the Minister for Provincial and Local Government, Sidney Mufamadi
20 June 2007
Madam Deputy Chairperson
Honourable MECs
Esteemed representatives of South African Local Government Association
(Salga)
Delegates
Honourable members
1 Introduction
Exactly two weeks to the day, we tabled the Budget Vote of the Department of
Provincial and Local Government in the National Assembly. We opened the policy
debate with a speech which focused on the following:
* A synoptic overview of the Human Capacity Deployment Programme and the
impact this has had on the performance of local government and ultimately, on
the lives of our people.
* The Status of Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) for the financial years
2004/05, generation of municipal IDPs which will guide our work in the
forthcoming financial year.
* A Snapshot Update on the Nodal Economic Programme and on that occasion of the
Policy Debate in the National Assembly, we emphasised the crucial importance of
drawing the correct lessons from the outcomes of our earlier endeavours. We
further postulated that: experience over the last 13 years of democratic
government has produced a logical case for local government policy review and
for consideration of steps to establish a coherent policy framework for
provincial government.
2. What lessons from previous endeavours?
As at the time of our debate in the National Assembly, 29 organisations had
taken part in the hands-on support programme. We are most grateful for the
generosity and efforts of these organisations. The department has advised me
that many more organisations have indicated readiness to join in. These deserve
our expression of appreciation in anticipation.
Thanks to this intervention, appreciable progress was recorded with respect
to the following:
* a substantial removal of service delivery backlogs
* the realisation of improvements with respect to Municipal Financial Viability
and Management
* the provision of technical capacity to support infrastructure
development.
In order to successfully take advantage of opportunities offered by this
hands-on support, two elements have to be in place:
* local government must accelerate efforts at getting its own house order
* we have to be more precise as to how local government is to be imbricated
into the total synergy of our multi-sphere system of government.
Already in the 46 districts, all the district municipalities,
intergovernmental structures which are visualised in the Intergovernmental
Relations Act of 2005 are in place. The introduction of these structures has
the effect of reshaping institutional dynamics towards more effective
governance and developmental ends. Thus, we have seen that a combination of the
mobilisation of resources from outside government as well as better alignment
of governmental resources through more integrated inter-sphere planning,
budgeting and execution, has produced a new type of the opportunity challenge
nexus.
The challenge we now face is one of finding ways by which to tilt the
outcomes of our recent endeavours in favour of the opportunity side. The main
thrust of our efforts to date, was directed towards helping local government
acquire the requisite institutional capacities to discharge its constitutional
obligations to the people. However, this must be seen as but one element of the
government-widespread effort to strengthen our institutional capacity across
all the three spheres of government. We take this opportunity, again to report
to parliament that thanks to the IDPs' engagement process, we now have a better
idea as to the national and provincial support actions which are needed to help
enhance the quality of municipal IDPs. More importantly, these IDPs are, in
practice, fast becoming a forceful call to arms through which local, provincial
and national spheres of government are aggressively promoting the goals of
nation-building, social cohesion and economic rejuvenation from below.
The Department of Provincial and Local Government (DPLG) has now initiated
an IDP National Assessment Process and this has improved the prospects for the
profound enhancement of the quality of our work across all the three spheres of
government. This process must also be seen as an integral part of our
institutionalised mechanism for monitoring the implementation of our Government
Wide Five-Year Local Government Strategic Agenda. In this regard, it is our
pleasure to report that provinces have made impressive progress towards
establishing provincial Monitoring and Evaluation Units in the offices of the
Premier and the provincial departments of local government.
Madam Deputy Chairperson, at the National Assembly we also spoke about the
rural development and urban renewal nodes which, as we all know, are home to
many of our country's poorest people and therefore, sites of formidable
development challenges. We spoke of the Maruleng and Bushbuckridge nodes which
are the current pilot sites for our programme of building capacity for economic
development and poverty reduction in the nodes. We reported that in its first
year of execution, the pilot facilitated R4 million in direct business
development support and that:
* it saved R41 million worth of investment in agriculture, agri-processing
and tourism
* it created 766 job opportunities
* it created 18 small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) linkages to
commercial markets
* it conducted four community- private-public sector partnerships.
We again call on all development stakeholders, ranging from Salga, national
and provincial government, state-owned enterprises, private sector
organisations to the institution of traditional leadership, fully to
internalise the demonstration effect of these successes and to translate them
into the universal experience of other areas which were similarly historically
neglected.
3. Spatial Restructuring
Madam Deputy Chairperson and Honourable Members, the advent of democracy
also saw government introducing a process of state spatial restructuring. The
erstwhile ten Bantustans, four provincial administrations and more than 1 200
municipal entities were rescaled into new political and economic spaces. The
new configuration seeks to move the country away from the institutionalised
regressive politics of ethnic balkanisation and the economic marginalisation
which was embedded in the Apartheid spatial planning. During the process
leading to the enactment of the Constitution Twelfth Amendment Act of 2005 and
the Cross-Boundary Municipalities Laws Repeal and Related Matters of 2005, we
undertook to pay special attention to former cross boundary municipalities.
This would entail:
* the formalisation of protocols to govern a smooth transition
* ensuring a practical and effective response to circumstances that may impact
negatively on governance and service delivery at the municipal level.
In this regard we wish to report that the local government equitable share
(LGES) has been realigned to the new provincial boundaries and the allocations
adjusted for the 2007/08 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF). At the
commencement of the new fiscal year, all provinces would be receiving these
allocations and this will enable them to take responsibility for functions and
the provisions of services in the areas of the new municipalities. The former
Cross-Boundary Municipalities (CBMs) also benefited from the additional funding
to the equitable share baseline allocated from the vertical division of
revenue, and were shielded from any negative impacts of the adjustments to the
population, powers and functions that were affected to the equitable share
formula in making allocations for 2006/07. This is in addition to the R548 862
million that had been allocated to CBMs as at 31 March 2007 for purposes of
facilitating implementation of municipal infrastructure projects. Finally, we
have deployed experts in the former CBMs who are providing both infrastructure
and institutional support. Institutional support includes financial, economic
development and integrated development planning type support. National
Treasury, dplg, Salga as well as provincial and national sector departments
will upscale efforts for continued service provision.
4. Policy Initiatives
It is clear that many of the advances we made in the last three years were a
result of special rapid capacity enhancement measures which we introduced as
and when they were deemed necessary. Indeed, others were a result of the system
of government itself achieving requisite levels of maturity. A critical
implication of this is that we need to determine whether or not the current
governance and development context requires a rethink of aspects of local
government policy which was in any case, formulated in the period 1993 and
1998. We need to ask ourselves whether some of the inertness we have
experienced so far is path-dependent or perhaps it is a function of
retrogressive routines we evolved since 1994. These and other related questions
have come to light following the Local Government Review of 2005 which shows
challenges that need to be addressed. The lessons learnt through Project
Consolidate have brought these matters into even sharper relief.
It is clear that we do not as yet have a settled model, in the necessary
detail, to efficiently handle the inevitable contestation over powers and
functions within and between spheres of government. We must establish a policy
framework, which is clear enough to enable us to navigate the necessary tension
between processes of recentralising some aspects of power and those of
decentralising others. In view of this, the January 2007 Cabinet Lekgotla
instructed the Department of Provincial and Local Government to initiate two
separate but related processes:
* a Review of the White Paper on Local Government (WPLG)
* formulation of a White Paper on Provincial Government (WPPG); this has not
existed up to now; there has been a constitutional provision but no policy
framework.
The two processes are about to begin. They are meant to span a two-year
period. They will unfold in a three-phase process:
* Firstly, it will be the publication of questions in July 2007 to provide
an overview of the major issues on which policy is required.
* Secondly, there shall be a continued extended research to examine these
issues in more detail and provide possible policy options in a Green Paper
which will be published towards the end of 2007.
* Lastly, following gazetting, public comment and feedback, the final drafting
of the two White papers will commence in early 2008.
Deputy Chairperson and Honourable Members, we call on all South Africans to
fully embrace the opportunity created by these processes and participate in
helping shape a governance system which, needless-to-say shall have immensely
profound implications for all of us.
Thank you.
Issued by: Department of Provincial and Local Government
20 June 2007
Source: Department of Provincial and Local Government (http://www.thedplg.gov.za)
