Chairperson, hon Minister and hon members, Sun Tzu, the brilliant Chinese strategist, said: He who controls communication shall control the battlefield. If that was true a thousand years ago, then it is so much more so today. The main difference now is that in a modern constitutional democracy there is a parliament and there is a free media, the fourth estate, to contend with.
News and information move at the speed of light. When an impertinent hothead blows a fuse deep in Luthuli House, it does not stay there; it is world news within nanoseconds. Events and utterances are recorded, and there is no place to hide from the truth.
Effective government communication is, therefore, a vital instrument in creating positive international and local perceptions that will promote investment and inform the broad public about government services. But the message should be consistent and authentic, or else you will lose credibility that you can never regain. I will talk more about that later.
The total allocation of R546,2 million for the Government Communication and Information System, GCIS, is an amount which needs to cover very important departmental programmes, as well as the communication plans of other national departments and other spheres of government - those that actually consult the GCIS to give them advice on good media strategy.
The department also runs the 2010 Fifa World Cup project, which the hon Minister referred to earlier, that liaises with Fifa, the Fifa Local Organising Committee and the IMC, the International Marketing Council, the body that is marketing South Africa internationally. Cope wants to wish them well in ensuring the best ever Fifa World Cup in the history of soccer.
Approximately 25% of the budget is allocated to one of the eight programmes: Administration. The other major programme is Programme 6, which goes mostly in the form of transfers to the International Marketing Council and the Media Development and Diversity Agency, MDDA. The hon Kholwane has already referred to the important role of the MDDA. We in Cope support media diversity and would welcome the MDDA's continued performance in years to come. We are also concerned about the operations and this is covered in the committee report.
The transfer to the IMC has escalated considerably over the past four financial years, mainly as a result of marketing strategies for the 2010 Fifa World Cup. And, apart from the administration which receives the largest portion of the budget, namely R170 million, we also note that there is a new programme: Communication Resource Centre.
This centre monitors and analyses international media coverage of South Africa. It also has a rapid response unit for local media with which to do both proactive and reactive media - and it has a lot to react to. An amount of R6,1 million has been budgeted for this programme, but it may run out by the looks of things.
It is important to note - and I would really like the hon Minister to know that we understand, very largely, that this is a people-driven department - that 65% of the total budget is spent on current expenditure and that compensation of employees will consume 41,35% of all current expenditure this year, with a further escalation of R10 million next year. This is notwithstanding the fact that the staff complement will remain the same.
Growing expenditure on staff salaries becomes a problem, particularly if there is a commensurate increase in the cost of consultants - and there was a huge increase. The amount to be spent on consultants increased from R2,7 million last year to R21 million this year. That is tenfold. Perhaps the department should spend more than 3% as the percentage of compensation of employees to build lasting capacity in the GCIS, and not have consultants that we always rope in to assist the department.
Cope would urge the Minister to monitor these tendencies to ensure that performance outcomes weigh up to growing expenditure on consultants and salaries. The government should be a service delivery structure not an employment agency.
Cope would like to commend the department because it has a particular task ahead of it. Let me just address some of the constraints that it faces. Actually we have a lot of sympathy for Mr Maseko and his staff. How do you package a relatively intelligent communication strategy when the Minister of Communications blunders into the domain of the Treasury and announces a proposed tax levy on the SABC, only to be repudiated by the Minister of Finance a few days later; or when the whole world condemns the ruling party for cashing in on the energy crisis and electricity price hikes by scandalously profiting directly from the power station deal and South Africans, ordinary South Africans, have to foot the bill; and the one head becomes contrite and says the ruling party will be selling their shares in Hitachi, and the other head says no the next day?
How do you defend such chaos? [Interjections.] Or when Minister Ebrahim Patel comes up with a plan to establish a development bond scheme only to have Minister Gordhan pour cold water on one of the key elements ... [Interjections.]