Chairperson of the NCOP, hon members, Ministers present here, first of all I would like to thank the 1,3 million people of South Africa who voted for Cope to come and represent them in this august House.
Chairperson, allow me to congratulate the Minister. He says it is a new department. A new department means a new broom which must sweep clean. I'm going to raise three issues that the Minister is supposed to go and implement. Firstly, what is the criterion for establishing municipal areas? For example, in the Musina Local Municipality there are 57 196 people and in Mutale Municipality there are 108 215 people; in Malamulele there are 307 897 people but it is not a municipality. What has been done now is that they have taken Malamulele and included it in Mutale. What is the rationale behind that? I was with Kgosi XiKundu who was crying, because if his people are included in Mutale, they will have to travel 200 km from where they are in order to receive services.
In Giyani location - but I call it "town" myself, because I have a problem with the issue of "location" - there is special treatment for the mayor. There is a section, Section E in Giyani, that has no tarmac roads or streets. Since the appointment of the mayor, as I'm standing here, they are busy working on those streets to tar them. Why is that?
Let us consider the anticorruption strategy, as was mentioned at the first briefing in the morning and now. Is it merely a rosy document to be put on the shelves? Will those strategies be properly implemented? I was happy to hear the Minister say that he was going to come up with a turnaround strategy which will deal with the complaints and debts. I want to see a clean audit by 2014. Are we going to be relieved to see that? [Time expired.]