Hon Chairperson, let me first thank the hon members for their very instructive inputs during the course of this debate. I think all the inputs contained solutions to the problems and challenges of development of our communities. Basically, all the speakers could speak on a first-hand basis about the areas they represent. Some speak on behalf of villages, others on behalf of townships, others on behalf of towns, and others on behalf of provinces.
What I think is lacking is how we draw the pertinent lessons out of all these experiences. I want to illustrate that by citing the fact that there is a labyrinth of townships called Soweto, and, arguably, it, as a single entity, represents the biggest township - if you like - in all of South Africa. Of course, we know that our history created these dormitory townships primarily as labour camps to supply labour to the white metropolis of the olden days.
I want to cite this example of Soweto because it was no exception. The communities who owned properties in old Sophiatown, Alexandra township and Kliptown were uprooted and resettled in what is today known as Soweto. The last of these communities were the community of Sophiatown and the community of Alexandra township. The latter is a special case, and I don't want to go there for now. I just want to confine my illustration to Soweto.
Soweto, like all other townships, was deprived of the barest public amenities and facilities. Schools in that sprawling labyrinth of townships merely meant bricks and mortar - no laboratories, no libraries. A community of close to 2 million people had no swimming pools or such facilities. However, today, as we speak, after the Johannesburg City Council took a decision to tar all the streets of Soweto, without exception ... [Applause.]
I'm saying this because if we draw the right lessons out of these experiences, we will be able to work together and address the disparities between communities in our country. Essentially, the challenge that faces us as a nation is to eliminate the gap which was artificially created through social engineering between what are, primarily, the white areas as opposed to the black residential areas. And it is possible. The lesson of Soweto instructs us on how to go about doing such a correction; essentially, it's a correction.
They took the decision to tar all the streets in Soweto, and went about tarring them. As we speak, all the streets in Soweto, without exception, are tarred. By this one act, the problems of dumping and those of the lack of parks have been eliminated. All the residents had to do is to add greenery and flowers from the capstone of the road to their fence. Increasingly, residents in Soweto have taken responsibility for doing so.
Today, as we speak, Soweto qualifies for the status of a city. The only thing lacking today is a city hall or town hall because they now have all the requisite amenities and facilities. There is a university in Soweto, namely Vista University, which is part of the University of Johannesburg. The university has wonderful buildings, and they even have students from outside of South Africa studying there at that campus. They have shopping malls like you would find in any other suburb.
They have a world-class soccer stadium; not one but three. This is why in 2010, when the Blue Bulls were without a home ground for their semi-final game of the Super 14, they looked around for a stadium that would accommodate all their supporters and the crowd that would attend that day. Where did they find it? They found it in Orlando. This persuaded them to go to Orlando Stadium. They didn't know what to expect. Many of their supporters had never set foot in a township before.
However, when they got to Orlando East, they found that the people of Soweto are also entrepreneurial in approach. The people of Soweto knew that the people who would be coming to support the Blue Bulls would be coming in their numbers, so some of the people there painted their fences in the colours of the Blue Bulls. [Laughter.] One very enterprising tavern owner there did that. He even mounted the horns of a bull at the front gate. The Blue Bulls supporters thought, "Well, here is our headquarters". [Laughter.]
I'm merely using this as an illustration that they found the benefits of playing at Orlando Stadium relatively or comparatively much higher than playing at Loftus Versfeld. For example, for the price of a pint of beer, they found that in Soweto you get a quart, which is 750ml. They were very happy. They could have their braais there. Most of them left Soweto almost at midnight. This, to me, is an illustration of what can happen to our national cohesion if the facilities are there and available across the length and breadth of the country.
Therefore, the issues and concerns that were raised about infrastructure are issues that, if properly communicated and we all work together, can be addressed in a manner that would not disadvantage this or that section of the South African nation, but would be seen as a natural and logical march towards a united, democratic, nonracial, nonsexist and prosperous South African nation. Unless we address these gaps, we will forever remain with two countries in one.
That is why the Minister of Finance announced the R800 billion for infrastructure development, and this infrastructure would necessarily be developed in the townships and in the rural areas, in order for us to create - or to cement the creation of - a united country.
I thought that from the inputs we could draw a lesson from this experience of how Soweto was catalysed, because just the paving of the roads served as a catalyst for economic development. Today they look after wetlands and the birds are back. There is a deep appreciation, and the issue of attracting tourists is ongoing. Almost every weekend there are tourists who go to Soweto in their numbers. This happens because the infrastructure is in place. I think this is a very important point, and the point was made by Prince Zulu.
It is very important that, essentially, we address the absence of infrastructure in areas that were desolate, were deliberately selected to dump people in. If you read the book by the late Fr Cosmas Desmond, The Discarded People, you will understand what I am talking about - Mbaza and other areas where people were dumped, communities uprooted from areas where they could eke out a living and dumped in barren, desolate areas. Therefore, the municipalities there could not by themselves be in a position in 100 years to muster sufficient resources to address these challenges of infrastructure.
We cannot speak of health unless people and communities have access to potable water and proper sanitation. Therefore, this, in my view, is a national challenge. The NCOP is better placed, because this is where the co- ordination of all three spheres can best be brought to effect. Therefore, you carry that responsibility. With regard to infrastructure, I think if we all single-mindedly seek to approach this issue, this challenge of infrastructure development, we would make tremendous advances and progress within the shortest possible time, but to leave it to these municipalities and set ourselves goals of ensuring that none of the municipalities receive qualified audits and so on is compliance.
Development is not compliance. We have to ask what the lessons of the Fifa Soccer World Cup are, because I can assure you that there are regulations upon regulations, bylaws and laws which essentially are impediments to development. You try getting something done, and you will be shocked at the thickets of legislation and regulations that you have to work through from different departments, and there is no co-ordination. When we were preparing for the Fifa Soccer World Cup, through the interministerial committees and the Local Organising Committee, we were able to cut through both bureaucratic and legislative barriers to ensure that delivery of these facilities happened within set timeframes.
I think that lesson should not be lost to us. We should be able to identify the bottlenecks and be able to ensure that through a co-ordinated approach, if need be, we get the best possible outcome. If we have a major project, do call for the establishment of a local organising committee, LOC, because where would a small municipality in a rural area find the resources to employ all the requisite skills? The municipality is in a no-win situation, because it will not have the in-house capacity, and if it goes outside, the consultants will take it to the cleaners. So, there will eventually be no money left to do anything. I am saying if we call for a LOC, it then creates the mechanism for such requisite capacity to be drawn from the national and provincial spheres, so that we get delivery without too much waste.
Last week, I had the privilege of listening to Prof Salvatore who made what I thought was a thought-provoking input. He argued against overregulation. He said that the recent financial meltdown that started in the United States of America started in the financial services sector. He says that those bankers, out of greed, repackaged debt and sold it 45 times over. They would take one debt, repackage it and sell it to people as an asset. People bought it and really bought nothing, and the bankers would sell the same repackaged debt to another 44 people. He said they would take the money and pay the rating agencies who gave them a rating of AAA. That is why, when the system just collapsed, there was no warning because these institutions, the merchant banks, were given credit ratings of AAA.
So, he says - and I think this point is pertinent to us here, because we are legislators - when you make laws and regulations so specific in an endeavour to prevent specific wrongdoing, human beings are very creative. They take that whatever is not mentioned in the specific regulations is permissible. So, his argument essentially was that we are better off with laws and regulations that are so general and vague that even the wrongdoers, when they search for loopholes, should remain in doubt as to whether they can get away with it. I am raising this because you can work through too many laws and regulations for one project, and your term - five years - is complete. You will still be ploughing through the regulations after five years, and we have to try and streamline the regulations, particularly with regard to development of communities.
The other points that I think are well made are the ones regarding the fact that education is an investment. I can't add anything to that other than an historical analysis of where the problem originates from and how it was shaped. This tells me that the solution to our problems in basic education lies in opening and establishing more teacher training colleges and recruiting the best professors who are prepared to invest in education. It doesn't matter where we find them in the world as long as they can train and produce a new calibre of teacher.
Simultaneously, as we produce a new calibre of teacher who is capable of producing the requisite skills in the modern South Africa we live in, we should also be improving on the management and supervision of the existing schools. The reason is that most of the difficulties I experienced in basic education, as I visited some schools, is that it is difficult to know who the principal or a person responsible for accepting the deliverance is; they all look the same. [Applause.]
It is like everywhere else; if a school can perform better - like a school I know of in Orange - Farm, which produces excellent results but that school doesn't have electricity, it is because the principal of the school is so passionate that he imbued the teachers as well as the learners with the same passion. What they do is to walk the extra mile and produce results. That is an exception to the rule and how do we ensure that we get that to be the rule rather than the exception?
There is a school also in Venda in Limpopo, Mbilwi School, which gets 100% pass rate every year at matric level with mathematics and yet it's a rural school. That is a challenge. I think it's got a lot to do with the supervision and management at the most senior level from the school principal right down to the teaching staff. I agree that this is a very important aspect that we need to look into and try to correct, but as I've said, I think it requires, simultaneously, that we should be aiming at producing a new calibre of teacher. Otherwise we are going to stagnate whether we like it or not. We will stagnate as a country and we will fall behind other countries in the world, unless we do something as radical as that.
With regard to perennial problems of corruption, for example, you have public servants who are just lazy, doing what they call "work-to-rule". With the "work-to-rule" approach, they know their rights for leisure time and try to extract those out of every available excuse. If you have that, that in itself is corruption because what it could result in is that people who come to the counter will have to wait for longer hours until they are tempted to grease or sweeten the machinery so that things can begin to move. Once that happens, temptation takes charge, then the whole system is corrupted.
Correctly speaking, public systems should never be at the mercy of an individual, regardless of what position that individual is in. But if it is possible in other systems that when you apply, an individual can decide whether your application is successful or not, it is wrong. The system must have the checks and balances, such that if you come to a desk of a servant who would not be willing to process that application, it should be possible for others to pick up that there is a blockage in the system.
I am using this as an example because you know the spectacle or saga of the young black male who applied for an identity document and ended up with an identity document with a photo of a white lady. A mistake like that should not be allowed to reach that poor young black male and it is wrong; it shouldn't happen. Somewhere in the system it should have been picked up that it was wrong and been corrected. But it is not picked up anywhere until poor people end up with such an identity document; it is useless in that he has to reapply from scratch. Of course, there is a manifestation of corruption from the Public Service because that's what we concern ourselves with. It always takes two to tango.
According to our systems, we have a plethora of bodies that deal with corruption, anticorruption, this anticorruption, that anticorruption, this anticorruption, that anticorruption, and so on. But do these bodies work together in such a way that they can prevent corruption?
The most important point that I made about Prof Salvatore's input was to prevent - not to chase after the corruptee or corrupted after the event - that from happening. I think the frontline soldiers of corruption are gifts. Once you are in the public space, as a rule, don't accept gifts. If they give you gifts, register and declare them because if that doesn't happen, people would come and leave tickets here for the final rugby match, tickets for cricket or soccer finals and you get used to it. They don't ask for anything or for favours; that's why they are calling them gifts. [Laughter.]
But the day will come when, from the back of the queue, where they hide at the back of the queue, they will wave at you or just greet you. [Laughter.] They don't ask for any facilitation; they just greet you so that you take note that they are at the back of the queue. [Laughter.] And they leave it to you when you are conscious of being embarrassed.
Therefore, we've got to find a way of dealing with gifts. First and foremost, those in the public space must know how to deal with gifts. Then we must raise their consciousness. Of course, as I've said, it's a combination here of the rules and so on. Nobody must be certain that if he tried to do this in this way he can get away with it. People must always be in doubt that it doesn't matter whether it's in a dark corner, you will get yourself into trouble. We must create that kind of environment in order to deal with corruption.
But, of course, we also do ourselves a great disservice because we tend to label everything as corruption to a point where the word loses its meaning and people become cynical about it. I think it is important to understand that this is a serious challenge which has the possibility of eroding all the gains we have made.
Therefore, it is a serious challenge that we must not use for scoring points and playing games. We must be serious about it because it is really aimed at eliminating corruption. [Time expired.]
All I was saying, hon Chairperson and hon members, is that out of this debate, I think we have enough experience to find solutions to these challenges for the moment. And that we should not be victims of our pride. We must be prepared to draw lessons from others. I know that in the political space, on the eve of the local government elections, the tendency is to dig ourselves into trenches of our political affiliations, but these issues of development we are talking about are bigger than any political party. We should be prepared to work together to draw lessons from each other and to tackle these challenges together. This country could be a better place, not only for us, but for our children and the next generation. Thank you, Chairperson. [Applause.]