The Chairperson of the NCOP
The Chairperson of the SALGA
The Political leaders of our Municipalities
The Senior Managers of our Local Government sphere
Ladies and Gentlemen
I greet you all in our resolve and commitment as Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), to continue to work closely with all actors in the three spheres of Government and beyond, until we realise what we set for ourselves to achieve and we sloganised thus:
- My Municipality, my service
- M Municipal worker, my future
- My Municipal Union, my partner
- My SALGA, my collective voice
- My Demarcation Board, my reliable compass
- My MISA, our solutions
- My Traditional institution, my pride
- My COGTA, my intergovernmental relations facilitator
- My Community, my call.
We are meeting here today on the last day of the Nation focusing on remembering the work of that International icon, son of the South African soil, the first President of a free and Democratic South Africa, Nelson Mandela.
We do so as part of celebrating the ANC’s one hundred years of struggle and service to the people of South Africa and the World.
The Nation received a lecture on the work of Nelson Mandela, delivered by the President of South Africa, Mr Jacob Zuma, and that set us in motion as the people of this country, to focus on the good contributions and sacrifices Mandela made for us to be where we are today, a free Nation.
The lecture also guided us to commit to do things the Mandela way.
As individual South Africans, we also spent in unique ways, our respective sixty seven minutes of community work.
As we open this Local Government week, we remember when Nelson Mandela delivered his First State of the Nation Address, when he said the following:
“My government is equally committed to ensure that we use this longer period properly fully to bring into the decision-making processes organs of civil society.
This will include the trade union movement and civic organisations, so that at no time should the government become isolated from the people. At the same time, steps will be taken to build the capacity of communities to manage their own affairs.
Consistent with our objective of creating a people-centred society and effectively to address the critical questions of growth, reconstruction and development, we will, together with organised labour and the private sector, pay special attention to the issue of human resource development”
Yes, indeed, a focus on accelerating service delivery and addressing challenges through cooperative Governance means that we need to entrench a culture of working together as the three spheres of Government, embracing the three principles of distinctiveness, interdependence and interrelatedness, interpreted around who we are as a Unitary State of South Africa.
We also have to partner with civil society formations, professional organisations, religious communities, business bodies and many other stake holders, in the spirit of a nation mobilised to give its best, ensuring that the local area is served best.
Cooperative Governance is about support to each other in general, and in particular, correct to the objectives for this week’s programme, it will mean how we interpret the mandate of the Provincial and national spheres to provide support to the local sphere.
Yes, support to Municipalities means doing all what we have to do to ensure that:
- Municipalities exercise their powers
- They Manage their own affairs
- They perform their functions.
We have been into this together right from the era of project consolidate, siyenza manje and now Local government Turn around Strategy that introduced the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent (MISA).
At this Local Government week, we want to confirm that the Local Government Turn Around Strategy (LGTAS) remains our focus, institutionalised and projectised.
In this regard, we committed and are mobilising all sectors to do things the LGTAS way, aiming to build confidence between the people and the Government through providing targeted services to be managed like time-bound projects.
The LGTAS is instructive to us that in any given situation that we have to prioritise and reprioritise our support to Municipalities, we have to consider the guidelines as follows:
Assess the situation, determine problems, establish causes, address problems, restore community confidence, improve local Government performance, create a state of better life for all.
Following these guidelines, it stands to reason that each municipality is unique and therefore a one-size-fit-all generalised target-setting may not be a solution to deal with the situation from municipality to municipality.
However, in terms of the projectised agenda to accelerate the implementation of the LGTAS, we came to a conclusion that we may make a serious dent in dealing with appealing situations at our Local Government arena if we may give priority to five questions, namely:
- Accelerating Service delivery
- Enhancing good governance
- Promoting sound financial management
- Fighting corruption.
- Facilitating infrastructure development
Continue to build confidence in challenges of delivery even in areas where we may not be meeting our targets.
Batho pele remains an important policy and in this regard we stand to succeed if we achieve even just the minimum compliance with the principle of redress.
We must fill vacancies.
We must Sustain MPACS
We are holding this conference starting today, at a point where we are still dealing with the recent report by the AG on Municipal Audit outcomes.
We appreciate the fact that the release was managed in the manner of engaging key stakeholders in the cooperative governance arena.
Responding to the report, we committed that there is work to be done. We said there are lessons to learn from those municipalities that achieved clean audit rating and that more support is needed to those municipalities that performed below this rating, of course mindful of the fact that even those that received clean audit must be supported so that they should not regress.
We compared with different years and the situation appeals more. We are comparing with National and we will soon assess and comment. We are strengthening efforts to fight corruption through reviving the anti-Anti-corruption Inspectorate and related activities. MISA establishment consolidate our infrastructure development programme.
We coordinate the roll-out of the PICC programme through SIP 6 and SIP 7. We continue to create space for a sustainable Municipal demarcation process. We introduce today a Task Team to lead a review of the Municipal demarcation process, the objectives of which include the following:
- Provide for a regulatory framework for long term sustainability of Municipalities
- Regulate the activities of the Board in its application of enabling legislation
- Provide for strict compliance with the demarcation principles of economic viability, mobility patterns and other socio-economic factors
- Provide for a public participation framework to create space for inclusivity
- Locate the demarcation assumptions to the phase of development (Integration, NDP, etc)
The Task Team will do an assessment of the current challenges and advise on the intervention required, as to whether that should be in the form of a review of the current Act, a Ministerial Determination or the development of Rules and Regulations to facilitate the implementation of the Act.
Two phases of time-frame is prescribed for the Task team to do its work, the first one being end of September 2012, to deal with the short term issues raised on the current re-demarcation work in preparation for the next elections.
The second phase of the time-frame is the end of July 2013, to present a position-paper that will take us through the Bill development process.
The names of the Task team members are as follows:
- Dr. Mkhulili Ncube
- Ms. Nomvule Mokonyane
- Mr. Mpho Nawa
- Mr. Landiwe Mahlangu
- Mr. China Dodovu
- Hosi Maubane
- Hosi Ngove
- Ms Mpumi Mpofu
- Mr. Temba Fosi
- Mr. Joe Maswangayi
- Mr. Roelf Meyer
