Chairperson, hon Minister Masenyane Baloyi, hon House, distinguished guests, today we have before us a policy debate on the Budget Vote for the Public Service and Administration that the committee supports.
For any democratic state, its mission, vision, plans and hopes are only realised if there is strong and effective public administration that can drive the policy objectives of the governing party. For a developmental state such as ours, the examination of the effectiveness and the efficiency of the state are central, and the developmental objective of the state depends on this effectiveness and efficiency.
This has been declared the year of action by our President in his state of the nation address and the governing party further declared it to be the year of working together to speed up effective service delivery to the people.
South Africa is a developmental state which is a conscious and a deliberate social construct which must lead the process of overhauling both the economic as well as political legacy of apartheid. In the year 1987, 8 January, the late ANC President Oliver Tambo said in the ANC NEC statement:
We must proceed from the position that our task is to win a revolution. Political revolutions are about the capture of state power and its use to advance the objectives of the fundamental social transformation. The task must be carried out consciously and intentionally by the revolutionary forces to bring about profound change in favour of the social classes and strata that have gained power.
Without the victory of the revolution, revolutionary changes are not possible. The state is a vital feature in that effort to bring about those revolutionary changes because a new society cannot be built within the existing framework.
Five years later we began negotiations at the Conference for a Democratic South Africa in 1991. The African National Congress put forward what it envisaged as a united, democratic, nonracial, nonsexist South Africa: A unitary state where a bill of rights guarantees fundamental rights and freedoms for all on an equal basis; where people live in an open and tolerant society; where organs of governments are representative, competent, fair in their functioning and where opportunities are progressively and rapidly expanded to ensure that all may live under conditions of dignity and equality.
South Africa, as a developmental state, is apparent in the way in which Public Service and public policies are made and implemented in the country, as well as the boldly stated goal to eradicate poverty through active state leadership and intervention to achieve the objectives of democracy and economic growth, development and redistribution. This then informs the manner in which the state and Public Service must be structured and organised. Then the whole question of transformation of the state comes into play.
Chairperson, when we speak of a united South Africa we have in mind in the first place the territorial unity and constitutional integrity of our country. South Africa must be seen and recognised by international communities as a single nonfragmented entity with a single citizenship, a nation and a common loyalty, not a quasi-federal feature which some opposing forces talk about.
There is a need for a strong and effective central government to handle national tasks, a strong and effective provincial government to deal with the task of the regions, and a strong and effective local government to ensure active local involvement in the handling of local matters. The central government has the responsibility for ensuring that there is a common framework of policy standards, norms and practices applicable to the whole country and for seeing to it that all areas of the country have equitable access to national resources.
Chairperson, all previous national democratic revolutions, especially in Africa, have been political revolutions. Major democratic governments, however, seldom destroyed the old machinery of the state. More often they took over the imperialist-colonial institutions, parliamentary procedures, multiparty systems, courts, bodies of law, army and the police organisations and the bureaucratic administration. They appointed their own nationals as soon as possible to the positions formerly held by the expatriates of the colonising state.
When the national liberation movements hereto achieved independence they inherited the old colonial system and went on working along the old lines. They did not destroy the old state machinery to build a new one. They took over government and ministerial houses and other privileges. They became a class of bureaucrats. The tendency in many African countries has been to maintain all economic as well as political systems. There has been continuity and not revolution.
However, because the South African national democratic revolution is more than the type of general political revolution, it has the responsibility to do more than mere working along the old lines. Our revolution in South Africa must destroy the old state machinery to build a new one.
This is the central message to all who work in the Public Service and Administration department. Chairperson, the process of building a new Public Service cadre forms part of the mega task for creating a developmental state. There are those placed in the positions of responsibility who do nothing, either through incapacity or unwillingness to address the concerns of the people they are meant to serve. Where people are found to be incapable of performing the task assigned to them, we must work with speed to either capacitate such people or replace them with more capable ones. To be a Public Service cadre means service to the people and a caring attitude in dealing with citizens.
The ANC is committed to transforming the state in a manner that benefits our people. There is no room for using the resources of the state for self- enrichment and acting from narrow selfish interests. Selfishness is alien to the values of the ANC. We expect the leading Public Service cadre to earnestly listen to the people's concern, truthfully reflect their wishes, sincerely help address their hardship and do more to speed up effective service as echoed by the Minister here.
Chairperson, the ANC, working together with our allies, will engage the Public Service trade unions and clarify our respective roles in building a new Public Service cadre for a democratic developmental state. Revolutionary trade unions must be at the centre of driving quality service to the people. The ANC agrees with the concept of a transformative trade union committed to the ongoing transformation of the Public Service, its structures, systems, ethos, and the way we do things.
A transformative trade union is one which is broad in its thinking, politically motivated, and defends the interests of its members within the context of a national democratic society which we are building. It is the antithesis of a typical English craft union that only looks after the narrow economic interests of its members to the exclusion of broad political and social responsibilities within the sector in which it operates. The ANC believes that the road of transformation that still lies ahead requires transformative trade unions which are capable of building a new Public Service cadre.
As parliamentarians, when assessing any Budget Vote, we have to ask ourselves the questions: What is expected from this institution? In this case we need to ask the question as to how the Public Service will comply with the constitutional requirements so as to make possible for oversight to be done in such a way that it's able to measure the progress in terms of the budget that has been allocated to it. We must also ask on behalf of the department whether the national fiscus has sufficiently allocated resources to the department to meet its constitutional obligations.
The main mandate of the Public Service in terms of the Constitution is to transform the Public Service, oversee changes to the structures of the Public Service, establish norms and standards for, among others, human resource development, issue directives and regulations, formulate a national anticorruption strategy and exercise oversight over the State Information Technology Agency.
In carrying out this mandate, the Ministry for the Public Service and Administration has developed a strategic plan for the medium-term period as briefed to the committee. From 2010 to 2014 it identified 10 strategic outputs which have been further broken down into projects with related matters.
In conclusion, this year's Budget Vote must be assessed within that background and we hope that the Ministry will brief the committee quarterly while other things that are left will be addressed to you. We support the budget.