Statement of the Governance and Administration Cluster
Questions and answers:
Question: Minister, it has been reported in the statement that 1 499 officials have been charged with misconduct for corrupt activities and R110 million recovered from perpetrators by various departments. We are not hearing about criminal charges and convictions. Is in enough to charge public servants with misconduct if there is evidence of corruption and looting of the public purse?
Answer (Minister Dlamini Zuma): In my understanding, we do both where it is relevant – you would have seen that in some cases we even arrest people at work by the police. In investigating serious issues of corruption we tend to work with other law enforcement agencies. Once the matter of criminal charges has gone to the police, it is out of our hands. What is within the power of this cluster is to ensure disciplinary actions within government as well.
Question: Minister Padayachie, your Director-General last week said three options for a single public service had been presented to yourself. Can you elaborate on these options and the process going forward?
Answer (Minister Padayachie): I think it is important to reiterate the principle trust of the presentation we made to Parliament last week – we are quite serious about this year, putting in place the institutional infrastructure for the establishment of a single public service.
A great amount of work is being done to establish this basic infrastructure. We are implementing the Integrated Financial Management Services programme, we are also looking at enhancing the coordination of departments at a national level and also between departments in the different spheres of government – national, provincial and local government spheres.
So we are quite serious that this year we will advance the work that will deliver on the commitments we have made to create a single public service.
Now, we have defined a way forward on how we will deal with this particular matter. You will remember that initially when this matter was introduced in Parliament a few years ago, a Management Bill to establish a single public service was initiated in Parliament. This was subsequently withdrawn because at that stage, the complexity of establishing the infrastructure was not fully understood. We have now become wiser on the complexity of this task and clearly the evidence before us suggests we lay the basis for the institutional infrastructure to create a single public service and this is what we are focusing on doing in this current term.
(Director-General Department of Public Service and Administration): Thank you very much Minister. At the heart of the initiative of the single public service is the promotion of integration and the harmonisation of processes and procedures in the national, provincial and local government sphere so that service delivery can improve.
Now, two of the critical options being considered - you can have a single legislation – this is based on the legislation that was previously tabled in Parliament and subsequently withdrawn. The other option is to look at existing legislation and effect amendments in these pieces of legislation – such as the Public Services Act, the Municipal Services Act so that the objectives of harmonisation and integration can be achieved through amendments in these pieces of legislation.
For example, what is currently dealt with in the draft bill at present is the establishment of a cadre of senior managers across the three spheres of government. There is provision already in the Public Service Act for such a cadre to be established.
What we may need to look at is whether we can create provision for this at municipal level as well and through this, you can achieve the same objective through effecting amendments in existing pieces of legislation.
These are the options being considered at the moment for achieving the objectives of integration and harmonisation to improve service delivery.
(Minister Padayachie) Thank you very much DG. I think it must also be understood so we understand the message clearly – we are not envisaging a constitutional change in the architecture of government. We are rather focusing on mechanisms that must be introduced to integrate systems so we can get a easier, swifter movement of people into the public service.
A critical deficiency that has been identified that in areas where there is the greatest need for skills, we are particularly deficient. There is for example, a tendency for public servants to migrate to the national level. However, at other levels in the system, like in local government, we are suffering from a deficiency in skills.
The ability to move people across these various levels is therefore a very important mechanism for integration and we need to establish that capacity within the three spheres of government. But the realisation is that there are many complexities in this matter. For instance if you look just at the question of the harmonisation across the three spheres of government, we have to deal with the conditions of service of employees. Now, we may be looking with something like well over 20 or 30 pension schemes of which employees are members and we need to look at integrating this when employees are moved.
The focus therefore is on harmonisation and to ensure we have the capacity to move people to where they are best needed. Secondly, we must looking at moving information across the system more effortlessly across the different levels of government through connected ICT systems. There are many deficiencies in this regard. We are therefore looking at creating the infrastructure for connected government across the various levels. Programmes on e-government, and what we now define as m-government (mobility government), an ability to take government to where the people are, is quite critical to the dispensation of services.
In this regard, we must consider the establishment of Thusong Service Centres throughout the country and the information before me is that there are now 171 Thusong Service Centres throughout and the country and by the end of December 2011, our audits have indicated that we have managed to render services to just over 5 million people.
State Information Technology Agency (SITA)has succeeded in connecting 96 of the 123 Thusong Service Centres throughout the country. We are planning to expand this particular network.
The thrust is therefore to lay the institutional framework for connected governance and to enable us to move more swiftly and decisively towards a single public service, something we are committed to in this year.
Question: Minister, how is the Municipal Systems Services Act being implemented – I’m referring specifically to the fact that municipal officials can no longer be public office bearers in political organisations – do you have an audit of who is a municipal officer and a public office bearer – can you elaborate on how this process is being implemented?
Answer (Mr Mbulelo Musi): With regard to the Municipal Systems Amendment Act, you would know it was assented to in July 2011 and to begin to implement it, we are working with South African Local Government Association (Salga)which is a statutory representative of local government.
We are already beginning to engage with the provinces to ensure we streamline the implementation of the Municipals Systems Amendment Act and indeed, the process is underway to ensure that the professionalisation intent inherent in the Act finds expression in so far as one of the areas in which we are making progress is to ensure that the five key posts that are supposed to professionalise local government are put in place.
And municipalities are being assisted precisely because we have a challenge of many municipalities not having Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), communicators, town planners, etc. and that process is being prioritised in partnership with SALGA.
The process is being rolled out and we are hoping that from this year, the process will be accelerated. Phase I was to ensure municipalities were aware of the Act, Phase II was to ensure its implementation. This is our focus for this year.
Question: Minister, what have been the successes of the Local Government Turnaround Strategy – in light of the fact that you say it is going to be accelerated? How many local governments that have received assistance are now able to work on their own?
Answer (Mbulelo Musi): You will recall that his strategy was adopted by Cabinet on 2 December 2009. After that Phase I looked at municipalities being able to integrate the Local Government Turnaround Strategies into their Integrated Development Plans. We have now been able to get a report in the last MINMEC held last year that 278 municipalities have been able to develop Municipal Turnaround Strategies which are beginning to locate the fact that it must now be localised and implemented. All have now streamlined these and must now be implemented.
We have begun to see, if you recall the report of the Auditor-General, for instance on the areas that relate to the turnaround of the management of finances, we are beginning to see progress. For instance in the area of the Eastern Cape we have seen a clean audit which is a major achievement. We are also seeing in other provinces municipalities implementing measures that are able to translate into better service delivery and other areas of governance. So it is essentially an ongoing process and work in progress.
Question: Minister, how do you see the South African Languages Bill playing out in the Western Cape where there is a choice between three official languages – is Afrikaans considered an indigenous language?
Answer (Minister Mashatile): Thank you very much. Let me clarify the issue of the three languages – we encourage departments to use as many of the 11 official languages but it is practically impossible for government departments and state enterprises to use all 11 languages. So the Bill mandates the use of at least three official languages.
The provinces invoking their language policies will follow the same approach because this is really in line with the Constitution. The main thrust is that all languages should be equitably promoted so there is no discrimination of any language.
Provinces and departments will therefore take into account the needs of the citizens they are meant to serve.
So, in the Western Cape – the main languages are Afrikaans and isiXhosa. So you can expect that these languages will be mainly used as well as English.
If you go to Limpopo, you can expect languages to include TsiVenda, Tsepedi, and perhaps English or Afrikaans.
The main issue is the practicality and whether citizens can access services in languages of their choice and therefore government departments and provinces take this into account.
At the same time there is another body we have established – the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) – whose mandate is to broadly promote languages in society – beyond government so there will be correlation between the work of PANSALB and what government is doing. You know that the Bill provides for language units in departments to monitor the use of languages.
No language will be discriminated against. All languages will be promoted and mandated by the Constitution.
Answer (Minister Mashatile): The issue of sign language has been included in the Bill. In addition to the 11 official languages, we are encouraging government departments to make provision for the use of sign language as is necessary. PANSALB also has the responsibility to promote sign language including other languages that are used in our communities in South Africa that are not necessarily official languages. All this is included in the Bill and we hope that as the processes unfold we are able to tighten those provisions.
Let me explain briefly – the emphasis on indigenous languages in the Bill – you will see there are those that are not used as widely. We are therefore calling on departments to use those that are not commonly used as they decide on the three languages they will be using. This is really what we are encouraging.
At the end of the day, in terms of the Constitution, there will always be parity in this issue.
Question: Minister Padayachie, on the issue of the induction programme for newly appointed public servants – what does this programme entail? How will it enhance the effective public service you are looking at?
Answer (Minister Padayachie): There are a number of issues that have arisen from the questions put to us. I want to take this opportunity to remind ourselves of the remarks by the President that seem to knit together these issues quite nicely – “all government work relies on having a cadre of dedicated, skilled and hardworking public servants who are responsive, innovative and willing to go beyond the call of duty to help realise government’s objectives.”
Now, the current perception of the public service is that it is not as skilled as we need it to be, we do not have the level of management capacity required to deliver on our mandate, we do not have a performance culture because we do have a performance reward or sanction structure applicable to good or poor performance and there is a severe problem of corruption, low levels of efficiency and we simply do not get value for the money we pay in salaries. If we consider that the single biggest expenditure we have is salaries then the overall increase in production will increase our overall increase in the return on investment.
The statement calls on us in the public service to increase our overall productivity in the public service to focus our attention on improving productivity in the public service. But the question on how we do this relates to a number of maladies present in the public service.
The first is to ensure we recruit sufficiently talented young people who can join the public service with the right kind of ethos and values. The programme at Public Administration Leadership and Management Academy (PALAMA) is aimed at doing precisely this – to break the barriers to entry into the public service and increase exposure to the public service through an induction programme and to sift them out so they can enter the public service with the correct approach and values. We want to reinforce the ethos of public centred values that must underpin the public service in the country and the programmes and PALAMA are aimed at doing this.
On the area of corruption – we are convinced that by and large, public servants are not responsible for this type of conduct. We believe there is small core of public officials responsible for this kind of perception that the public service in general is driven by values that are not sound.
We are committed to dealing with this. You will recall that as part of building the anti-corruption capacity within the public service, we will this year, translate the public service anti corruption unit into a separate single government component with dedicated investigative capacity because our analysis tells us there is insufficient capacity within government departments to conduct the necessary investigation once we receive complaints of corruption.
It will therefore have focused and dedicated capacity to speed up investigations that are required to accelerate disciplinary processes against officials who are guilty of wrong doing.
I think it is important here to convey the message, as we have been doing, that we are determined to root this out in the public service. We will complement the anti-corruption capacity throughout government and we will work with all agencies to create a multi-focus multi-agency approach that will attempt to root out and minimise corruption within the public sector.
The vetting of officials involved in the supply chain processes are important. As you know, the President has decided that this must be implemented and we will do so together with National Treasury.
If you look at the frontline offices – it is very unfair to put someone who has just walked out of university into a frontline office and that person has to deal with the public without a proper induction or skilling, specific to what they will be doing. This is why you find the frontline officers are sometimes a bit brash or defensive. The impact of an induction is very important because it gives officials confidence and provides a willing and co-operative frontline officer. We must therefore not underestimate the value of this as well as other training we provide in the public service.
Question: Mr Musi, you mentioned some municipalities do not have CFOs and other key personnel. How many does this involve?
Answer (Mr Mbulelo Musi): It is very difficult to quantify and provide figures on this issue at this time. Suffice to say a report that was issued by the National Treasury as well as the office of the Auditor-General indicates we are sitting with a vacancy rate of almost 50%. It is not only about municipal managers but I will verify this data and come back to you in due course. The posts that are filled is on-going. I therefore want to be accurate.
Question: Minister, can you provide more information on the 14 new libraries in terms of the geographical spread and the method used to locate these libraries?
Answer (Minister Mashatile): The library programme is very massive as you can see. It is being rolled out throughout the country. We are targeting specifically rural areas because in the past, the focus has been on urban areas. But this programme is being rolled out in provinces. We provide funding to provinces and the MECs of culture in provinces prioritise where libraries are built. I would encourage you interface with the MEC in your area and if it is an area where we really do not have any libraries, I would support this.
Question: To the Director-General of PALAMA, you have mentioned the training of 2443 unemployed youth – how far is this process and when did this take place. Regarding the 18 660 new public servants who last year participated in the Junior and Middle Management induction – what is the impact of this training?
Answer (Director-General of PALAMA): This relates to the relationship between the National Youth Development Agency and PALAMA. Yes indeed, the partnership was developed two years ago with the realisation there are scarce skills within the public sector and there are young graduates out there who cannot enter any work environment because they do not have experience.
The course developed together with the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) was designed to firstly tap into the database of the NYDA of those graduates who are out there and unemployed. We bring them into the public service, inculcate values and ethos so we create a pool of future employable public servants. We have done this not just in partnership with the NYDA but also with other departments where we drew in trainers who could expose these youth to values in the public service.
Indeed to date we have trained 2443 and we aim to increase this to 1780 in the coming financial year.
As to how many have been absorbed within the public service – it is individual departments that recruit from the pool of these youth because these departments participate in the training of these youth.
This is also related to the issue of induction into the public service – there are two forms – the induction of middle managers but for senior managers we have another programme. Induction is a continuous process and we have also introduced an e-learning programme so the induction and orientation can be continuous. So once you come in the induction is meant to inculcate those values and ethos of the public service.
Question: To Mbulelo Musi, when will the Amendment of the Municipal Property Rates Act come before Parliament? Have the interpretation issues with this piece of legislation been resolved?
Answer (Mr Mbulelo Musi): We anticipated this would be tabled between May and June this year, if all things go well. This is still our target. We will also accommodate the due process of taking into account inputs that are being made. Our objective is simply to say we have developed norms and standards because the way the property rates act is presently managed if differentiated and quite complicated. We therefore want to encourage transparency in this process.
Question (Minister Padayachie): I wonder if the DG of Stats SA would like to say something about the National Census?
Answer (Director-General of StatsSA): Yes indeed we must thank the media for providing concentrated attention during the census. We visited 14.9 million dwellings. We are processing the data in Pretoria West. The date as appears on our programme for the release of this data is around November this year. But there are some quarters who believe it should be earlier. We will announce this in due course.
There is the other issue of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey – we note with a bit of regret that there are comments about this release – that is was aimed at making the State of the Nation Address what it is because we announced the creation of 365000 jobs.
The role of the Statistician General and his appointment, as well as his mandate, is to be without fear or favour. The dates are released a year in advance. We do not know when the state of the Nation Address will be, we do not know what the level of employment will be at that time. We just release the figures as they stand.
We therefore feel the comments by some journalists are quite regrettable. We are in the service of the State to inform but we are not in the service of the State to inform with fear or favour. I suggest you familiarise yourself with the Statistics Act.
Question: Minister Padayachie, will vetting cut across public servants? When will it begin? Is it a once off process?
Answer (Minister Padayachie): We have to be clear that the responsibility to immediately implement this falls within National Treasury and we are supporting this urgent implementation as the Department of Public Service and Administration because the vetting system focuses on public servants who are within the procurement chain.
To support the immediate implementation, SITA, which is responsible for the implementation of an integrated IT solution, has developed an e-disclosure system for public servants. That would be placed at the disposal of National Treasury so this vetting can be implemented immediately.
The vetting itself will involve the co-operation of the intelligence agencies, the State Security system.
All officials who are participating in State procurement will be vetted. It is not a once off process. There will be continuous vetting of public servants who are in the system.
This is a strategy to broaden the base of our anti-corruption capacity within the public service. It is also an integral part of the Public Sector Integrity Management Framework that we are finalising. An important element of this is to ensure public servants will not be put into a position where they are able to conduct business with departments in which they are employed. We are hoping to bring this to Cabinet and finalise it as a policy position.
It works hand in hand with the call by the President to Cosatu and to invite Cosatu and civil society to work together with government in our fight against corruption within the public service.
Question: Minister Mashatile, the programme you have announced today that we see the restoration and preservation of our national heritage – it will mean a lot of time and resources that must be spent on rolling out this programme. Apart from highlighting our history, what are some of the socio-economic benefits for communities?
Answer (Minister Mashatile): On the socio-economic benefits – firstly memorials, monuments and museums tell the story of the nation. They preserve our heritage. And many other people come to know about this heritage by visiting our museums, monuments and heritage sites. This is not just tourists or foreigners. It is also local people because we do this for future generations.
And when they do this, they spend money. I think this is what the President meant when he referred to cultural tourism in his address. If you talk about the economy of cultural heritage, this is what you mean. As we build these museums throughout the country, we are contributing the economy of our country.
We are able to create jobs. People visit the cafes, buy memorabilia and this contributes to the economy. So, yes there are massive benefits to this in the context of what I call Mzansi’s Golden Economy. We are really going to revitalise local economies so people can benefit from what we are doing.
Question: Is there legislation mandating municipalities to implement recycling projects – and if not, why not?
Answer (Mr Mbulelo Musi): There is no legislation on recycling within Cooperative Governance and the Department of Traditional Affairs (COGTA). The issue speaks to the broader area of environmental management which speaks to the Department of Environmental Affairs and we believe the instruments residing there are sufficient to take care of these issues. The other issue relates to job opportunities. This falls within local economic programmes. We think this legislative regime is adequate to take care of some of the challenges relating to recycling.
Question: Minister Dlamini Zuma, regarding the National Population Registration Campaign – can you explain how you will increase awareness of the campaign?
Answer (Minister Dlamini Zuma): This campaign began in 2010. We do work with the Minister of Basic Education because children tend to turn 16 while they are at school so we are working very closely with schools to ensure they can receive their IDs while they are still at school. We do not want to wait until children are in matric or looking for jobs until they apply for IDs.
We want children to have IDs when they turn 16. In the last year we managed to get more than 600 000 children to apply for IDs before they turned 16. This is good progress. We want to get away from the situation where children apply for IDs only when they are in matric or when they get a job.
Of course the media should also assist us and in some instances we have been working with some of the media.
In the communities we work with what we call stakeholder forums which consists of local representatives – councillors, teachers, sometimes other departments in an area. We therefore form what we call stakeholder forums. These forums serve as a bridge between ourselves and the community because they assist us to mobilise and identify people who need services.
For instance, if we are going to a community with a mobile truck, there is no point going there and hoping people will come to access services. The stakeholder forums therefore mobilise for us. They identify citizens who need services and ensure they are there at the point of delivery.
They are also our eyes and ears. If there are problems being experienced in our offices, they let us know and we are able to deal with this.
We therefore take these forums very seriously.
Also, if there are people who are not collecting their IDs, we have begun to work with the members of the forums who go with our officials to assist dispatch the IDs.
So, it is an on-going campaign, it has assisted us and hope it will continue to support us.
The media can play a very valuable role in this process. In fact the radio stations have been assisting us. When we go to communities, they assist by announcing it to the community. We appreciate their co-operation and hope it will be better this year.
Question: Minister Mashatile, how much will the refurbishment of the monuments you have outlined cost?
Answer (Minister Mashatile): Obviously we will require massive capital injections to build new museums. We are embarking on a major intervention called the National Liberation Heritage Route which will really require we build new museums. We estimate this will cost about a R1 billion. A lot of work has already begun. In some areas we are nearing completion. We will announce as we go on the monetary value of what we are doing. This is included in our budget and we have also received some new resources from National Treasury which we will expand upon in our Budget Speech later this year.
Comments by the Deputy Minister of Sports and Recreation Gert Oosthuizen:
Thank you for the opportunity. Just to perhaps focus on our preparations of the team going to London, hopefully achieving our dream of 12 or more medals. In the background of this, we emerged from Beijing with one medal only. An analysis showed a total spent of preparing Team South Africa for Beijing, over a four year period, amounted to R90 million. Now, since then our support to the athletes who will comprise team South Africa, has increased tremendously towards achieving this goal and 12 medals in 2012.
We have from the Lottery funding over the last three financial years allocated R400 million to identified federations to assist them in preparing Team South Africa. South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) has also made available R60 million that they are spending. Up to now R36 million has been spent and by the time the team departs for London, R60 million would have been spent.
I know there will be criticisms that this is not as much as the sports and Olympic powerhouses like Australia, Britain and China but let me just point out this is a massive boost for our local stars going towards the Olympics in London. We all know that some of our teams are presently qualifying.
SASCOC will announce in June or July the team of men and women who will fly our flag in London.
And shortly after that the Paralympic team will be announced and we all know they always do us proud as a country. We have invested equally in this team from SASCOC and the National Lottery. We hope that come 27 July we will make our country proud as we have always done and come the Paralympics on 9 September they will also make us proud emphasising what government is saying – we are normalising society, promoting equal access for people with disabilities to sport and obviously the development and harnessing of these skills.
We thought it was important to ask the media for their support, especially as we go towards our Magnificent Wednesdays campaign very shortly beefing up support throughout the country as we did last year and as we will do going forward so we are also doing it for our abled and disabled athletes.
Concluding remarks by Minister Dlamini Zuma:
Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen of the media. I think the next phase of these briefings will follow individual budget debates and we hope we can count on your support.
