Hon Chairperson, I also share the sentiments of sympathy with all other colleagues, regarding the untimely passing on of Minister Padayachie. Our prayers are with members of his family and friends as they go through this difficult time.
The government continues to grapple with communication challenges. We are citizens of an information age, an era in which access to knowledge and information is power, and where successful citizens are those who understand this currency and are able to use it to advance their interests. Like business and civil society, the knowledge economy is one that government, too, must engage in.
At the most basic level, government must do this through good communication with citizens. This should mark a break from the past practice, with a recognition that government is able to improve the lives of the people it serves in a number of ways, including through the free flow of information.
In the not-too-distant past government communication was synonymous with propaganda. This included expensive marketing exercises to legitimise minority elections and impose constitutions. At its most insidious, it included infiltrating the newsrooms of some of the country's top newspapers. Good government communication had no precedence in pre-1994 South Africa, and achieving it remains a work in progress in the new South Africa.
In acknowledging the diversity of this country, with its 11 official languages, different levels of literacy and access to mainstream sources of information make good and accessible communication even more of a challenge; particularly since new laws and policies, which should be shared with the broadest segment of the population as many of them have the potential to change and improve lives, are constantly being enacted. Government communication is just beginning to tackle these challenges with mixed success.
Some examples of government communication illustrate an inability to successfully define the audience it is trying to reach and then speak directly to it. A recent publication, for instance, placed in KwaZulu-Natal newspapers on "social and economic development in KwaZulu-Natal" looked like it was trying to lure investment and enterprise into the province.
In the opposite of the spin, the publication began with a peculiar section describing the province as one "plagued by social needs, few of which seem to be receiving any attention". It went on to talk about "constant fallouts between communities, business and government" and noted that "more than anywhere else in the country, groups are clannish and insular, with constant bickering between political players". The rambling narrative painted a picture of a province in chaos, and one that no right-minded investor would like go anywhere near.
This extreme and expensive example of poor government communication is probably the exception, but points to an area that requires development. Many government departments have sizeable budgets for communications, but tend to pour these into expensive and often uninspired newspaper advertisements and supplements that reach an elite few.
It is also debatable whether or not verbatim extracts from ministerial speeches make any real impact. Good governance requires good communications from all spheres of government. Many relatively privileged citizens suffer when trying to reach the right bureaucrats to solve their problems, particularly at municipal level. The problem is compounded for the poor, who do not have the resources to spend long periods on the telephone when trying to remedy an electricity or water problem.
All too often good government communication fails at the point where government interacts with most people, through accessible one-stop-shop call centres.