Chairperson of the NCOP, Deputy Minister, distinguished members of the House, ladies and gentlemen, and officials of the department, I appreciate and feel privileged to be speaking in this House, presenting a budget for a brand-new Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. It is important to me, because this is the first time I stand in front of you to speak and engage with you, in this new administration, after the provincial and national elections.
Colleagues will recall that I am very passionate about the NCOP as a structure, because I am a former chairperson of the Select Committee on Local Government and Administration.
Today I want to reflect on the expanded mandate of the department, which is moving from being a Department of Provincial and Local Government to a Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. This mandate was outlined in the state of the nation address, where we said that as a department we are the choir conductor of our system of co-operative governance in South Africa. The role of choir conductor is a new and expanded one, shifting the focus from co-operative government to co- operative governance.
At the same time we are able to give support to provinces, something we didn't do in the past. We should sharpen our legal instruments so that we are able to give support to municipalities. We must ensure that these instruments are strategic in nature, because municipalities are required to report on so many things. They spend most of their time writing reports, receiving guests from national government, from Parliament, from the provinces, and so on. They have meeting after meeting, and a meeting to prepare for another meeting. We believe that those days are gone. Local government officials must spend their time doing their work, rather than spending most of their time in meetings. Meetings are not going to help us go forward.
The other shift is that we believe we must move away from traditional leadership to traditional affairs. It means we look at all the affairs of traditional communities. Included among those affairs are indigenous knowledge systems. It includes throwing of the bones, which I call a "floor X-ray". When you go to hospital, they do an X-ray of your chest to check your health status. In our traditional communities they throw the floor X- ray to determine your health. We want to market this, because we believe that this is what our people are doing in terms of survival. Of course, we must deal with the charlatans, those who are abusing the systems and our people. We believe that 85% of South Africans are using this practice or system. South Africa is a democratic country - those who believe in using this system should be allowed to do so without fear, because according to our Constitution choices can be made.
In terms of our mandate we will come with innovative ways of strengthening social cohesion and deepening participatory governance in this country. In doing so, we believe that over the next five years we should be able to protect, guide and direct the roles and responsibilities so as to ensure that we produce a single, harmonious melody in this country. We must ensure that the rhythm, the vibrancy and the meaning of this melody are in consonance with what we want to put across.
As choir conductors we therefore want to say that, in conducting our responsibilities, our strategic partner is the NCOP. We believe that we have a unique role to play and a responsibility to live up to. However, some quotations have been presented in relation to the role of the NCOP. Allow me to be as direct as to quote you, hon Chairperson, from your documents:
The NCOP not only provides provinces with a forum in which to engage with the national government on matters concerning areas of shared national and provincial legislative powers, but also oversees the programmes and activities of national government relating to provincial and local government matters. You further state, and I quote:
The 1996 Constitution introduced a new concept called "co-operative government". That places a high priority on consultation, co-ordination and communication between the different levels of government and all organs of state. The NCOP can be regarded as a concrete expression of "co- operative government", whereby governance in South Africa is seen as a partnership among the national, provincial and local spheres of government. It further means that national legislation must be sensitive to provincial interests and concerns. In addition, provinces must not act alone or in isolation, but must be integrated into the national legislative or law-making process.
In our view the conceptualisation in these quotations is a bit flawed in some respects. Firstly, the focus is on "co-operative government", and not on "co-operative governance", where the governed and the governor are working together. That is the first thing.
In the second place, we are saying that the way in which it is conceptualised doesn't look at the issue of local government. Local government is ghettoised, not only in terms of the name of the National Council of Provinces, where local government is not mentioned, but also in respect of the fact that the 10 representatives who are supposed to be here are observers. It means they are not allowed to vote. That is why you find that local government as a sphere feels a bit alienated from participating in the NCOP. They don't feel that they are an integral part of the system.
The third area we believe is quite important relates to the capability of this institution in terms of its numbers and strength. We believe that this has shortcomings, and must be bolstered and strengthened.
Lastly, we believe that the issue of facilitating international relations to promote a good and just world order is something that has to be looked at and strengthened. We therefore believe that, having expressed these views, you remain a premier strategic partner of this department going forward. We believe that we must work together, because we are an expression of co-operative governance in the legislature. We ourselves deal with co-operative governance at an executive level, so therefore we must be able to ensure that we collaborate and work together going forward.
One of the most important things, as we see it, is that we are involved in a process of reviewing the future of provinces. We have finalised the policy and it is a question of taking it to Cabinet to engage with it. At the same time we are looking at the issue of municipalities and what has happened to them. In doing so, we must be able to work together. Having taken the policy to Cabinet, we believe that once Cabinet pronounces on it, it must ensure that the process is taken to the legislatures and to the people of this country, so that they can express whether they believe that we should continue with the current conjuncture of the system of government as is. We believe that these matters must be engaged upon. If there is agreement that provinces should remain, we believe we will need a fundamental review of the structure of the NCOP, as I have said, with regard to its name, its structure, and its capability. But not only that. We also have to look at the priorities and the positioning of the NCOP in a way that reflects the interests of provinces and municipalities going forward.
From our side, as the department, we think there are about five priorities that we must take forward. Firstly, we must ensure that, in our developmental state, we build provinces and strengthen them - so that they are responsive, efficient and effective - and the same goes for municipalities.
We must ensure that the system of governance focuses on vulnerable groups. According to the ANC's strategy and tactics, we are the disciplined force of the left. This means that in our action we support the weak and the vulnerable. In respect of our definition, we believe the weak should include military veterans and farmworkers. Those groups were not included in the past.
We also believe that we must support the institution of governance, in particular in respect of traditional leadership and traditional communities. We must use processes to build social cohesion going forward.
We have agreed that we must have a turnaround strategy for local government. It is called the Local Government Turnaround Strategy 2009-11. This turnaround strategy will cover the following issues: reducing the number of complaints regarding issues of local government by 2011; reducing municipal debt, which is more than R41 billion, by half by 2014; building a debt-free society and promoting a culture of saving and payment for services; ensuring that municipalities have clean audits by 2014; reducing corruption and fraud to the minimum by 2011; and promoting clean cities by transforming waste into work by 2014 and at the same time establishing people's parks for love.
We also believe that ward committees should be empowered to become centres of co-operative governance, where we can ensure that our people interact at local level and co-ordinate all activities. Today the police have its own structures, health services have its own structures, and education has its own structures. We believe that this represents a silo mentality. Ward committees must be centres of co-ordination. One could have specific areas of responsibility, but the ward level is where things should be happening.
We also believe these ward committees must focus on establishing co- operatives, so that economic wealth is generated and they stop spending their time complaining, finding fault and not doing anything. In every village there must be economic activity taking place. It means that going forward people have to look at how they can generate wealth in their own areas of jurisdiction.
We believe that by doing these things we will actually be able to go forward. When I make my closing remarks, I will outline the tasks that should be undertaken by the ward committees. That will be when I come back for the second round.
We believe that one would be able to hold the department accountable for ensuring that these things are done. These are measurable objectives. We are saying, if you can't measure it, you can't monitor it. Therefore we are presenting things that can be monitored, because you can measure them. That is what we are outlining here. It is not a general statement that we are presenting in going forward. Thank you very much, Chairperson.