Local Government Association (SALGA) Provincial Membersâ Assembly
12 May 2006
Programme Director, Namane Masemola,
SALGA National Chairperson Mayor Amos Masondo and other members of your the
national executive here present,
SALGA Acting Provincial Chairperson and SALGA Mpumalanga executive
members,
The Mayor of Mbombela, honourable Justice Nsibande,
District and local mayors,
Honourable councillors,
Municipal managers and officials,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen;
It is once again an honour and an inspiration to have been invited to be
part of the opening of your annual membersâ assembly in our province Mpumalanga
this year.
It behoves me, on behalf of our province, to take this opportunity to
congratulate you all most heartily for having been elected by your respective
municipalities to represent your communities in our local councils for the next
five years. You undoubtedly distinguished yourselves by succeeding to be
endorsed in what was a fiercely contested election.
This is an eloquent statement of the confidence communities have in you and
we wish you all the success in your fresh duties.
Programme Director, let me proceed and immediately welcome to this forum our
councillors from Bushbuckridge who are now part of the Mpumalanga local
government movement. We are under no doubt that their participation as part of
us will go a long way in making us wise and enriching our collective
experience.
We have observed before that the importance of local government derives
largely from its position as the critical interface between the government
service delivery system and the people. It is with this understanding of the
importance of local government in mind that we have to tackle the challenge of
halving poverty and unemployment by 2014.
It is for this reason that each and every ward councillor must be the
custodian of all the critical information on economic activities, unemployment
and poverty in their ward. In fact a ward councillor needs to be familiar with
the poverty profile of the families in their area. At least he or she should
know the most indigent families in their area and be certain that they are
accessing social security grants. That is the most tangible form of public
service.
Over and above familiarity with the poverty profile of their ward, each ward
councillor needs to be familiar with new economic investment activities and
trends as well as growth potential in their ward and municipality. It is only
when such information is at our fingertips that we can influence council to
develop informed strategic Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) and Local
Economic Development (LEDs).
In the medium to long term our policies must create a change in the profile
of our population, making more and more people employable and less dependent on
government grants. It is in this area that councillors must wear the important
hat of facilitators of economic growth. There is consensus in government and in
the private sector that for us to undermine poverty and unemployment the way we
wish to our economy must average six percent growth between now and 2014. For
councillors to be able to play the catalytic role towards economic growth, they
need to appreciate all elements of their local economies.
It is not enough, though important, to simply be aware of the spatial
disparities in economic development inherited from apartheid. There is no doubt
that we inherited spatial disparities that created a disjuncture between the
location of people and the location of economic activities. The area of Moloto,
which supplies labour to economic activities in Tshwane is the best indication
of this disjuncture.
For us to exercise leadership, however, we must also recognise that globally
some form of spatial disparity in development is actually a norm. We must also
recognise that development is a movement away from the rural economy to greater
urbanisation. In fact in the case of our country, studies show that not only
are the majority of poor people located in the high value generating urban
areas but the migration pattern is continuing in that direction from poor rural
locations. In addition, most of the wealth of the country is produced in a
small percentage of the countryâs area where these poor are located. More
specifically, 93 percent of the national economy is located on 30 percent of
the land. It is no wonder that 79 percent of the population including 70
percent of those living below the minimum living level, lives in this 30
percent where there is a perceived potential for livelihoods.
Our province is no exception. The majority of our population including the
majority of the poor is located in areas of high economic activities such as
Nelspruit and its surroundings, the Witbank-Middleburg area and surroundings,
and Secunda and surroundings. These realities of urbanisation and spatial
economic disparities pose a real development dilemma. In our quest to
facilitate economic growth we need to recognise that urban areas provide the
greatest potential for growth while at the same time tackling rural poverty. It
is a dilemma of balancing current considerations with future trends.
Where resources are limited, difficult choices and decisions have to be made
and that is the hallmark of leadership. Redirecting investments to poor areas
with little potential for growth might not necessarily be the most effective
way of spending limited resources. The realities of spatial development
including migration and urbanisation suggest that expenditure in poor areas
should be more of a social nature targeted at poverty alleviation rather than
economic investment which has little potential for growth and labour
absorption.
Colleagues and comrades, the reason why I am belabouring this matter is
simply because as we all know the challenge of local government during your
term of office is to be agents for economic development and growth.
To the extent that the quest for the six percent growth to halve poverty and
unemployment is premised largely on infrastructure development, we must avoid
the dissipation of our infrastructure spending efforts through scattered
unfocussed spending. It has been stated before in various forums that greater
impact will be achieved if a school is built in the same area where a road is
being built and a clinic is planned for. We have a short space of time in which
to ramp our economy to higher levels of growth. Our councillors must begin to
play a more catalytic role in facilitating higher levels of growth. Unless we
work smart to maximise the impact of our expenditure on infrastructure even if
our budgets were to be doubled we would see little impact.
Programme Director, recently we accomplished a significant initiative in the
history of government relations with business. We recently co-hosted a
conference with National African Federated Chamber of Commerce (NAFCOC) aimed
at addressing the many disappointments we have encountered as government with
predominantly emerging business from whom we procure goods and services. The
aim was to strengthen the partnership between government and business for
efficient and effective service delivery. I am happy that a sizeable number of
local government leadership and managers participated.
We believe that the challenges that the Loskop Conference addressed,
permeate local government as well. This interaction with business proved
valuable because it allowed government to look at the supply chain process and
address the impact it has on service providersâ ability to deliver what is
expected of them. Business in turn articulated their challenges and flaws.
One of the key lessons from the conference has been the extent to which the
supply chain system in government can either build or destroy small, medium and
micro enterprises (SMMEs). In the process of procuring goods and services we
have a responsibility to build growing sustainable businesses and not to ruin
emerging businesses.
Further work on identified problem areas will be done in order to come up
with new recommendations that all should adopt.
One of the challenges we are going to grapple with in the next five years is
to achieve the alignment of development plans of all three spheres of
government. National has promised us the requisite support in order to realise
this critical imperative.
I wish to take advantage of the platform of this membersâ assembly of SALGA
in the province once again to record our appreciation of the coordinating work
your organisation is sponsoring to make our municipalities and councils
function better.
This function is going to progressively increase if the face of our province
is to transform evenly over the next five years.
Our programme for the next five years is unambiguous; electricity for all;
water and sanitation for all. Our politics are about economic development and
the roll out of this infrastructure. We must become activists and self made
experts on this infrastructure roll out.
I wish you some very fruitful deliberations and hope that you emerge from
this conference with higher quality plans that will change the lives of our
people.
I thank you!
Issued by: Office of the Premier, Mpumalanga Provincial Government
12 May 2006
