annual Vuna Awards Ceremony
12 December 2006
Programme Director, Ms Nikiwe Bikitsha
Our host acting Mayor of Johannesburg, Councillor Nkele Ntingane
Honourable Minister of Arts and Culture, Dr Pallo Jordan
Deputy Minister Nomatyala Hangana
Honourable Premiers of Mpumalanga, Mr Thabang Makwetla, and Sello Moloto of
Limpopo
MECs from our nine provinces
Mayors and Councillors from all our country's municipalities
Members of Parliament and Members of Provincial Legislatures
Traditional Leaders of our people here present
Representatives of our Partner-Organisations the Development Bank of Southern
Africa, the National Productivity Institute and the South African Local
Government Association
Directors-General and other senior officials from our three spheres of
government
Managers and other officials from over three spheres of government
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Allow me to join the Acting mayor in welcoming you to the city of
Johannesburg. I do so without seeking to be party to the submission of the
city's credentials to the Vuna Awards Adjudication panel.
On behalf of the Ministry and the Department of Provincial and Local
Government (dplg), as well as the co-sponsors of the Vuna Awards, the
Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), the National Productivity Institute
(NPI) and South African Local Government Association (SALGA), I wish to
acknowledge this overwhelming outpouring of solidarity which is manifested by
the attendance of so many esteemed guests who come from far and near. You have
come to celebrate with us, on an evening that belongs to the municipalities who
felt confident enough to throw their names into the hat.
When we introduced a new system of local government six years and seven days
ago, we did so in order to reaffirm our commitment to give the assault on
poverty and underdevelopment, pride of place in public policy. To that end, we
reduced the number of municipal entities from the 1 200 that were busy going
nowhere, to the 283 municipal jurisdictions which promise to become spaces of
opportunity for all our people.
What we said on the second anniversary of the Vuna Awards, remains as true
today as it was then: municipalities are variable in their capacity to wrestle
with challenges. Some of our municipalities continue to struggle under the
weight of challenges whilst others are indeed distinguishing themselves as
pall-bearers of the national effort to put our development trajectory on firm
anchorages. We celebrate these municipalities because their achievements so
far, confirm the reliability of the accelerated progress which our people
expect from government.
We are here this evening, to celebrate local government practitioners �
public representatives and administrative cadres alike, who are fighting
deprivation with passion and professionalism, putting human welfare at the
centre of all the work that they do. These are icons of excellent performance
whose laudable deeds are worthy of emulation by all of us.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to congratulate all those who participated in
the provincial Vuna Awards during the month of November. We commend them for
sharing with us their achievements, thereby making it possible, in the present,
for all of us to peer into a future of bright possibilities.
The last Vuna Awards contest took place when our special programme of
support for local government, "Project Consolidate," was little over a month
old. We introduced Project Consolidate for the express purpose of giving
municipalities access to a much larger pool of expertise in various functional
areas of governance. Indeed, the project gave us the platform to harness the
civil sphere, in its various dimensions, to the national task of making our
country, a better place to live and do business in.
If today the prospect of inclusive development is looking brighter than ever
before, it is thanks to the generosity of many non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) that gave so much of what they have. They committed their knowledge base
to the empowerment of those of our people who lived through the devastating
effects of the exclusionary policies of the past.
We have mobilised and physically deployed experts to 61% of the Project
Consolidate municipalities. The deployees possess a combination of skills which
give them the possibility to add value in the following functional areas:
* service delivery and infrastructure development
* local economic development
* municipal financial viability
* municipal transformation and institutional development
* good corporate governance.
We have also been able to get positive responses from at least two private
sector companies who have come to understand that well managed local
jurisdictions are indispensable to their own bottom-lines. These are providing
project management training to local government officials and the impact of
their work is beginning to be felt. In all, our deployment per province ranges
from 36% in KwaZulu-Natal to 93% in Mpumalanga. The distributional pattern of
deployment per focus area is 60% technical, 38% in financial management and
0,7% in local economic development planning.
Comparative data gleaned through our monitoring and evaluation systems shows
that a significant number of our municipalities have posted impressive rates of
performance. For instance, out of a total of 179 water services authorities at
local government level, 165 are providing to some, nine are providing to all
and five are not providing free basic water at all. With respect to those
households that are indigent, 74% of the total national indigent baseline is
receiving free basic water. In addition, R6,75 billion has been committed to
municipalities in the 2006/07 financial year, benefiting 238 municipalities.
Some of the projects initiated in terms of this programme entail public-works
packages that provide additional engines for growth.
Needless to say, the programmes are giving impetus to (dplg) advocacy
function which stresses both the need to support local government and to ensure
that our three spheres of government function as a seamless system of delivery.
In this regard, I wish to record our profound appreciation for the
responsiveness displayed by some sister-departments. Already, at least two
sister-departments have formulated sector master plans which constitute
frameworks for inter-sphere co-ordination.
Many more national and provincial departments have taken part in the
Integrated Development Plans (IDP) engagement process in 2005 as well as in
2006. Thus, we see in practice, developmental concerns at municipal level
animating operational changes, which take the conduct of intergovernmental
relations to a qualitatively new level.
Madam Programme Director, ladies and gentlemen, I am convinced that on
current trends, we are bucking the continental trend: as a country we are on
course to meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving levels of poverty by
2014. Of course, this long-term, high-minded goal begins with such demonstrable
steps as we have already undertaken in our national context.
However, as a result of our having succeeded to overcome some of the old
problems, new ones have sprung into life. For instance, in the nodal
municipalities we have significantly increased the number of people who are
beneficiaries of our social security system. Our focus on poverty alleviation,
legitimate though it is, has tended to precede from presumptions that
under-call the potential of these rural and urban development nodes to work
their way into the productive domain.
Working with the Business Trust, we are completing a process of drawing up
economic profiles for the 13 rural development nodes and the 8 urban renewal
nodes. The profiles will form the basis of Action Plans to guide the work of
all spheres of government (including state-owned enterprises), in these
geographic spaces. It has become urgently necessary for us to find innovative
ways of moving nodal communities from reliance on welfare hand-outs to active
involvement in productive economic activity. It means that our package of
support measures for nodal municipalities will prioritise assistance in
entrepreneurship mentoring, financial management and economic development
planning.
In terms of our focus going forward, all this means that the post-Project
Consolidate scenario cannot be characterised by the scaling-back of the
baseline of support for our local government. We shall have to get better
organised, equip ourselves with the institutional and governance instruments
necessary for improving the quality of support to local government. At the same
time, municipalities must improve their own capacity for autonomous action.
They need to prepare for the day when they may have to be on their own!
Ladies and gentlemen, all of you who graced this occasion deserve my best
wishes for a restful festive season. Please, take a well-deserved rest so that
next year, you can come back fresh enough to get down to the business of
forging a better future for our country and our people.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Provincial and Local Government
12 December 2006
Source: Department of Provincial and Local Government (http://www.dplg.gov.za)
