Mr Chairman, one of the most disturbing things about the slow pace of expenditure on municipal infrastructure is that it is a declining trend. In the 2008-09 financial year, the rate of expenditure of municipal infrastructure grants was 85%. It went down to 75% in the 2009-10 financial year. That left close to R2,2 billion unspent.
Let's remember what this money is for. It's supposed to cover many of the services that are vital to the poorest of our citizens: electricity connections, storm water drainage, street lights and sanitation. When this money isn't spent, it's the poorest of our citizens who lose out. Therefore, this debate cuts to the heart of our struggle in South Africa to bring the basics of an acceptable life to all of our citizens.
The SA Institution of Civil Engineers makes the point that the state of a nation's infrastructure is one of the best indicators of its likely prosperity. It's also worth pointing out that, out of the 13 DA-run municipalities, before the recent municipal elections, 12 - in other words 93% - spent 100% of their municipal infrastructure grants. All municipalities in the Western Cape spent 100% of their infrastructure grants during the 2009-10 financial year.
In contrast to this, 10 municipalities did not spend a cent of their municipal infrastructure grants. Another 41 spent less than half their grants. Almost all of those were municipalities controlled by the ANC. So, what are the reasons for this inability to spend on infrastructure?
Well, there are many. Some of them are more technical or procedural. Sometimes it's because tranches of funding from national government arrive too late in the financial year for the projects to be undertaken, if there is to be proper financial compliance.
There is another problem that may be delaying projects. Engineers, who often motivate for these projects, know that current Treasury regulations mean that winning tenders are chosen by giving disproportionate weight to price. That may mean paying for materials that are cheap, but will not last long. In this case, "goedkoop koop is duur koop" [cheap buying is expensive buying].
Not wanting to waste the money may be cause enough to sit on it. The possibility that this is happening is surely enough reason to re-examine those regulations so as to include a greater weighting for quality, longevity and sustainability of infrastructure that is built.
The SA Institution of Civil Engineers says that there are sometimes problems with co-ordination between different spheres of government which have interlocking responsibilities. This may result in nonsequential project completion because of the failure to co-ordinate. These are procedural matters which can and may even be fixed relatively easily.
But, there are other problems that have their roots in the politics of the ruling party, which will not be so easily put right. The first of these relates to skills. An engineer told me that the planning process is flawed. He says too much weight is given to public participation processes.
Now, those processes are necessary, but they can only take place effectively when they are guided by sufficient technical knowledge. People may know that they want sanitation, but they may not know that, in order to get a sanitation system that works properly, there needs to be a necessary expansion of reticulation works. The result is that toilets are installed and connected to the sewerage system, but the reticulation cannot then handle the load and there are sewage spills and the degradation of the surrounding environment and quality of life together with health risks - this is exactly what happened under the ANC in Cape Town.
That lack of technical capacity is apparent as a recurring theme in any discussion of infrastructure. South Africa starts at a disadvantage, having - by proportion of the population - up to 20 times fewer engineers than are found in Western Europe, the United States and India. Skills have gone and are difficult to attract back.
It's common cause that smaller municipalities do not have the financial resources to attract engineers. One of the more successful interventions has been the Siyenza Manje project that deploys technical experts to smaller municipalities in need. But the success has been threatened by the department, moving responsibility for that project away from the Development Bank of Southern Africa, DBSA, to one run directly by the department. That has immediately caused uncertainty amongst the deployed professionals, and has led to at least one resignation that I know of. Why mess with success? The government should explain.
This points to another reason that engineers are reluctant to work in smaller towns. They simply don't want to work for municipalities that are badly run. Who wants to work for a company with bad management, where decisions that should be technically motivated are rather driven by whim, factionalism and political populism? And it's not just me saying that. Factionalism in the ANC hampers delivery, and those are the words of the Deputy Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Yunus Carrim, who admitted this earlier this year.
There've been numerous reports about factional fighting in provinces like North West, which is tied to the spending of money on infrastructure projects and attempts to win kickbacks from that spending. Has the situation improved since the local government elections? Possibly too early to say, but so far it doesn't look good.
Let's take, for example, the District Municipality of Nkangala in Mpumalanga province. In the last two financial years they've managed to spend only a third of the money allocated for infrastructure. They're sitting on some R500 million. Yet in one of the local municipalities in that district, Thembisile, tens of thousands of people are without clean water.
It needs to be said in this debate that the hard figures of money spent do not tell the full truth about what is happening. Sometimes the money is spent, but the infrastructure is still not delivered. That's because the companies given tenders cannot perform and cannot complete projects. By way of example, there's a 400-metre stretch of tarred road between the N4 and the town of Belfast in Emakhazeni Local Municipality. The road has potholes and is too narrow. A project to fix and widen it was begun two years ago. Work has been done, but it has been of a poor quality. New contractors have been appointed and they say they will begin soon.
We go down the road to Machadodorp, where a new sewage pumping station was scheduled to have been completed in November 2010. The extended completion date was the end of February this year. Well, as of last week, not a single litre of sewage has been pumped by that works after millions of rands have been spent. It seems quite clear that the officials don't know what they're doing, and they're giving contracts to people who don't know what they're doing.
It may be unstated, but the practical effect of the policy of this government is that jobs and tenders for comrades are more important than giving people clean water. [Interjections.] That's a political problem related to cadre deployment and its handmaiden, corruption. This government plays a double game on cadre deployment, saying that it is taking steps to end it, and yet it is still there for all to see, if you look for it.
Now, to spend wisely on infrastructure projects is not easy. It is made far more difficult by the policies of this government that guarantee extra hurdles are put in the way of any project going ahead. When there is a municipal infrastructure project, it is not enough simply to appoint a contractor who will build the best system for the lowest price.
Other factors are introduced, which make finding the best contractor more difficult. The council has to deal with whether or not the contractor has sufficiently good black economic empowerment, BEE, credentials. And there is the issue of gender. Councils are told that, where possible, they should give contracts to companies which are owned by women.
Then there is the issue of the geographical origin of the companies involved. There is always a great deal of pressure to appoint locally based companies, or at least appoint companies that will appoint workers from the municipality where the contract is being carried out.
Then, of course, there is the alignment of contractors to the correct faction of the ANC. If the contractor does not have the right connections, the contract may not be given and the money not spent.
All of this makes finding an appropriate contractor much, much more difficult. Is it any wonder that projects are difficult to initiate? Some of those things may be nice to have, but they detract from the mission of municipal government and should not be allowed to stand in the way of delivery.
This government has a wrong approach. Municipal government is there to deliver quality services effectively and financially sustainably for the municipality and cheaply for the consumer.