Government, Sydney Fholisani Mufamadi, on the Occasion of the Mayors Conference
with National and Provincial Government, Cape Town Convention Centre
25 May 2006
Programme Director
Deputy Minister for Provincial and Local Government;
Honourable MECs responsible for Local Government Affairs
Mayors and Local Government practitioners
Director General for Provincial and Local Government
Ladies and gentlemen
The drafters of this programme decided to set me up for failure to deliver.
They billed the few remarks that I am about to make as a keynote speech,
thereby raising your expectation to heights which are not reachable.
The Ministry together with Local Government Minmec and the Department of
Provincial and Local Government chose to dedicate this day to our Mayors
returning and newly elected. I am indeed grateful to the organisers of this
conference for creating this opportunity for me to offer my congratulations and
to welcome Your Lordships, the Mayors, to the family of local government
practitioners.
By some strange coincidence this conference takes place on a day of immense
significance on the calendar of our tortured but hopeful continent. It is on
this day Africa Day that the whole of Africa is reflecting on the price our
generation is now paying for centuries of colonial plunder that our continent
was subjected to.
At a United Nations World Summit convened in New York to review progress on
the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) about seven months ago, a
determination was made that âAfrica is the only continent which is not on track
to meet any of the targets enunciated in the Millennium Declaration within the
stipulated time frameâ.
Clearly, we are faced with a situation in which it is not enough to bemoan
the past. It is an occasion for the retooling of African post-colonialist and
moulding thereof into a force that can (make possible), the goal of reducing
global poverty by at least 50%, by 2014.
National challenge
Chairperson, I am citing the African challenge because I think it best
illuminates our national challenge and the implications this national challenge
has for the Mayors assembled here today. It will be recalled that as a nation,
we have set for ourselves, targets which are even more aggressive than those
which appear in the Millennium Declaration:
We say:
* universal access of decent sanitation and water by 2009
* universal access of electricity by 2012.
These are the goals we have decided to pursue in the current term of local
government. Needless to say, these (our national goals) can only be achieved if
we have a local government sphere which is signposted to take us in that
direction.
Now, as far as this matter is concerned, the buck stops with you, the Mayors
and the collectives you lead. You have been given the responsibility to decide
weighty questions which bear on the quality of the collective life of our
people. If you were elected Mayor at any moment in the previous era, you could
afford to take your position for granted. We need to fully realise what it
means to be elected Mayor in the second term of the democratic system of local
government. It means you are a generation of local government leaders which is
poised at the confluence of what was and what is in a state of becoming. You
are called upon take decisions under the pressure of history, a history that
has brought you to the forefront of attention.
Local government
The tasks given to local government entail more demanding capabilities and
performance. This means that you are not only expected to find the means for
addressing traditional local government challenges of delivering basic services
to the people, but we are supposed to find strategies and mechanisms that are
potent enough to remove the many bottlenecks which stand in the way of
sustainable development in a local jurisdiction. Evidently, whilst the buck
stops with you in your small corner, that corner cannot be your sole domain. We
can only succeed if we pool our resources towards a common goal.
Yesterday in the National Assembly, we pointed to some limited and yet
important progress we have been able to realise in the context of Project
Consolidate. On the verifiable account we gave yesterday, it is clear that we
have been able to achieve accelerated delivery in hitherto poorly performing
municipalities. It is these achievements which give us the confidence that our
national objective of universalising access to important basic services during
the current term of local government is realisable. It also gives us the
confidence that the challenge to stay on course regarding the Millennium
Development Goals can be overcome.
When I saw the resource outlay for our local government sphere, the
readiness of provincial and national departments to assist, as well as the
pledges and actual support we received and continue to receive from
organisations of various types, it became clear that the list of excuses is
diminishing.
If one of our 283 municipalities fails, it will be for no reason other than
that the local leadership (both political and managerial) did not do what they
have to do. We must do whatever we do, cognisant of the fact that we are
responsible for our decisions including those taken against our better
judgement or those taken in the spur of the moment.
When I started, I drew parallels between the broader African challenges and
the challenges we face in the relatively narrower national context. A recently
published report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(the OECD) spoke of:
An African windfall arising from a Chinese-driven super cycle and it warned
that the continent shall have lost an important opportunity if it does not use
the windfall for poverty relief and diversification away from commodities.
We have succeeded to steer the macro-economy into positive territory
windfall.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Provincial and Local Government
25 May 2006
Source: Department of Provincial and Local Government (http://www.dplg.gov.za)
