Thank you programme Director
MECs Executive Mayors, Mayors, Speakers and Chief Whips; All Councillors present here today
Traditional leadership
Government Officials from all spheres of government;
Invited guests
Ladies and gentlemen.
Good day!
It is with profound gratitude and pleasure to be afforded this exceptional opportunity to address this august ceremony of the official inauguration of the new Mayor of Makhado Local Municipality, Cde Mutavhatsindi.
I would like to take this opportunity at the outset to congratulate the new mayor on his appointment. We welcome you to this third phase of democratically established local government. We consider municipalities as strategic centres to drive forward and actualise our service delivery objectives in this part of the province.
We are not only here to inaugurate our Mayor, but we are also here to thank our former Mayor for the immense contribution in building better lives for our people.
To the new Mayor, we are confident that you will live up to the hopes and aspirations of the many people who elected you as their public representatives. These are our people who remain destitute and who do not have access to basic services such as water, electricity, health care and decent houses. We want all councillors to be concerned about issues of service delivery and serve our people with respect, honour and dedication. Our municipalities must ensure that quality services are delivered to the right beneficiaries on time and professionally.
We expect that each of you bring a conscious desire and determination to execute your responsibilities to the best of your ability in advancing the interest of your respective communities. In other words, councillors are people who are supposed to be accountable and committed, dedicating themselves to uplifting our communities for the better. You assumed office with a deep and clear sense of your obligations to the communities you serve. You have taken up this noble calling of a municipal councillor knowing the challenges well that you cannot and will not betray the trust of the people who have put you in office. These past local government elections, we were called to reaffirm our values and commitments, to hold them against a hard reality and see how we are measuring up, to the legacy of our for bearers, and the promise of future generations.
Once again the people renewed their mandate and said “The ANC leads, the ANC lives”. It is in this light that we should concede as government that we owe our people a service. We therefore urge all of you to commit to Government‘s priorities of accelerating service delivery in order to meet national targets. These key priorities are: Education, Health, Rural development and agrarian reform, the fight against crime and creating decent work.
We expect all municipalities to operate within the ambits of their respective turnaround strategies. Local Government is an important sphere of government with a clear mandate. This means municipalities are an intergral part of Government and must operate and cooperate with both the provincial and National Government. We have a constitutional obligation to support and strengthen the capacity of municipalities to manage their affairs, to exercise their powers and to perform their functions expertly.
The year 1996 marked a very significant milestone in the development of our democracy. For this was the time when we held the first local government elections in our country. Indeed, this was a practical step at creating and institutionalising a cadre of development activities whose sole purpose was to breathe life to the promises contained in our Constitution.
From 1996 to today, our system of local government has gone through many years of challenges. And significantly, in the year 2000, we could safely say that, that was the period when we sealed off that process of establishing local government as we then had the first democratically formulated wall-to-wall municipalities
We will all agree that out of that history, a new era is in the making. This is a new time, from which an effective, efficient, accountable and developmental local government is emerging. Many among us who have been following the transformation of the local sphere of our governance will agree that, unlike earlier on, our local governance system is beginning to experience an important evolution – away from the problems of the past, into the possibility of a better and prosperous future. That being said, ladies and gentlemen, let our failures be our teachers than our undertakers.
Our people took to the polls amid a great deal of resentment, uncertainty, distrust, hopelessness, apathy – all which was levelled at us as the leadership, owing to our weaknesses in keeping our promise of delivering a good service to our people. Thus this new born era of local Government becomes a critical moment because we have since learnt many lessons and identified gaps that exist in our system. We can confidently say that we are now well positioned to take the challenge and deliver on the mandate we are given by this district and the province at large.
The African National Congress (ANC) Government has delivered much needed services to all our people, however much still needs to be done. The public applauds the services government is providing but they yearn for an improvement and accelerated delivery of services. We certainly can exceed our current service delivery watermark where in the province 83.6% of households have access to running water, 60% of households have access to decent sanitation and 83% of households have access to electricity.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have adopted a Local Government turn-around strategy, which in simple terms, tells us to do things differently. The aim of the strategy is to restore the confidence of the majority of our people in our municipalities and rebuild and improve the basic requirements for a functional, responsive, effective, efficient and accountable developmental local government. To make the implementation and monitoring possible, we have set aside 32.8% of our budget in order to realise the 2014 clean audit goal. It is through the same strategy that we are determined to eliminate the variety of ills that led us to reach some chaotic state of affairs that characterised some of our municipalities recently. We once more congratulate our two municipalities that received clean audits being Fetakgomo and Waterberg.
Fetakgomo municipality is the only municipality that has received a clean audit report for two years in succession. Their secret is simple: committed, visionary, law abiding, knowledgeable and collective leadership. We hope that other municipalities will emulate these two and use them as benchmarks instead of visiting municipalities abroad.
My department will not only build shelters for our people, but will also support our municipalities to realise the basic needs of our people. The department will also focus on attaining the ideals of operation clean audit and municipal financial systems, demarcation of sites and development of land use management schemes. Part of our immediate responsibility is to assist municipalities to comply with audit regulations, and to adhere to all provisions of Municipal Finance Management Act, Municipal Systems Act, Intergovernmental Relations Act and Intergovermental Fiscal Act and other relevant acts. We indeed need to do things differently in local government to turn the tide ahead of the year 2014.
The Operation Clean Audit 2014 campaign, which is just a financial year away, must be further intensified to promote clean audits by 2014. Makhado local municipality has been the worst performing municipality for the past eight financial years. There is no time and the work must begin in earnest right now. We must ensure that by 2014, all municipalities in the province achieve clean audits on their Annual Financial Statements. To this end, we will be working very closely with municipalities in ensuring that we strengthen and instil good financial management on a province-wide basis. This is our sincere commitment and no excuses will be tolerated in this regard. We must all be crusaders of good governance. Our clean audit goals are an objective we must achieve.
For this goal to be realised, it is imperative that we have municipal councils that perform effective oversight. This means that councillors have to ensure that they address internal control weaknesses, non-compliance and certain governance matters such as the effectiveness of internal audit units and committees. All audit queries raised by Auditor General must be attended to with immediate effect. Gone are the days when audit remain unattended to year after year.
One amongst many of your responsibilities as a political leadership is to provide oversight and monitoring. This remains a major challenge not only in this municipality, but in many of our municipalities in the province. To the new mayor and all councillors, never allow yourselves to be spoon-fed with information by administrators. Never be lazy recipients of information. You must be critical of all information you receive.
You can only be critical if you make it your business to understand what is happening in the municipality. The foremost blue print document of the municipality is the Integrated Development Plan (IDP). The law requires you to develop and adopt the IDP as council. Coupled with the IDP is budget. It naturally follows that you should know all the activities of the municipality as they are guided by your creature which is the IDP.
Year after year, the Auditor General has found that councillors interfere with the Supply Chain Management processes or the appointment of staff in the organisation. Councillors are forbidden from partaking in Supply Chain Management processes or appointment of staff, except section 57 managers. It is your responsibility as the head of this municipality to ensure that councillors know their bounds.
We have in collaboration with South African Local Government Association (SALGA) inducted all municipal councillors on all legislation governing this all important sphere of government. There should be no excuses!
Ladies and gentlemen, this democratic government continues to enhance our institution of Traditional Leadership. The department will support traditional leaders by ensuring that they work with our local municipalities to ensure that democracy is deepened and that tribal land is used for the benefit of poor people in our province. We call upon our new breed of councillors to ensure that this key stakeholder is afforded a royal reverence as we continue to work with Traditional Leaders to speed up service delivery and develop stronger, safer and healthier communities. As a province, we are continuing with our efforts to provide tools of trade for this institution to operate effectively.
We must never be in competition with Traditional Leaders. We must complement one another. Equally, Traditional Leaders must never undermine the Legislative Authority of our municipalities. We are mindful of the damage that has been inflicted by apartheid on this important institution. We are committed to rebuilding this institution and we have thus far laid a firm foundation to afford this institution its rightful place in society although much more still needs to be done.
Ladies and gentlemen, one pertinent question this new leadership must deal with is how to do things differently to ensure faster change in our communities knowing fully well that you will be judged harshly by history if you do not take stern action to stem any elements of maladministration, corruption, fraud, laziness and lack of strong oversight by councillors.
Indeed many of the difficulties we encounter will require maximum unity and cooperation between and among us deployees or representatives. You have an obligation towards each other. As councillors, you must support the Mayor and collectively ensure that the administration under the leadership of Municipal Managers functions better and properly. Unity of purpose and intent will allow us to employ our collective wisdom in navigating our municipalities through stormy waters for the benefit of our people. We must not allow personal differences to obstruct the advances we have as a district, province and nation.
We implore all of you to work together with members of the public towards building more prosperous and cohesive communities. Let the ordinary citizens of this municipality be the real winners who will stand to benefit by identifying service delivery gaps within your respective areas. I am sure that you will agree with me when I say the hallmark of a caring leader is the extent to which he/she places the interests of the people first.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would have done a disservice to the people of Makhado if I do not sketch out our expectations as Government from the new broom and the collective. You are very fortunate because you are joining the municipality while it is wrapping its business for the financial year 2011/12. You have an opportunity to influence the strategic plans for implementation in the New Year. You will not have the excuse that you have found these plans.
You and the collective must satisfactorily resolve all outstanding audit queries by no later than the end of the financial year, receive an unqualified audit opinion for the financial year 12/13. You and the collective must reinvigorate the staff morale which is at its lowest. Appoint both Municipal Manager and CFO who have the requisite skill, expertise, competence and qualifications.
You and the collective must accelerate service delivery; redouble your efforts to provide our people with water, roads, sanitation, electricity and other services. You can only be different from the rest if you introduce forward and integrated planning. This will lead to increased and efficient expenditure of your budget. You will continue to dream if you will still be trapped in the mentality of planning, packaging and implementation of projects in the same financial year. It does not work, it will never work.
Above all we expect you to work as a team, not in competition, to work as a unit, not in silos, to complement one another, not against each other, to guide one another, not to mislead each other and finally put the interest of the people of Makhado at the forefront.
In conclusion, I wish to emphasise hard and smart work. Let us work hard to build a strong development municipality, which responds to the needs and aspirations of the people, and which works faster, harder and smarter. Let us take cue from that and work hard and always remember that the votes that our people have given us shall never be a blank cheque by which those who govern can make of them as they please. We need a local government that is professional, service delivery driven and free of all the ills in carrying out our mandate of creating a better life for all.
We wish you success in your responsibilities and we are certain that our support will assist all of you in being effective and efficient in the manner in which you carry out your mandate of service to our people. Emerge everyday a determined force to be reckoned with in the implementation of realistic service delivery and undertake to be more accountable to communities.
The past is behind, learn from it. The future is ahead, prepare for it. The present is here, live it. Let us continue to make local government everyone’s business.
I thank you!
