S Mufamadi: South African Local Government Association Members
Assembly

25 June 2006

Programme Director
The Chairperson of SALGA, Councillor Amos Masondo
Premiers S’bu Ndebele and Edna Molewa
Mayor Obed Mlaba
Honourable MECs
Honourable members of the NA and the NCOP
Distinguished guests
Esteemed Members of the SALGA National Assembly
Ladies and gentlemen

I cannot let this opportunity pass without congratulating the organisers of
this ‘National Members Assembly’ for their keen sense of timing. When you
reconvene tomorrow to continue with the business of this Assembly, you will be
doing so exactly 51 years to the day, after 3 000 men and women met in Kliptown
(Johannesburg) in order to give us an important landmark in the history of our
country. They met as delegates to the historic ‘Congress of the People’ to put
forward the alternative perspective according to which a normal society needed
to be organised. Driven by undying loyalty to their country, and abiding love
for the people, they sought to overthrow the Apartheid paradigm whose central
purpose was to construct the overwhelming majority of our people into
inferiority.

In one voice, they denounced the then organs of state power whose organising
logic was to manage the exclusion of the majority from mainstream political,
economic and social opportunities.

Those of us who cherish the cause of freedom, are moved by the exploits of
the “Class of 1955”, to honour their courage and their determination. We know
that the road which they travelled was hard and stormy. We know that their
resilience in the face of adversity, has issued into the reality of a new South
Africa. Theirs is a perspective whose time is upon us, shaping the dynamics of
the new South Africa. The optimism of their language was prescient. Evidence of
this is the fact that this General Member’s Assembly of elected local
representatives of our people, takes place in conditions of freedom. The
existence of this Assembly serves to confirm the reality that what the freedom
fighters of 1955 envisioned then, has indeed come to pass.

Ladies and gentlemen, you who are assembled here today are the second
generation of local, public representatives elected under a truly democratic
local government dispensation. History has entrusted you with the
responsibility to negotiate such obstacles as stand in the way of local
government attaining the purposes of its establishment. Not only do you have
the privilege of building on the foundations laid in the aftermath of the 1994
democratic breakthrough, but also, you have the benefit of a privilege which is
not often available to practitioners: the benefit of hindsight.

The Councillor Induction Training Programme, which is organised jointly by
the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) and the Department for
Provincial and Local Government (DPLG), is intended to familiarise you with the
system within and through which you will work in order to discharge your
obligations to the country and the people. The idea therefore, is to equip both
councillors and managers with the ability to understand and navigate the
governance and developmental landscape.

As I said earlier, given the point at which you are coming into the system,
you will need to familiarize yourselves with the original conception of the
trajectory of local government transformation. In the process, you will see the
mixed results of our efforts, some of our municipalities have done exceedingly
well, while others have made modest achievements. Yet others have been battling
in an attempt to carry out their constitutionally-mandated responsibilities.
Patterns of deviance must be studied and fully understood. Bearing in mind
also, the fact that success depends on not allowing wrong practices (be they
practices by councillors or by civil servants) to escalate out of political
control.

Notwithstanding the many difficulties experienced by local government in the
last five-and-half years, some of our recent successes have enhanced our
confidence in our collective ability to meaningfully advance towards our goal
of bringing about universal access to basic services. For instance:

* Between February 2005 and May 2006, we reduced the number of households
that use buckets for sanitation from 291 888 to 165 962
* As we speak, 72% of households in the country already have access to
electricity. This was the picture as at March 2005.

These and the numerous other positive trends were buttressed by steady, yet
decisive achievements following the interventions we made and are continuing to
make, in targeted municipalities. For instance the JS Moroka and the Matjhabeng
municipalities are now firmly set to achieve the levels of financial viability
which have eluded them for a long time. When the Auditor-General joins this
Assembly later, I am sure he will confirm that the Mafikeng municipality, after
failing to submit financial statements for five years, has now, for the first
time, submitted financial statements.

Working together with National Treasury and several national and provincial
sectoral departments, we are succeeding to raise the capacity of municipalities
to spend their allocations intended for the development of municipal
infrastructure. As a matter of fact, as at April 2006, 100% of the municipal
infrastructure grants earmarked for the period had been transferred to
municipalities and the rate of spending stood at 73%.

The inter-sphere co-operation we have been forging around implementation of
municipal infrastructure targets and the positive results arising there from,
have served to crystallise the relevance of what national and provincial
government departments do day-to-day, to the mandate of local government. It
teaches us the salutary lesson that we must visualize development as an outcome
of a joint effort, a partnership which transcends the ‘them’ and ‘us’
distinction.

Ladies and gentlemen, these positive trends can only be sustained if SALGA
and the DPLG principally, are fully conscious of their responsibility to and
within, our entire system of government. These two role players have to fortify
their place at the centre of the intergovernmental process. They must place
themselves in a position better to co-ordinate inter sphere planning, budgeting
and implementation processes. This will enable us to avoid duplication and
unfocused use of resources. Needless-to-say, the two factors have in the past,
impaired optimality of effect.

Indeed because we are becoming better focused as we continue to look for
more effective ways of operating in accordance with the letter and spirit of
our Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act, it is also becoming possible to
harness an unprecedented number of actual and prospective non-governmental
partners, to the now commonly accepted task of providing hands-on support to
our municipalities.

These are responding to our call in part because they can see that we are
getting organised enough to, in turn, enable them to become informed,
public-spirited citizens who can usefully dedicate some of their own resources
to the task of accomplishing the crucially important goal of improving the
functional status of our municipalities.

At this point, I must pause to assure those who constitute the friends of
local government, now in the process of formation, that we dearly appreciate
their association with us. It is indeed reassuring to know that more and more
citizens individual and corporate are actively showing the burning desire to
work with us for the achievement of a prosperous and better South Africa. Some
of the stakeholders who have given lavishly of their many talents and resources
include the First National Bank, Arrivia.com, the Business Trust, Standard
Bank, the Old Mutual Group, Afrikaanse Handel Instituut (AHI), Independent
Development Trust (IDT), INCA Capacity Building Fund, German Technical
Cooperation (GTZ), Bank for Reconstruction and Development (KFW), Department
for International and Development DFID (UK), SAP, the Black Lawyers
Association, the Kellogs Foundation, USAID, the South African Planning
Institute, and the professional engineering associations.

The co-operation between us and these organizations augurs well for our
objective of accelerating growth rates and cultivating allocative patterns
which will increase the share in that growth, of those who were consigned to a
position of marginal existence. The promise to raise growth rates depends on an
ambitious target, namely, the removal of the binding constraints. As
councillors and managers, it surely must be obvious to us that growth in our
areas will crucially depend on attracting investments to these areas.

In this context, the binding constraints which come to mind are things such
as:

* poorly managed towns and cities
* municipalities with labyrinthine administrations
* municipalities with utterly inadequate infrastructure and
* those municipalities who do not come across as being committed to upholding
the certainty of the rule of law.

All these ‘binding constraints’ and others, issue into a material
environment which is inhospitable to growth-inducing investments.

Among the organisations with whom we are co-operating is the Business Trust.
This organisation generously acceded to our request to help conduct a process
of developing economic profiles of municipalities. This economic profiling
process is meant to, inter alia, and provide a firm foundation for the
stakeholder mobilisation towards the convening of economic development summits
in all our district and metropolitan municipalities. These summits have to take
place by no later than the 1st of March 2007. I hope that this Assembly will
direct itself to the task of assisting delegates to make out how to intensify
their efforts in this regard. For those municipalities which may not have
started with the necessary preparations, the time to do so is now. As they go
about their work, they can count on the support which must, and will be given
to them by their partners within our multi-sphered system of government.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have taken this opportunity to come here in person
so that I can be able to express my admiration and warm personal regard to all
of you. I admire your nobility of purpose and your devotion to your work. You
made this commitment to serve being fully aware that the challenges ahead in
the current term of local government are considerable. Like you, I believe that
no obstacle is big enough not to be negotiated out of the way.

The key to success is for all of us to familiarise ourselves with the
document: ‘Strategic Priorities of the Current Term of Local Government’ and
its attendant ‘Implementation Plan’. We must then work backwards to put in
places all the requisites for the attainment of our goal.

If there is one thing I am certain about, it is the certainty of our
success! That success is the only monument we can build to the steadfast
loyalty of the Class of 1955, and to the many sacrifices they made in order to
make this, our country, a worthy place to live in.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Provincial and Local Government
25 June 2006