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Address of the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, at the
National Council of Provinces, Limpopo, 4 November 2005 Chairperson and
Deputy Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces,
Honourable Members,
Fellow
South Africans; I am honoured to have this opportunity once more to interact
with the National Council of Provinces. As I did when I spoke to the NCOP as it
met in KwaZulu-Natal in October last year, again I would like to congratulate
the NCOP for its programme to take Parliament to the people. This addresses
what must remain a central feature of our democracy, namely, the maintenance of
the closest possible contact between the legislatures, the executive and administrative
authorities on the one hand, and the masses of our people, on the other. Because
of the legacy we inherited and therefore the challenges our nation faces, the
democratic state has to play an especially important role with regard to the process
of the reconstruction and development of our country in all spheres of human endeavour.
The masses of our people are conscious of this and are therefore intensely
interested to know what the organs of State are doing. Those of us involved in
our governance system have a collective responsibility to ensure that we respond
properly and continuously to this legitimate desire. In addition to this,
we have stressed repeatedly that such regular interaction with the people would
contribute greatly to the realisation of the objective that Government should
be transparent and accountable. Throughout the period of our democracy,
we have also insisted that to create a people-centred society, we have to engage
in people-driven processes of change. This cannot happen if the people are not
sufficiently empowered with the knowledge they need to enable them constructively
to participate in determining their future. As the Honourable Members are
aware, the NCOP occupies a unique position within our constitutional system of
governance. This derives from the fact that it is the only institution within
this system that straddles all three spheres of our co-operative governance construct-the
national, provincial and local. This places the NCOP in a strategic oversight
position. It has the possibility and the mandate to keep a constant eye on the
processes that must integrate legislative and executive decisions in all spheres
of government, and ensure the practical implementation of these decisions, especially
to the extent that they directly on the lives of the people. For this reason,
I believe that the NCOP should regularly review its effectiveness with regard
to the discharge of this mission, to ensure that it constantly improves its performance.
This would benefit our democracy and all its institutions enormously and further
strengthen our system of co-operative governance. In this regard, Honourable
Chairperson and Honourable Members, you will pardon me if I return to the same
subject on which I focused when I had the honour to speak to the National Council
last year. This is the critical issue of local government. I said then
that we need "municipalities that serve all our people and have the requisite
capacity to provide regular and reliable services to citizens as well as being
at the forefront of the reconstruction and development of our country. "We
need efficient and effective municipalities so as to deliver these better services
to ensure that poor households have access to basic infrastructure and the poor
are provided with free basic services. "Further, as we accelerate
the implementation of our expanded public works programme, we need strong municipalities
to work in partnership with other spheres of government, similarly, the Municipal
Infrastructure Grant will not make the required impact if our municipalities are
weak. "As we know, there are serious delivery backlogs which have denied
millions of our people the possibility of a better life. We are aware of municipalities
with large communities that have no access to clean water, sanitation and electricity. "To
respond to this lack of capacity, in May of this year, Cabinet took a decision
to develop a support initiative for local government structures, called Project
Consolidate, and constituted an inter-Ministerial Committee for this programme." Chairperson,
I am please to report to the National Council that in the period since I made
this statement, a year ago, Project Consolidate has made the impact we sought,
opening the road towards the empowerment of our system of local government properly
to discharge it responsibilities. As the Honourable Members are aware,
both the President and the Deputy President of the Republic, as well as our Ministers,
are engaged in an Imbizo process that involves visits to municipalities. This
process differs in some important respect from the Provincial Izimbizo that we
convened in the past. The central purpose of the Provincial Izimbizo was
to hear directly from the people about their concerns and their needs, allowing
them to raise any issue on their minds, with no restrictions. This process helped
greatly to sensitise us to the expectations of the people on many issues of immediate
interest to them. It also exposed us to what they expected Government to
do, to address the challenge of providing a better life for all. As the Honourable
Members know and would expect, this related particularly to the sphere of local
government. The people's response confirmed that we were correct to emphasise
the critical importance of local government as the one sphere of government that
faces the greatest challenge to maintain the closest possible contact with the
people, the best placed to give practical expression to the vision that the people
shall govern. As the Honourable Members know, sooner or later the Minister
of Provincial and Local Government and the IEC, our Electoral Commission, will
announce the date for the next local government elections, Arising from the concerns
expressed by the people about local government and what we know of the challenges
facing this sphere of government, I would like to make a proposal for consideration
by the National Council, relating to the forthcoming elections. Last week
I had to answer a question in the National Assembly occasioned by the concern
of a Member of Parliament about the processes in which the various political parties
in our country are engaged, to select their candidates for the next local government
elections. In my response to this question, I indicated that I have indeed
received disturbing reports concerning some of these selection processes. There
seems to be a very intense interest among some of our citizens to secure nomination
as candidate councillors, using all means available to them. This has resulted
in various actions, which, though affecting individual political parties and organisations,
clearly do not contribute to the further deepening of democracy in our country.
Among other things, the actions to which I refer seek to undermine the free expression
of the will of the people in the party selection processes. This is done
by way of all manner of unacceptable actions, which include outright intimidation
through the use of threat of violence targeted at the intra-party electors. This
also includes corrupt practice, represented by various forms of bribery of the
potential voters empowered to participate in the party selection processes. I
believe that we must state the pre-eminent consideration in this regard in a forthright
manner. This unseemly scramble for political power in municipal government appears
to be driven by the desire to abuse elected positions to lay hands on the economic
resources that the local authorities have the possibility to access. This
includes the power of members of municipal executive authorities to determine
the outcomes of municipal tendering processes, regardless of the fact that the
Municipal Finance Management Act expressly prohibits the involvement of councillors
and mayors in adjudicating bids for municipal tenders. Despite this legal
provision, it is obvious that those desperately hungry for political power for
selfish reasons are driven first and foremost by hunger to get rich quick at the
expense of the poor of our country. These are the same poor masses that elect
popular representatives, confident that they are putting their X signs opposite
the names and symbols of parties and individuals committed to serve their interests.
However, as I said in my Address to the National Council last year, and
as I have already indicated, we need "municipalities that serve all our people
and have the requisite capacity to provide regular and reliable services to citizens
as well as being at the forefront of the reconstruction and development of our
country". We cannot build such a system of municipal government by
electing councillors driven by criminally selfish motives, who have absolutely
no interest in serving the people and who do not belong among those determined
to occupy the forward trenches in the difficult and complex struggle for the reconstruction
and development of our country, focused on the achievement of the goal of a better
life for all. I humbly request that you use your powerful voice as elected
representatives of the people, to urge all our parties and local communities to
present as candidate councillors people they are convinced are truly committed
to serve the people of South Africa. In this regard, if you accept my proposal,
I would suggest that you also indicate publicly the kind of behaviour that is
unacceptable in the nomination processes, as well as the behaviour that is acceptable
in our democracy, to help the masses of our people to understand the kinds of
activity our elected legislative organs and the rest of our governance system
find impermissible. Further to this, I would suggest that the NCOP should
not be satisfied merely to adopt the kind of resolution I am proposing. I would
dare suggest that having adopted such a resolution, the National Council should
make every effort to ensure that his resolution, reflecting its views, is communicated
to as many South Africans as possible. This would help to create the national
climate that will help all of us to elect an echelon of municipal leaders who
enjoy the confidence of the people, because they inspire certainly among the electorate
that they will act as, truly, the people's envoys. I am certain that the
millions of our people would feel greatly obliged to this particular sitting of
the National Council if, at its conclusion, it said that as an elected organ of
state, It had taken up the cudgels to promote the achievement of the objective
- good councillors for developmental municipalities! Chairperson, I have
said that the current round of Municipal Izimbizo differs significantly from our
previous Provincial Izimbizo. For the Municipal Izimbizo, we decided to focus
on the strategic objective to help the municipal authorities to meet their obligations,
regardless of their size and resource endowment. To achieve this, as the
Honourable Members are aware, our Municipal Izimbizo consist of interaction between
ourselves on the one hand, and the Mayoral Committees, the municipal management
echelon, and the Ward Committees on the other. In the first instance this
had enabled us to identify the specific problems that impact negatively on the
possibility of the municipalities to meet their obligations to the people. We
have been greatly assisted in this regard by work done by Project Consolidate
and the IDP Hearings Panel Reports, both of which detail the constraints impeding
effective service delivery and socio-economic development. To give an indication
of what I am talking about, let me cite some of the comments made by the Panel
that conducted the IDP Hearings in the Gert Sibande District Municipality in Mpumalanga.
Among other things the Panel said: - There are serious capacity constraints
in most local municipalities. Their District interventions are short-term oriented
in the sense that they are focused mainly on district staff deployment…instead
of working towards capacitating the respective local municipalities to be self-sufficient
in the future".
- "The District is…focusing on micro projects
that have very little impact on the economy of the district. There are no plans
for big anchor projects with large socio-economic spin-offs."
- "The
District is still struggling with planning processes due to a system of over-reliance
on consultants".
- The District is often not able to spend some of
the funds it has available, due to its own implementation capacity constraints.."
Having
met and engaged the executive and administrative leadership of Gert Sibande District,
I would say that these leaders are indeed working hard to ensure that the municipalities
they lead and manage, meet their obligations to the people. The problems identified
at the IDP Hearings do not arise from a lack of commitment by this leader to discharge
its responsibilities. Part of the problem was identified by Project Consolidate,
which said that almost 20% of municipal posts were vacant, significantly this
included 15 of the top managerial positions, 85 within the Professional Category
including engineers, town planners and so on, and 130 skilled artisans required
for maintenance and operations. It is obvious that without this skilled
personnel, the district will continue to experience serious shortfalls in terms
of meeting its own IDP objectives. During the Gert Sibande imbizo our attention
was also drawn to gross imbalances in terms of the staff employed by the various
local municipalities in the district. Govan Mbeki Local Municipality accounts
for about 25% of the population of the district, while Albert Luthuli Local Municipality
has 21% of the population. And yet Albert Luthuli Municipality employs only
191 people, compared to the 1448 employed by the Govan Mbeki Municipality. It
is perfectly obvious that with such a small staff, Albert Luthuli can never hope
to achieve any of its development objectives. The reason for this extraordinary
disparity became very clear when it was explained that Goven Mbeki Municipality
covered the town of Secunda, while the Albert Luthuli Municipality covered the
formed KwaNdebele bantustan area. In order words, the democratic order has permitted
the perpetuation of the gross imbalance that existed during the apartheid years
between white South Africa and bantustan South Africa. Both the challenges
we have mentioned raise critical questions about municipal finances. To hire the
skilled personnel to fill the vacant posts in the Gert Sibande municipal area
and properly staff the Albert Luthuli Local Municipality will require financial
resources that these municipalities may not have. And yet if we require
these municipalities to contribute to the achievement of the goal of a better
life for all, as we do, we surely have an obligation to provide the municipalities
with the resources they need to help our country realise this goal. Chairperson,
as I have already indicated, during the Municipal Izimbizo we also interact with
the Ward Committees. Again, this gives us the possibility to understand the specific
challenges facing this important institution in our system of governance. It
seems clear that many municipalities have indeed made serious efforts to ensure
that they establish the Ward Committees, However there are some problems that
need to be solved to improve the effectiveness of these Committees, which play
a vital role in ensuring the interaction between the people and our governance
system that we spoke of at the beginning of this Address. Ward Committee
members raise such questions as the need to ensure adequate funding of their Committees,
some emolument for the members, improving interaction between the Committee and
the Councils and feedback from the Councils, extending the mandates of the Committees
beyond one year, and strengthening the Speakers' Offices to improve their capacity
to support the Ward Committees. Chairperson and Honourable Members, I have
mentioned these detailed matters about local government to encourage the NCOP
to take the issue of strengthening our system of local government as one of this
major challenges. As we sought to indicate earlier on, as we commented
on the unique position of the National Council within our system of governance,
the NCOP would necessarily also have to focus on the realisation of the objective
of co-operative governance, without which it would not be possible to build an
effective system of local government. The central task facing us during
this Second Decade of Freedom is to ensure the implementation of the policies
and programmes we have evolved during our eleven years of liberation. This decade
must see us move forward to achieve the targets we have set ourselves with regard
to such important matters as the reduction of unemployment and poverty, and the
achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
To achieve these objectives
requires that we attend to the details thrown up by the requirements to ensure
the successful implementation of our policies and programmes. The NCOP
would serve our country and people well if it so organised its work that it gives
itself the space to focus on the challenge to help our system of local government
to measure up to its developmental challenges. Success in this regard will
ensure that we succeed to move forward decisively towards the achievement of the
goal of a better life for all. I am certain that the NCOP will rise to this challenge
and continue to stand in the front ranks of the institutions in our country committed
to building a winning and people-centred society consistent with the vision espoused
in the Freedom Charter.
I thank you for your attention.
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