years.
Accordingly, I trust that your deliberations in this forum will benefit from this newly expounded policy direction, especially in the context of co-operative governance.
I therefore hope that your resolutions will be consistent with these key objectives of government and thus set local government off on the path of development, reconstruction and growth for our country.
In this way and in keeping with your stated theme, this meeting seeks to provide practical purpose to “SALGA’s role in building a caring society.”
Substantially, the President’s State of the Nation Address requires each and every one of us, social partners and stakeholders, to work together to improve the quality of service we render to local communities.
As government, we have been firm in emphasising the necessity of improving the provision of services to attain sustainability in the livelihood of our people.
However, improved services have to be delivered and the current indigent policy expanded against the background of job cutbacks.
The present economic crisis will not make matters easy on our efforts.
Programme director
I am confident therefore, that this forum will effectively reflect on its mandate to enable local government to fulfil its role as a sphere of government at the cutting edge of service delivery.
This is all the more reason to roll up our sleeves and ensure that not only do we utilise state resources prudently in carrying out our mandate, but that we speedily move to achieve our goals.
As a matter of fact our country is in the middle of the worst recession in recent memory.
It is therefore incumbent upon us to mitigate the negative effects of this economic downturn on the masses of our people, especially the poorest of the poor.
For this purpose we need to give fresh impetus to our commitment to ensure that there is delivery of clean water, decent shelter, proper sanitation and sustainable livelihood in urban and rural areas alike.
This must include addressing some of the long term challenges such as the eradication of the bucket system, a sight for sore eyes that has been subjecting our people to a life of indignity for decades.
Challenges like this should make SALGA more determined to address all its binding constrains such as capacity building, so that the task of poverty eradication, employment and empowerment, among others, can begin in earnest.
It is a further reason why the newly-minted Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs is important in ensuring there is co-ordinated implementation of the Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) and local economic development strategies of municipalities.
This is why we have to hasten our integration of all three spheres of government local, provincial and national to have a single public service.
This will then better our service provision while also up-scaling the oversight and monitoring system of municipalities.
A well motivated public service team is a key requirement for the successful implementation of the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), which serves the twin aims of employment creation and warding off the blows of the current economic recession.
The President has already spelt out that as “part of phase two of the Expanded Public Works Programme, the community work programme will be fast-tracked.”
We are conscious of the strategic importance of this mechanism in the amelioration of our people’s lives.
Because of its location within local municipalities, the CWP helps communities benefit from scaled-up public works and employment programmes.
In addition to the above, we need to ensure meaningful participation of local people in the IDPs by ensuring they are involved from the beginning at various levels of our planning, implementation and monitoring.
In this way IDPs will be responsive to the needs of our people and thus prevent discrepancies in the delivery of services.
For instance, this will, among others, help avoid cases where both district and local municipalities embark on an IDP process in the same community, respectively.
Community participation in the formulation of IDPs will render unnecessary any future resort to sporadic acts of protest over service delivery.
We also have to continue to improve the management of our municipalities, reshaping all the strategies espoused in project consolidate to elevate our municipalities to the level of optimal delivery of services.
The priorities we have set for ourselves in the next five years have by their very nature necessitated the expansion of government to enhance capacity for implementation, monitoring and evaluation of government programmes.
Thus the establishment of the Planning as well as the monitoring and evaluation Ministries in The Presidency will enable us to stimulate the performance of our government in achieving its set targets for development and growth.
These important units are geared to reinforcing our overall strategic planning with the object of addressing the skills and personnel shortage in many of our municipalities.
Quite often the lack of technical expertise has proven to be an impediment to the effective delivery of services and impinges negatively on our development efforts.
The practical implications of all this lead to the question: is the local government still properly structured in light of these changes with regard to the said national departments?
This question necessitates some reflection, given the three spheres of government’s need to work in concert for the realization of our vision over the next five years.
Programme director
As part of government planning, these and other challenges will be taken into consideration so that municipalities remain strategic engine rooms that meet their mandate.
Consequently, you as local government representatives have to find ways to re-position local government accordingly to ensure a linkage with other spheres of government.
In addition to this the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs is profiling the socio-economic status of all the 283 municipalities, which will provide a clear picture in terms of capacity, backlogs and important areas that need attention.
This will enable government and its social partners to come up with a comprehensive intervention strategy that seeks to address the existing challenges of capacity.
In this regard we must commend the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), the South African Institute of Civil Engineering (SAICE) and the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut (AHI) for partnering with government in rolling out a number of initiatives aimed at strengthening the delivering capacity of municipalities.
Chairperson
In February this year, the then Finance Minister announced that an amount of R2, 5 billion will be allocated to municipalities for the provision of basic services.
Every municipality that gets the slice of this allocation has a responsibility to ensure that we see a positive allocation of this money in order to reach our service developmental goals.
Chairperson
As local government we need to devise means to lessen the adverse effects of the current economic crisis on the viability of our programmes.
Certainly, this crisis has the potential to affect revenue and tax base of municipalities.
Government has limited resources at its disposal, so it is crucial for communities to be aware of this fact through their participation in programmes such as IDPs; the better to lessen misunderstandings about what is feasible in the present conditions.
This also calls for intensified efforts by councillors to pull their weight and ensure that as the face of government they live up to the undertaking of a caring government.
This will also minimize the volume of calls to The President’s office hotline by discontented members of the public.
Recently, the President has announced that an instrument for the measurement of performance of public representatives will soon be in force.
In light of the coming local government elections in 2011, we call upon councillors to get their act together so that they comply with this requirement.
I am therefore certain that SALGA will emerge from this strategic engagement with a sharpened focus on the trajectory it needs to map out to make local government better and more responsive to its mandate.
I am also confident that when it comes to the crunch, SALGA will not be found wanting in providing the indispensable leadership required to bring about the reality of a caring society.
I thank you.
Issued by: The Presidency
10 June 2009
