S Mufamadi: Debate on State of the Nation Address

8 February 2006

Madame Speaker;
His Excellency President of the Republic, Mr Thabo Mbeki;
Honourable Members:

Mr President, in the ‘State of the Nation Address’ you delivered to the
joint sitting of Parliament last week, you made mention of several
anniversaries which our nation will be celebrating this year. The importance of
those anniversaries cannot be overemphasised. All of them, in their variety,
serve to remind us that our commitment to bring about a better life for all, is
shaped by the commitments of those who went before us. We are revolutionary
descendants of those who were revolted by the deprivations visited on the
overwhelming majority of our country’s people.

The address was characterised by a considerable degree of candour about the
challenges we face. The challenges and the outstanding tasks were acknowledged
without obscuring the reality of our country’s painful history, its actuality
and its prospects. For instance, it was stated in the Address that we intend to
make large investments in various sectors in order to:

* Meet the demand of electricity;
* Satisfy the demand for water;
* Improve service delivery, including the provision of:
* Roads;
* Housing, schools and clinics;
* Business premises and business support centres;
* sports facilities, and
* Multi-purpose government centres.

The commitments made in the ‘State of the Nation Address’ resonate with the
vision which is encapsulated in the Freedom Charter. It is the Freedom Charter
which envisions a society in which “there shall be houses, security and
comfort”. It commits us to the ideal of a society in which slums shall be
demolished and new suburbs built where all have transport, roads, lighting,
playing fields, crèches and social centres”. Indeed, for those of us to whom
the search for a better South Africa is an article of faith, the Freedom
Charter is a baseline point of reference.

Our government has committed itself to help create conditions which will
allow our people to overcome politically contrived disabilities.

Madame Speaker, we are acutely aware that some of our communities continue
to bear the legacy of marginalisation and exclusion. They continue to be
afflicted by:
* Service-delivery backlogs;
* Backlogs of infrastructure - both social and economic and
* The problems of lack of technical skills.

In the year 2000, we started from the correct insight that in order to solve
the problems facing our people, we must have a wall to wall system of local
government. The concomitant step consisted in the proposition that there shall
be universal access to such basic services as water, electricity, refuse
removal and sanitation and that local government bears responsibility for the
provision of these services.

Madame Speaker, to us 1994 was the start of what we have always known is a
long haul. In that process, the advent of a new system of local government was
a crucial watershed – a development which took our search for a ‘society of
opportunity’ to a new height. For the first time in the history of our country
all communities, urban and rural, have the distinct possibility to realise the
goal of a better life.

As I indicated earlier, the rollout of basic services and infrastructure is
characterised by a number of challenges, some of which include: continued use
of the bucket sanitation system, poor water storage and treatment systems,
infrastructure backlogs in rural and informal settlements and lack of municipal
technical capacity to plan for and manage infrastructure investment and service
delivery.

Sceptics have used the existence of these challenges to make gloomy
prognoses about the future. However, those who look at the balance sheet in a
light unclouded by attempts to enhance their own electability in the
forthcoming elections, have been able, to notice that the pattern of municipal
performance is a mixed one. Besides the low-capacity municipalities which are a
matter of concern to us, there also exist medium and high-performing
municipalities. Some of our municipalities have been able to take advantage of
the fiscal outlay amounting to R10.3 billion which was made since the year
2000, to broaden the base of access to basic services and to redress levels of
infrastructure backlogs. With respect to the contribution of Local Economic
Development initiatives, current data shows that of the 53 district and
metropolitan areas in the country, the economies of 13 grew consistently above
the national average of 2.5% per annum over a three year period.

Nevertheless, we approach the next term of local councils with a more
developed sensitivity to the matter of local government’s need for enhanced
institutional capacity. The feedback we received in the 2004 national and
provincial elections campaign gave a compelling strategic impetus for
consolidation and deepening of progress through hands-on support for local
government.

Through Project Consolidate, we deployed service delivery facilitators whose
briefing to assist municipalities is not only to build capacity for
interventions which are calculated at making an impact in the medium to
long-term, but also to remove blockages that stand in the way of progress which
needs to be realised in the immediate–term.

Successes in this regard include breakthroughs made in the North West
province where we, inter alia, targeted the local municipalities of Klerksdorp,
Ratlou, Greater Taung and Kagisano for the removal of the bucket system.
Working together with the North West Provincial Government, we intervened in
April 2005 and within seven and half weeks, a total of 4075 households had been
taken out of the bucket system. In addition, several public facilities
including clinics, a crèche, a tribal hall, tribal offices and schools, had
been equipped with a decent sanitation system.

In another instance, the municipality of Cederberg in the Western Cape was
placed under Project Consolidate as it was facing a severe cash crisis with the
attendant debilitating impact on service delivery. This was a sad case in which
by March 2005, the Municipality had wiped out reserves and funds of about R15
million to R20 million and had outstanding service debtors of R3 million, an
overdraft of R2 million and bank loans of R14,5 million. We intervened with a
view to remedy the situation. As we speak, a turn-around has been achieved by
introducing basic budget control measures and revising the tariff structure for
services. The council is now firmly set on the road to self-sufficiently, its
capacity for revenue-collection is enhanced and its ability to provide basic
services to the residents has improved.

Madame Speaker, the commitments we made at the onset of democracy had the
effect of democratising national expectations. Some of the progress made in
various parts of the country include the fact that since the introduction of
the Urban Renewal Programme in 2001, 245 961 households in the urban nodes now
receive free basic water. In the urban nodes of Motherwell, Mdantsane,
Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha alone, 128 905 households now have access to
free basic electricity. Also, a total of 374 733 electricity connections were
made in rural nodes from 2002 up to September 2005. We are presently developing
a national Municipal Infrastructure Investment Framework which will serve as a
road map towards the goal of universal access to these services.

As we make these and other related forms of progress, this will at once
confirm the plausibility of the aspirations which were shaped by our democracy.
It will also accentuate the mood of impatience amongst those who feel that they
are not getting the dividend of democracy quickly enough.

People who are resident in low-capacity municipal areas are expectant of
accelerated progress. They have seen it happen elsewhere and they want to see
it also happen where they live. They expect responsiveness from the party which
has earned an unrivalled reputation as the vanguard of the struggle for
progressive change in South Africa. They know that it has now become possible
to insist on accelerated progress, with the distinct hope of being understood.
They are therefore not about to direct their demands to someone who does not
have the possibility to do anything about them.

The African National Congress (ANC)-in-government, can now fall back on the
accumulated evidence of experience to contemplate and devise measures which
will enhance local government performance. It can effectively expose as
dishonest those who, with a touch of hyperbole, have described our country’s
local government system as dysfunctional. They lean over backwards to find
faults and to pretend that positives do not exist. They deliberately play down
the compelling reality of progress in many of our municipalities, including
those that are receiving hands-on-support in terms of Project Consolidate.

For instance, the Johannesburg Metropolitan Council report titled
“Reflecting on a Solid Foundation” speaks to the seminal importance of work
done in places such as Soweto. It speaks of the tarring of the streets of
Soweto in a matter of just three years. These streets were neglected for more
than a 100 years. Houses have now been built in areas where the housing
provision programme was frozen as long ago as the late 1960’s. If Meadowlands
ever existed in the consciousness of all of us, we would know that what
Johannesburg’s achievements so far represent for the people of Meadowlands, is
the “different good” which the President spoke about last week.

Mr President and Honourable Members, a different good which is steadily
becoming the lived experience of the communities of Cederberg, Clanwilliam,
Citrusdal, Wuppertal, Graafwater, Motherwell, and Ratlou must now become the
norm rather than an expectation. We have to continue to transform these
erstwhile twilight zones into repositories of opportunity. We must continue to
supply municipalities with the means to achieve this. Accordingly, we have
decided that national and provincial government will prioritise for support
municipalities by streamlining their operations to focus on and provide
resources and capacity.

The Strategic and Business Plans of key service-delivery departments will
indicate concrete support measures for local government. The Department for
Provincial and Local Government, working with National Treasury and the
Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), are finalising a Local
Government Competency Framework.

This will provide a basis for improving the regulatory environment regarding
the appointment, performance and evaluation of Municipal Managers and other
senior functionaries within municipalities. We will also support municipalities
in accelerating the filling of vacant, mission-critical technical posts at
municipal and senior management levels.

In addition, we are collaborating with the Development Bank of Southern
African (DBSA) to mobilise experts who will provide professional support for
programme and project implementation. They will provide hand-on technical
support during all phases of the project management cycle, that is,
conceptualisation, planning, execution, close-out and post implementation
monitoring. We will also focus on low-capacity municipalities, especially nodal
municipalities and former cross-boundary municipalities, with a view to
assisting them to develop effective service delivery plans.

By the end of 2006, DBSA will have deployed 90 experts. This is part of a
three-year programme at the end of which at least 144 project managers,
engineers, financial experts and 30 graduates shall have been mobilised.
Patriots in formations such as the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut, the Freedom
Front, Business Trust, South African Institute of Civil Engineering and others,
have also decided to come to the party.

Madame Speaker, as the first term of local government draws to a close, we
salute the outgoing councillors who are a pioneer generation of democratic
local government leaders in our country. Their work, shortcomings
notwithstanding, forms an indispensable bedrock for our future endeavours.

The solid foundation they have laid, gives us the self-confidence to
say:

* No community will be using the bucket system by 2007
* All communities will have access to clean water and decent sanitation by
2010
* All communities will have access to electricity by 2012

Our plan constitutes the country’s roadmap to the achievement of these
ideals. Lying ahead is a formidable task which we are honour-bound to execute.
We shall not flinch at this task!

Thank you.

Issued by: Ministry of Provincial and Local Government
8 February 2006
Source: Department of Provincial and Local Government (http://www.dplg.gov.za)