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18 May 2005

Chairperson
Honourable Members

Allow me to acknowledge the presence in the gallery of eminent friends and partners of the Ministry and the Department of Provincial and Local Government (DPLG). Amongst those whose partnership is indispensable to our functional efficacy are:

* Honourable MECs responsible for local government and traditional affairs
* Nozi Mzimela and other traditional leaders of our people
* The leadership of SALGA
* Members of the Municipal Demarcation Board
* Representatives of the Local Government Seta
* Representatives of the National Productivity Institute
* Representatives of the Development Bank of Southern Africa
* Representatives of the Finance and Fiscal Commission
* Representatives of the Municipal Infrastructure Investment Unit
* Chairperson of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities
* Chairperson of the Afrikaanse Handels-Instituut
* Chairperson of the Commission for Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims.

Many more of our colleagues and partners who would have been here are, with Deputy Minister Nomatyala Hangana, taking part in the inaugural conference of the United Cities and Local Government Authorities – an African continental organisation whose birth our country has the honour to play midwife to.

The Chairperson of the African Union (AU), President Olesegun Obasanjo and other African leaders have joined local government practitioners from all over Africa, to celebrate another milestone in Africa’s quest for a rightful place and role in the global effort to banish the scourge of poverty and underdevelopment. The choice of our capital, Pretoria, as a venue for such a momentous occasion, once more confirms that Africa and indeed, the world, believe that we have something of value to share for the benefit of humanity the world over.

Chairperson, when we established the new system of local government a little over four years ago, we knew that we were starting on a climb of a steep path. This was a change which, like all other changes, had to begin from the place we were at. We knew then that we would only be able to gain the luminous heights of the steep path if we refuse to set aside the fatiguing climb.

The reality which we had to work with was one of historical neglect. In some areas of our country there was no local government structure to speak of; and in others, such as the rural areas and black residential areas in the peripheries of urban centres, what local government structure existed was there for purposes of managing the political and socio-economic exclusion of the majority.

And so, Chairperson, the 284 municipalities that we have constitute a system of local government, which is at once contemporaneously developmental and an antidote to the DNA imprint of the past on the present. Each one of these municipalities has a historical trajectory of its own, and for practitioners, choices tend to be massively constrained by the legacies of the past.

Honourable members our conception of the local government structure and system was inspired by the vision of bringing political decision-making close to the everyday concerns of the citizens. We sought to create municipal entities that would lend themselves to the realisation of economies of scale, as opposed to what existed hitherto, namely, many small municipalities with no revenue base. Not only did those entities not have decent revenue base, but also, they had no possibility to create conditions for sustainable service delivery and sustainable socio-economic development at local level.

Our ideal-type municipality is one which has a political and administrative leadership with capacity for taking a strategic role in the formulation and execution of development strategies. A leadership with technical capacity to analyse problems, formulate feasible solutions and implement them in technically competent ways. Such an ideal-type municipality, given local government’s proximity to the people, must also have the possibility to mobilise for popular participation in matters of governance. Indeed, the ideal-type municipality I speak of was visualised in various pieces of local government legislation which were brought into life by this House.

But chairperson, real municipalities are a deviation from the ideal-type. The December 2000 local government elections gave us a cadreship of over 8900 democratically elected councillors who are from diverse backgrounds. We needed to facilitate these councillors as well as the administrative leadership, to levels of performance necessary to deal with the complexities that are entailed in the new structure and system of local government. Since then therefore, we rolled-out capacity building support initiatives. Some of the successful capacity building support initiatives have included establishing Planning Implementation Management Support (PIMS) Centres in all 47 district municipalities. They also included the establishment of the Municipal Infrastructure Investment Unit, the South Africa Cities Network as well as several knowledge-sharing networks.

Through the Consolidate Municipal Infrastructure Programme (CMIP) and the Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) we have, since the year 2000, invested over R10,3 billion in basic municipal infrastructure. By the end of the 2004/05 financial year over 2 500 projects had been supported benefiting over 3 million households. Other positive outcomes included significant temporary job creation and training opportunities. Also, a total of 2 712 small medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) were utilised in the rolling-out of these municipal infrastructure projects.

With respect to basic service delivery, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) recently released a non-financial census on municipalities for the year ended on 30 June 2003. The purpose of this was to measure the level of development and performance of our 284 municipalities in terms of the provision of water, electricity, solid waste management and sanitation. The census shows that the number of households receiving basic services from municipalities increased between 30 June 2002 and 30 June 2003.

According to the Stats SA survey, of the 7,8 million households receiving water from municipalities in South Africa, 5,9 million (75,7%) had access to free basic water. With respect to the households receiving free basic water, the Free State province shows the highest proportion (91,5%) with Western Cape showing the lowest proportion (58%). The 5,9 million households receiving free basic water from municipalities in 2003, as compared with 4,2 million households in 2002, represents an increase of 41,7%.

With respect to electricity, of the 4,1 million households receiving electricity from municipalities, as at June 2003, 57,3% had access to free basic electricity. Again, Free State province showed the highest proportion (90,3%). The province with the lowest proportion was KwaZulu-Natal (4,1%).

Chairperson, the geography of service delivery and municipal infrastructure backlogs is indeed very instructive. A case in point is Soweto, which celebrated its centenary last year. For 98 of the 100 years of its existence, Soweto had tracts of gravel roads covering an estimated 300km in built-up areas. For the people of Soweto, who endured such historical neglect, the introduction of the new local government system was a watershed for the better. For the first time in the history of Johannesburg, the people of Soweto were treated with the dignity they deserve. As we speak, the city has allocated an amount of R400 million over a three-year period starting in 2002/03, to the task of tarring those roads. It is expected that the project will be 100% complete by the end of this month. It is achievements like these which show that their relative newness notwithstanding, our municipalities are capturing advances in the learning curve.

Like other metropolitan municipalities as well as district municipalities, Johannesburg has had to contend with the complex challenge of amalgamating organisations with hitherto fundamentally different organisational cultures, orientations and resource base. It had to contend with such vexing dualities as we see persisting in the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality. The Nelson Mandela Metro has succeeded to put together a Free Basic Electricity package, which benefits about 89 000 households at a cost of R137 per month, per household. However, this metro is home also to the people of the Govan Mbeki informal settlement as well as the KwaNoxolo community.

The problems experienced by the people of these communities have sometimes given rise to protest actions which can best be addressed by improving local government’s capacity for executing its strategic plans, including ensuring that there is adequate communication between council and the residence. Capacity in this context means:

* having the right numbers of appropriately skilled and oriented people working in the sector
* ability for change management – to transform the system of government into one that is responsive, reliable and sustainable
* tenacity to make steady and even incremental progress
* a sense of urgency regarding the imperatives of social and economic progress.

National and provincial government, as well as the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) remain worried about those municipalities that operate sub-optimally with respect to such performance indicators as universalising access to basic services, provision of social and economic infrastructure, and the creation of conditions for local economic development. This explains why we launched Project Consolidate on 29 October 2004.

Through Project Consolidate we seek to erect the scaffolding for bridging the gap between intentions and outcomes. This is a two-year programme of intervention in support of municipalities. Through it, we seek to harness the additional resources from other spheres of government as well as from the private domain, to the task of improving municipal performance. The professionals and specialists we are deploying as Service Delivery Facilitators will focus on the short-term goal of helping to remove service delivery blockages. This initiative will also give them the possibility to have a forensic feel of the situation at local level. This might also lead to policy refinement and to the refinement of our nationally co-ordinated programme of support for this sphere of government.

In short, the Service Delivery Facilitators, who we started to deploy from 1 April, will help develop plans for tackling service delivery and infrastructure backlogs. Where such plans already exist, they will help mobilise the appropriate resources to accelerate the execution of these plans. Our thinking with regard to Project Consolidate is dominated by the metaphor of a short-term programme of intervention that is embedded in our long-term policy goal of having a local government sphere which has the capacity to sustain itself. Such luminary heights in the steep path can only be attained by men and women who refuse to submit to constraints. Men and women have come forward from different organisations, public and private, to place their talents and expertise at the service of needy municipalities. They deserve our respect and admiration.

All the communities to which these Service Delivery Facilitators are being deployed must avail themselves of this opportunity. It is an opportunity for your local area to strike out afresh and for yours to be transformed into a space of hope. In various parts of the country, especially in the municipal areas which are Project Consolidate’s focus of attention, nationally co-ordinated public hearings on Municipal Integrated Development Plans are taking place. In addition, President Thabo Mbeki will be visiting selected municipalities to interact with local government practitioners as they contemplate measures by which they can put their own performance on an upgrade.

As all these things happen, officials of national and provincial service delivery departments will be expected to spend a significant amount of their time “dirtying their hands” in the crucible of that which changes the lives of the people for the better. In this regard, I would like to express my profound appreciation to those departments, national and provincial, who have already designated personnel whose task it is to reinforce the effort to implement Project Consolidate. With partners like these, the future of local government, and indeed the future of our country and its people, looks bright.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department for Provincial and Local Government
18 May 2005