Honourable district executive mayors
The executive mayor from our metro, the Nelson Mandela metropolitan municipality
Executive mayors from our local municipalities
Representatives of South African Local Government Association Eastern Cape
The chairperson of our portfolio committee on human settlements
National and provincial department officials here amongst us
Municipal managers or their representatives
Leadership of public sector entities
Distinguish guests
Comrades and friends
Ladies and gentlemen
It gives me honour and pleasure to preside over this first MuniMec meeting, perhaps as a new MEC to the department that is overwhelmed by old challenges and immediately wishes to welcome you all with boundless joy. For I cannot lose sight of the reality that your presence here , represent the aspiration of millions of our people across the length and breadth of our province with their hope and trust on us as elected leaders to champion their cause.
I welcome you conscious of the fact that you have come propelled by your burning desire to make this MuniMec respond to the people’s cause and particularly the largely unresolved issues of homeless amongst our people. I regard the today’s occasion as not only unique because it is the first in this fourth term of government but also because it occurs when as the department we seek to redefine our mandate within the context of human settlements.
We meet given the challenges of housing backlogs hanging over us, the negative economic climate fostered by the global financial crisis and given our people and their impatience with service delivery Slug. Therefore our MuniMec as a working session on matters relating to human settlement should engage on finding innovative measures of enhancing service delivery and eradication of poverty amongst our communities.
The decisions of this MuniMec must therefore infuse our mandate with consequences of historic magnitude. For we are gathered within these four wall with the voice of reason, the voice of providing our community with decent settlement devoid of racial and class patterns, in fact the voice of humanity.
Needless of the perspective given above, pleasing to me is to have you colleague and our team of officials who are as old as the challenges mapped up above, thus making us not to despair but to look to the future with determination and commitment.
The task with us today requires us acknowledging that a shift from housing to human settlement cannot be taken as simple the creation of a new department and change of name but a shift in thinking, planning and extent to which we mobilising our stakeholders behind our new mandate. We are to settle our people so that they experience decent housing as against the past human settlements patterns where the question of race, class and gender was the order of the day.
Because, unlike our colleague in other sectors, we promise more than service delivery, thus a change of economic status of the individual; this is informed by what the president of the republic stated in his state of the nations address that “human settlements development is quite bigger than housing the nation”. This is what encourages us to strive towards realising the attainment of integration of all relevant services at strategic and developmental level.
Our immediate job therefore, is to open up access for the poor to ownership of these real assets, the dream to own, which has become more urgent than before as the economy climate outside dictate the pace required.
Objectives
At this juncture, allow me to share with you my desire for the day. For today we meet:
* to engage on our new mandate and operational environment as Human Settlement.
* to jointly reflect a challenge we inherited from housing delivery and harnessing the experience and lessons learnt to realise human settlement
* to redefine our relations in terms of the challenges and new demands
* to have insight on the planning paradigm requisite by integrated human settlement agenda.
These stated set of objectives will enable us achieve:
Outcomes
* proper understanding of the new mandate and needed environmental changes
* a tabulation of constraints and risks impressing at our services delivery mandate and solution therefore.
* new tools of analysis and planning to ensure the shift from housing mandate to integrated human settlements agenda.
Having outlined the intended outcomes above, it has immediately dawn to us that housing delivery can not be sufficiently achieved if there is no cooperation within all spheres of government. Which is the fact that has prompted me to urge all of us here to remember Section 41 of the Republic of South Africa Constitution which provides for cooperative governance and intergovernmental relations It provides for all spheres of government and organs of state within each sphere to cooperate with one another in mutual trust and good faith by informing one another of, and consulting one another on matters of common interest as well as coordinating their actions and legislation with one another.
The Constitution provides for an act of parliament to establish or provide for structures and institutions to promote and facilitate intergovernmental relations. In this regard the Intergovernmental Relations Act No 13 of 2005 is an extension of the sound cooperative governance as outlined in the Constitution. It is a framework of national, provincial and local governments to promote and facilitate intergovernmental relations. It provides for mechanisms and procedures to facilitate the settlements of intergovernmental disputes and it also provides for matters connected therewith.
The Housing MuniMec to us is thus such a forum to facilitate sound intergovernmental relations. It is a forum where the two spheres of government (i.e. provincial and local governments) ought to discuss matters of mutual interest with the sole purpose of accelerating sustainable human settlements with each sphere playing a meaningful role in this regard. It ought to discuss successes and challenges in the rolling out the human settlement development as well as the measures to overcome such challenges.
This in turn needs paradigm shift in thinking and planning within, between and across sector department, public entities and our social partners. As we embrace the notion that shelter alone within our municipalities, wards, villages and households will not make a significant impact on poverty; as Rossiter (2000) puts it “integration relates to a multi-sectoral approach that is coordinated with all different sectors operating in concert so that results in one area are re-enforced by achievements in another”. This is the concert where everyone must co–operate a concert that every one of us will dance to the tune and melody that is being played (cooperation).
Jointly, we cannot sleep when our people did not have shelter and adequate food supply. Their health is poor, they cannot read or write. They are unemployed and their lives are bleak and uncertain at best. It is within our shoulders as leaders gathered here that the goals we have set ourselves as outlined in our manifesto will be apprehended if we could set aside our differences and work in unity as partners within our scope of mandates.
Pursuant to our desire for functional partnership, it is my humble appeal to our municipalities, who are often the coal face of service delivery, to effect sound management systems over housing subsidies management. My intent is to see within the next six months coordinated efforts to realise establishment and functionality of district housing forums. These from my side being strategic tool to enhance our oversight role over human settlement
Conclusion
I wish again to welcome all of you in this august gathering and urged each to take liberty in discussion with a critical eye and interest on details for we dare not to fail our people. Make this occasion to be of historic nature and be of reference by those would follow us. For this engagement cannot best reach to the aspiration of history only if informed by the plight of our people.
I thank you
Issued by: Department of Human Settlements, Eastern Cape Provincial Government
17 August 2009
