I'll come to the legislation.
In their wake they leave a trail of corruption, maladministration and governance failures, from which many municipalities just simply cannot recover.
Now, the new regulations announced by the department to give effect to the Systems Amendment Act are certainly very welcome. Sadly, however, because of the lacuna between the gazetting of the Act and the publishing of the regulations, to which the Minister referred earlier, many of these rogue officials will be appointed before the regulations take effect in the municipalities. This means that municipalities are going to be saddled with these officials for at least another two years. Perhaps the Minister, in his response, can take us into his confidence today and tell the House how he intends to deal with this problem as we go forward.
We also need to focus on getting the basics right. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, section 152, sets out the objectives of local government, and there are five of them. Too many of our municipalities are not focused on these objectives. As a result, another key crisis facing us is a lack of maintenance and capital assets and infrastructure.
Municipalities tend to focus on building, but then they do not place commensurate funds in the budget to maintain what has been built. This is largely why water reticulation and electricity distribution, and other key services, are failing more often around the country. The department must focus on urgently setting in motion plans to address this crisis.
I would now like to turn to oversight. We also need to set about ensuring far greater oversight, not only from a national level, but also a provincial level. On recent oversight trips, members of provincial legislatures or representatives from provincial legislatures were very seldom present, yet they need to conduct far more rigorous oversight.
Hon Minister and colleagues, we are facing an enormous challenge to get local government working. We dare not fail in this challenge, because if we do, and the current governance crisis continues on the same trajectory, then it will be impossible to implement programmes to improve service delivery and undo the legacy of the past.
The time for action is now and I leave you with the words of the former US president, John F Kennedy:
There are risks and costs to a programme of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
I thank you. [Applause.]