I hope you are not eroding my time. A variation on this trend is the rotation of Ministers, as evidenced in the Department of Public Works. The Minister appeared before Scopa, stated that his department was dysfunctional, and promised that it would be turned around.
The previous Ministers were not held to account and neither are the officials. There is also no sign of the collective accountability that the executive is expected to uphold. This needs to change. Scopa will invite the Minister for a discussion on the matter of executive accountability, and I hope that you, Minister, will attend.
Minister, are you evaluating the performance of government in the management of the people's money? The Special Investigating Unit says that R30 billion leaks from the public financial system every year.
We know that all public financial systems are leaky buckets, but the South African system is starting to more closely resemble a spaghetti strainer, rapidly draining the people's money into the troughs of politically connected cronies where they feast at the expense of the most vulnerable members of our society who are denied the service delivery that the people's money is intended to pay for.
Last week the Auditor-General expressed his concern that government and public servants were weakening the pillars of governance protecting South Africa's democracy and that his office was vulnerable because of the lack of support from government. My experience of the Auditor-General is that he is not an alarmist and that his timely warning should be taken seriously by the executive. In your performance monitoring and evaluation, Minister ...