Hon Chair of the NCOP, our Ministers here present, we thank you for your presence. Hon members, let me join our Minister, and also tell our Minister to say: "Vorentoe, nie agtertoe nie"!
The Minister has outlined the mandate of the new department. All that is still required is that the Minister must put in place the budget to realise those objectives as outlined. We have about five priorities that are required to realise the objectives of our manifesto, and without putting the proper budget in place, our Minister will hear what we hear from some of the parties that are like tortoises that do not want to relinquish their shells. All we need to do is to create decent jobs, fight crime, and promote rural development, health and education.
If you are from the past, especially if you tasted apartheid, it might not be easy to transform to what the current government wants the people of South Africa to taste. And if that is the case, we call on people to support the type of Minister we have, a Minister who is a choirmaster, ready to remove any person, from whatever political party, who does not want the song to be melodious to the audience. If you sing with people who are not able to sing, as we say in Sotho, your song will indeed not be melodious to the people.
Minister, we welcome your speech. We as the select committee are saying that we support every element of your speech. Over the past 15 years, we have seen that the mandate of the department is forcing us to say that, in order to move forward, we need to review certain legislative and policy aspects, precisely because without doing that the broad mandate of provincial and local government might not be realised. At stake here, hon House, is the fact that the Department of Provincial and Local Government Affairs ignored one sphere of our three spheres of government, the provincial government. While there was a lot of noise about municipalities, the provincial government did not have enough legislative capacity to ensure that it intervened.
We are facing a lot of section 139 interventions, which are not a result of wrong or weak policies; our policies are strong, and our policies are correct. All that is needed is to close the gap, and the gap is at provincial level. Therefore we must indeed speed up the White Paper, so that as NCOP committees we are able to make an input into what type of provinces we want.
No one is saying that we are going to remove the provinces as yet, but if perhaps South Africa wants them to be dissolved, fine, because there are nine provinces, not eight provinces plus one. There are nine provinces in a unitary state and that is why other people are worried. There are nine provinces - there is no single province that belongs in a separate pocket. That is not true. Therefore we need to move forward with that legislation. We want to see the strengthening of co-operative governance in a developmental state. Once we do that, we will deliver service freely, without tension, without section 139 interventions, without section 100 interventions, without any other noise from anywhere, because we would then have created a correct political environment for governance to take place. We need to go back and to strengthen that accountability. The process of accountability in government will have to be addressed so that the policies and the legislation are strengthened, because there are weaknesses, and we do not want that type of thing. We need to correct that type of thing.
We can only accelerate service delivery, Minister, if, indeed, we review that particular procedural relationship, particularly at local level where farmworkers and MK veterans are to be found. If we don't do that, how can we assist them? They are vulnerable, not because of their character, but because of the history of apartheid. Therefore we are still correcting that. We are still fighting something that is a legacy, even after 15 years in power. There are still many remnants of the legacy and the history of apartheid. Therefore no one must say we are in power and doing nothing, when these people were in power for over 300 years after Jan van Riebeeck occupied our land, right here in Cape Town. No one should tell us that.
We have a duty to perform and our duty, as we celebrate our centenary in 2012, is to tell our people that indeed this was a struggle worth fighting for. They shall have access to water and electricity, better roads, better jobs, and decent jobs for that matter. And, indeed, that is what we need to strive for.
Minister, your song, your melody, says we must also strive to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Indeed, we must commit ourselves to that. I think because the mandate is broad, the department can no longer say we want to halve poverty by 2014. We should fight poverty as long as we are alive. We have to fight it.
There are developments, there are extensions, and there is expansion, but as long as this government exists, we will have to fight poverty, until it is totally eradicated.
At municipal level, Minister, we have seen the budget. Earlier on we met with the Deputy Minister and had a briefing; we have seen the budget and we are happy with it. We only want to say that here and there we need to tighten certain screws. For example, we would want the department to study, debate and review the formula that determines the grant allocation. While it increases every year, I think the formula needs to be reviewed, because when you increase the grant next year, you will find that the prices have also gone up, so the increase might not be visible. Once we review that formula, we will be in a position to address not only the backlog but to plan forward for whatever we need to see happening in our community.
The other aspect that we need to tighten is the very same idea of intergovernmental relations. Previously it was a voluntary forum. We need that forum to no longer be voluntary, but to be obligatory. It must respond to a particular instruction or role, so that anyone who does not want to sing in the Rural Development Initiative, RDI, must know that there are consequences for not doing that. If that is not happening, the Minister must be able to drive the forum of the Rural Development Initiative correctly, and the provinces are at the head of the RDI. Who is at the centre? At the centre are the provinces ... [Time expired.] [Applause.]