Honourable Speaker
Honourable Premier of the Western Cape
Provincial Cabinet Colleagues Members of the Provincial Legislature Executive Mayors
Municipal Managers
Partners in local government
Invited guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Speaker, I serve the people of the Western Cape as Minister of Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning and in this regard I ask myself, “What do the people expect of local government? Are they happy with their municipality? If they aren’t, what can I do about it?”
When I talk to people, they tell me they want water that is clean, toilets that flush, roads that are safe, and lights that switch on. They want municipalities that are honest and transparent and trustworthy. They want municipal officials to listen to their problems and do something about them.
What people want, Speaker, is very simple. They want local government that works.
On the 18 May this year, we are closing a five-year chapter of local government and opening a new one. We need to understand what has worked and say, “Well done.” And we need to understand what hasn’t worked and change it.
Let me tell you about some of the things that are working. According to the Universal Household Access to Basic Services (uHABS) Index, 88% of people in the Western Cape have access to basic services, which is the highest in the country. 100% of poor residents have access to free basic services. 22 out of 30 municipalities received unqualified audits. 299 out of 348 ward committees are meeting on a regular basis. .
Speaker, I would like to thank the Executive Mayors and Municipal Managers for helping to make this happen.
But Speaker, we need to aim much higher. We need to aim for the local government of our dreams. All of our residents should have access to basic services. All of our municipalities should have unqualified audits. All of our municipalities should be free of bribes and fraudulent tenders and jobs for pals.
We need to have local government that works for everybody. If we succeed, we will open doors of opportunity. People will access services quickly and efficiently instead of standing in queues and wasting productive time. They will live in safe environments that promote good health. Businesses will grow and flourish because municipal processes are smooth and quick.
Good governance is the pillar
Speaker, local government will only work if we have good governance. This means that our councillors and officials must understand and respect the law and their roles and responsibilities.
I want to put our new councillors on a strong footing right after elections. My department will provide a Helpdesk to support municipalities for “Day 1”, which is the day of the first council meeting when councils must be legally constituted. If this does not happen quickly and legally, then our councils cannot hit the ground running.
It is important for councillors to be equipped for their role. In addition to the induction provided by South African Local Government Association (SALGA), my department will roll out seven programmes for councillors. These programmes will cover rules of order, administrative and legal accountability, oversight, delegations, supply chain management, and leadership. We will also roll out dedicated training programmes for Speakers and Executive Mayors. These courses will help councillors to run their municipalities effectively and accountably.
We are providing these programmes together with SALGA and the Hanns Seidel
Foundation, and I would like to thank them for their valuable partnership. Once the councils are in place, contracts of senior officials will expire and in some cases, new Municipal Managers and Executive Managers may be appointed. Speaker, if we do not have competent managers in place, local government will fall apart. For this reason, I am making recruitment resources available to municipalities so they can appoint competent managers.
I know that in spite of all this support, things may go wrong. One issue that has frustrated me is that I can only intervene when municipalities are on the point of collapse. Often, Audit Committees sound the alarm bell, and the response of some councils has been to fire the Audit Committee.
I made a proposal last year and I am pleased to say that it will soon be tabled at the President’s Coordinating Council. The solution is to make the Audit Committees and the Internal Audit Unit in municipalities independent. Audit Committees should be confirmed by the relevant MEC for local government, and they should only be dismissed with the approval of the MEC. Internal audit units pick up problems as they occur, and I am proposing that they should be paid by National Treasury and report not only to the Municipal Manager but also to the Audit Committee and the MEC for Local Government.
Working with communities
Speaker, local government will only work if it partners with communities. I believe it is very important for municipalities to be constantly speaking and listening to people. But many municipalities do not have a plan about what to communicate or to whom or when or how. My department helped five municipalities to improve their communication strategies in the past year, and we will provide intensive support to six more in the coming year.
But I also want to challenge communities: make a difference in your neighbourhood and work with municipalities. Don’t only ask what a municipality can give you, tell us what you can contribute. We cannot build a better future if we do not build it together.
I really want ward committees to work, and I know they can. This is what it takes to make a ward committee work: it takes committed members who represent their organisations and report back to them, it takes councillors who champion committee issues in council and Portfolio meetings, and it takes municipal officials who follow up on the issues raised in ward committee meetings.
My department has refined a ward committee model that is already working in some municipalities, and we will roll it out after elections during our training of councillors and ward committee members.
Communities can also play a much bigger role in Integrated Development Planning. Very few people attend IDP (Integrated Development Programmes) meetings because the discussion is broad and people are not given the chance to identify projects that can change their neighbourhoods. We will change this through championing neighbourhood development plans in some of the poorest areas. Communities will identify short-term, implementable projects that will be taken forward by dedicated municipal officials.
Access to services and opportunities
Speaker, service delivery is central to government’s mandate. But if you are poor and live far away from government offices, you cannot get access to government services. You cannot apply for an identity documents (ID) or learn how to start your own business, and the door of opportunity is then closed to you.
This is why we have the Thusong programme: it brings the most important government services together in one place, and in some cases it brings those services right to people’s doorsteps.
In the Western Cape we have permanent Thusong centres in 18 local municipalities and in the City. I want to have one in each of our 24 local municipalities, and we will reach this goal by 2014. We just opened a centre in Murraysburg and are opening two more in Bitterfontein and Ceres in the next month. Next year we will help to build two more Centres. We are also training 23 Thusong managers, and this will help them to provide people with a better service.
We also have Thusong mobiles. These mobiles bring government services to where people live in the rural areas. The Community Development Workers (CDWs) are a key part of the mobiles because they inform people about the dates and venues of Mobiles and also identify the services that are needed by residents in a particular area. Next year we will hold 24 mobiles and reach over 100 000 people, which is double the number reached in the past year.
Our CDWs also play an important part in the Thusong Extension Programme. They travel between small towns and Thusong Centres and take application forms and information back and forth. My department is already in the process of expanding this service.
CDWs facilitate access to opportunities in other ways. For example, Piet and Christine Erasmus found out about starting a chicken farm from a CDW. With his help, they took courses, applied for funding from the Department of Agriculture, and started their own business. They now run a successful farm that produces 300 chickens per month and 120 eggs per day and they have recently employed two people. This happened because of Piet’s and Christine’s determination, and it happened because a CDW saw an opportunity and enabled Piet and Christine to take advantage of it.
Municipal Support
Speaker, local government needs support if we want it to work. My approach to municipal support is to ask municipalities what they need to be effective, and my department will then aim to meet that need.
We have just established a “pool of expertise”, which is a list of over 100 service providers that can support municipalities with specific tasks. Our current projects are the review of policies and by-laws, reengineering of internal structures and processes, and improving performance management systems.
In addition, we have established a Municipal Professionals Programme with our donor partner GIZ. This programme has 23 professionals who have worked in municipalities for over 10 years, and a few are already in the process of being deployed to municipalities that have requested them.
One programme that I am very excited about is the Local Government Professionalisation Programme. This programme will enable municipal executives to register as professionals through the Recognition of Prior Learning and to follow a structured mentorship programme. Graduates will have a qualification that is accredited and recognised throughout the country, and over time it will improve the standard, professionalism, and status of municipal management throughout South Africa. We are working in close partnership with universities, South African Local Government Association (SALGA), the national Department of Cooperative Governance, Local Government Sector Education and Training Authority (LGSETA), and Municipal Managers on this programme, and we aim to have the first intake of students in 2012.
Our support extends to Integrated Development Plans (IDPs). In addition to providing training to municipalities in Neighbourhood Development Planning, we will provide active support to municipalities in implementing “Third-Generation IDPs” for the next five-year term. The Third-Generation IDP will be an IDP that reflects the needs identified by communities through Neighbourhood Development Planning and also reflects the budgets and priorities of all three spheres of government. We have promoted this through the IDP Indaba, which is a space where national and provincial departments sit in one room with municipalities and plan together. We will expand the IDP Indaba in the coming year.
Disaster Management
Speaker, we know that municipalities cannot work if they are not well prepared for disasters. Disasters can crush municipalities and crush communities, as we have seen in Japan.
This could have happened in the Eden District and Beaufort West Municipality, which were recently gripped by the most severe drought in over 100 years. It was easy to lose hope as dam levels dropped to 14.5% in Mossel Bay and 17% in George and 0% in Beaufort West.
Under the leadership of the Provincial Disaster Management Centre, all three spheres of government worked together to agree on water restrictions, infrastructure projects, and funding proposals. Our key partner has been the Regional Department of Water Affairs, and I would like to thank Mr Rashid Khan and his department for their support and partnership.
I am happy that the drought has now broken in Eden and Beaufort West, but I am even happier that all of those municipalities are now ready for future droughts. They have found new supplies of water, whether through water recycling or desalination.
What the drought has confirmed is that planning for disasters is the key to preventing them. For the FIFA World Cup we assisted all municipalities in the province to identify their key risks and to draft contingency plans. When the World Cup arrived, we were ready.
We also trained all the municipalities in the Western Cape to identify and address the disaster risks in their IDPs, and we assisted the City and all five districts to draft their IDP chapters. My department will help another six municipalities write their IDP chapters next year.
Together with the fire officers in the province, we developed a fire preparedness plan to ensure that we respond quickly to the first signs of a fire. In partnership with Working on Fire, we brought four fixed-wing aircraft from Gauteng that can “bomb” an area with water just as a fire is beginning.
In the coming year, we will be the first province to gazette regulations for fire-fighting norms and standards. This will create uniform standards that will raise the professionalism and standard of fire-fighting services in the province.
Speaker, fire-fighting is a dangerous business. During the fire that is still burning in the Rooiels-Kleinmond area, one firefighter has died and four Working for Water contractors were admitted to hospital with burns. I would like to express my deep-felt condolences to the family and loved ones of the firefighter who died and wish the injured contractors a speedy recovery. I honour and thank all of our men and women who put their lives on the line to protect us.
Municipal Infrastructure
Speaker, the most important job of a municipality is to provide basic services, and for this we need bulk infrastructure. There are municipalities in the Western Cape that cannot build more houses because they do not have adequate water and sanitation infrastructure. The human and economic potential in these areas is locked up as a result.
Many bulk infrastructure projects have already been implemented. A total of 221 Municipal Infrastructure Grant projects worth R312 million were completed in the past year. In addition, we obtained an additional R373 million in drought funds over the past two years: water recycling plants were built in George and Beaufort West and desalination plants in Knysna and Bitou. The largest desalination plant in Southern Africa will be completed in Mossel Bay at the end of this month.
But we still have a huge backlog, and we can only address it if we do thorough long-term planning. We have supported every district in the province to develop a bulk water and sanitation master plan. These are 15 year investment plans that say how much infrastructure is needed today and in the next 15 years, and they identify priority projects.
In the next 12 months we will assist municipalities to move into the project preparation phase. This includes development of business plans, feasibility assessments and concept plans. R345 million has already been secured through the Regional Bulk Infrastructure Grant of the Department of Water Affairs and R1.3 billion in Municipal Infrastructure Grant funds over the next three years.
But there is no point to building infrastructure if we do not maintain it. Some municipalities have water losses of over 30%. How can such a municipality request funding to increase its water supply capacity?
To address these basic issues, my department is assisting municipalities to collect income from non-revenue water. In two municipalities, we found many meters not reflecting the true usage. For example, in two municipalities, many water meters showed a reading of 0. This meant that the budgeted income for water in the two municipalities was not being billed or collected.
We are now assisting those municipalities to develop and implement plans to replace or fix the water meters and collect the revenue owing to them, and we are currently extending this support to four other municipalities.
Of course, local government will not work if we do not have competent people in place. Speaker, my department entered into partnership with Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) to conduct electrical artisan training, and 186 potential electrical artisans have been trained. Of these, 105 will undertake a National Trade Test and once they pass it, they can be appointed as fully-fledged artisans in municipalities. We are also partnering with the DBSA, the University of Stellenbosch, and the Water Institute of South Africa to train water process controllers, who are vital to the efficient maintenance of our water supply and wastewater treatment works.
Conclusion
Speaker, I haven’t mentioned many of the other things my department has done in the last year to make local government work.
Here are some of them:
- We achieved 100% expenditure with the Municipal Infrastructure Grant - the only province to do so.
- We developed and are implementing a Municipal Support Plan for every district and local municipality.
- We provided intensive support to municipalities experiencing governance or administrative problems, including Breede Valley, Kannaland, Prince Albert, George, and Swellendam.
- We helped 11 municipalities develop anti-corruption strategies and implementation plans.
- We completed a survey of electrical master planning in all local municipalities.
- We developed a performance management system for ward committees and linked this to the payment of out-of-pocket expenses to ward committee members.
- We rolled out training on community-based planning to 350 ward committee members, councillors, officials, and community members.
- We passed the Western Cape Local Government Laws Rationalisation Act, which eliminated many old laws that are no longer relevant.
- We facilitated agreements with ABSA, Capitec, Standard Bank and Nedbank to provide banking services in Thusong Centres.
- We ran a five-day training course for 29 provincial and municipal officials on IDP skills in November, and a further 18 officials in March.
- We supported 644 food gardens and facilitated 42 sessions on Child Maintenance through our CDW Programme.
- We launched a Municipal Bursary Scheme and enrolled four students in the pilot phase.
- We played a critical role in peacefully closing the De Doorns safety camp, where Zimbabweans fled after violence in November 2009.
- We reached over 5 000 adults and 10 000 school children with our Fire and Flood Awareness Campaign.
- We will provide training on fraud prevention to new councillors and municipal officials in all municipalities.
- We will assist municipalities to establish ward committees and train ward committee members on their roles and responsibilities.
- We will support 20 municipal officials through the second IDP learnership, which will be completed in April 2012.
- We will assess the property rates policies in 10 municipalities.
- We will place at least 10 more students on the Municipal Bursary Programme.
- We will develop a compliance model so that we can objectively assess governance and legal compliance in municipalities.
- We will assist municipalities to develop and rationalise their by-laws.
- We will create a provincial database of municipal information.
- We will help 15 municipalities to develop disaster management contingency plans. We will refer more than 21,000 people to government services and programmes through our CDW Programme.
Speaker, allow me also to thank my team: firstly my Head of Ministry, Mr Marius du Randt, and the Ministry team for their support and for keeping me on the straight and narrow. Thank you also to Dr Hildegarde Fast, Head of the Department, and the whole local government team for tackling each challenge with enthusiasm and for serving the people of the Western Cape.
Speaker, it is up to all of us to make local government work. It is up to councillors to provide accountable and effective local government. It is up to officials to implement the strategies and plans of their Councils. It is up to communities to hold their councillors to account and contribute to development. And it is up to my department to assist everyone to make this happen.
Source: Western Cape Provincial Government
