... will take years to be completely eradicated. Together with the people of this country, we are moving local government forward.
As our Nadine Gordimer said, "The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is." We in the ANC are also driven by the hunger to seek and tell the truth. Despite what the doomsayers and pessimists would want us to believe, the reality is that the ANC government is on course to build a developmental local government.
What then are the characteristics and key features of this developmental local government that we seek to construct? Our policy perspective and vision of a developmental local government is succinctly articulated in the 1998 White Paper on Local Government. The White Paper defines developmental local government as local government committed to working with citizens and groups within the community to find sustainable ways to meet their social, economic and material needs, and to improve the quality of their lives.
The second and more radical phase of our transition to the national democratic society demands of the democratic state that it perform a number of fundamental tasks at local government level in order to accelerate the full-frontal assault on the legacy of "colonialism of a special type".
Firstly, it must deal decisively with apartheid's spatial geography and planning by finalising and implementing the Integrated Urban Development Framework, which the department has developed and finalised.
Secondly, it must aggressively promote local economic development through the intelligent application of the already existing instruments in municipalities. Whilst having acknowledged the tremendous progress the ANC government has recorded, certain challenges continue to exist in local government like a festering sore. We would like to urge the department to pay particular attention to some of the following issues.
Firstly, it must prioritise the complete eradication of the bucket system, which is the most dehumanising form and utterly backward system of sanitation that the apartheid government introduced for our people. [Applause.] We must admit that we have not done well on this front.
Secondly, it must intervene in, and once and for all address, the poor outcomes of municipalities, especially given that this year we had intended all municipalities to receive clean audits.
Thirdly, it must develop intervention mechanisms to assist municipalities which are struggling to fully implement the National Development Plan.
We have full confidence in the team that the President has assembled to be in charge of this department. It possesses the necessary intellectual depth ...