Rre Tona, ga ke a go tshelela dithupa mo metsing, jaaka Rre Kgosi Kgositala a buile, se ke batlang go se bua ke nnete e e senang bana ba phefo. Modulasetilo ... [ Minister, as previously stated by Mr Kgosi Kgositala, I bear no grudges against you. All that I would like to say is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Chairperson ...]
I find it imperative to commence my speech by outlining the mandate of the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, which is to develop national policies and legislation relating to provinces and local government.
Furthermore, it has to monitor the implementation of legislation related to intergovernmental relations; local government administration; as well as financial management, traditional leadership, governance and disaster management. In terms of the government's outcomes-based Performance Monitoring System, the department is responsible for achieving a responsive, accountable, effective and efficient local government system.
Contrary to this laudable mandate, the nation is witnessing widespread and unmatched corruption, which is a horrendous menace to the provision of quality service delivery to our beloved nation. The big question is: How long should this spate of corruption occur unabated? How long should the poor taxpayers continue to suffer while those holding the reins continue to line their pockets?
Hon Minister, now is the time for the turnaround strategy to begin to work for the nation rather than for the corrupt few in high places. We have just celebrated our hard-earned freedom, on 27 April this year, 2012. Freedom without clean running water, sanitation, electricity, roads, decent houses, quality education and sustainable jobs means nothing to the masses of our people, because without these basic human needs being met there is no human dignity.
It is astonishing and shocking to realise how easily some municipal officials can be gulled out of taxpayers' money. The Moqhaka Municipality officials have proven beyond doubt that their state of gullibility is such that they are not suitable or fit to handle public funds. These men and women were easily swindled by a conman in the person of one Tshabalala into paying R942 950 into the Owame Groups account for a so-called management fee for him to develop Kroonstad into an attractive and economically viable town. The total cost to Moqhaka Municipality was R9 million. However, the residents of Moqhaka did not benefit at all.
The Auditor-General duly found that the money spent on Tshabalala and his soccer game had been fruitless and wasteful expenditure. Predictably there have been no political consequences and the mayor and council remain anchored in power. They cannot provide clean water or sewerage reticulation because they claim they have run out of funds.
I hope the people of Moqhaka will remember this when they go to the polls in 2014. It will take this government many decades to combat and defeat corruption - if it will ever defeat it. This is so because the government has allowed corruption to develop to the level where it has now become the norm. If you are a government official and you don't act corruptly, you are perceived as abnormal by your colleagues.
Corruption has even found its way to this Parliament. Here corruption has been perpetrated by the top echelon from whom one would expect high levels of mature leadership and self-restraint.
According to a report in the Sunday Times, on 18 March 2012, R186 000 of parliamentary money was spent on a private home belonging to a parliamentary staff member. It is indeed a shame to see people entrusted with resources belonging to a poor and starving nation such as ours concentrating mainly on lining their pockets instead of improving the lives of the poor.
Take the release of the key findings of the Manase Report on 7 February 2012. This report has lifted the lid on a corruption scandal of unprecedented size and scope, involving every senior politician and council official in the ANC-run eThekwini Municipality. In this metropolitan municipality, like all other ANC-run municipalities, officials are allowed to have business interests in companies that benefit from government contracts. This is corruption, and it must be stopped now.
It is corruption that leads to the meltdown in provincial and local governments countrywide. According to the Manase Report, the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality is rotten to the core, with overexpenditure of R1,3 billion attributable to wide-scale corruption, tender fraud, maladministration and inappropriate business dealings. The report fingers the former mayor, the former municipal manager, several current departmental heads and well-nigh two-thirds of the councillors.
eThekwini has been turned into a slush fund for well-placed ANC politicians and deployed ANC officials. This is clearly the inevitable outcome of a system of cadre deployment, which intentionally, systematically and conveniently links the ANC in government and the ANC in business. It results in endemic corruption and the merciless theft of public assets. For the DA, the meltdown in eThekwini ... [Time expired.] [Applause.]