Chairperson, hon Deputy Minister and colleagues, today I want to speak about patriotism. A sensible man once said: "You are a real patriot if you protect your country against your government." [Laughter.] What I heard today, from all corners of this House, was exactly that. When I listened to the hon Chaane, I heard words like "mind-boggling", "concerns", provinces, local government and projects "collapsing". I can continue with all the speakers who followed that golden thread, saying that in terms of the Division of Revenue Bill everything is not right in our country. We need to address the provinces and local government sphere specifically. I want to raise three very important issues in terms of my understanding of the issues.

The first one is the role of the NCOP vis--vis the National Assembly. My great concern is that we confuse our constitutional obligations. I hear words and concepts such as "oversight" and "accountability". My understanding is that in the final instance the National Assembly is responsible for accountability. With due respect, I am a bit concerned that the NCOP continuously engages the Auditor-General in terms of a different mandate. Our responsibility is oversight, which brings me to the point of this oversight. There is a stampede of oversight. Everybody - from the National Assembly, to the NCOP, to the districts and to the legislatures - wants to do oversight. After such oversight is performed, there are a lot of reports, which are accepted by various spheres. Unfortunately, the critical issue in this country is that very little happens once these reports have been accepted - and I am speaking as a patriot, protecting the country from the government. [Interjections.]

My analysis is that there are about three reasons for this "collapse" of many spheres of government - after all, that is what we heard today from various role-players. The first one is the confusion regarding the constitutional roles and responsibilities, as I indicated. I think as the NCOP we must honestly and objectively look at this issue.

The second issue has more to do with a political context - specifically leadership. The unfortunate reality is that in many spheres of our society, governments - provincial, local and municipal - are collapsing because of weak leadership. [Interjections.] The unfortunate reality is that the majority of these weak leaders come from the ANC. [Interjections.] If we want to address this, the ANC in particular but also all of us as political parties have a strong responsibility not to appoint as mayor the one who shouts "Amandla!" [Power!] or "Viva!" [Long live!] the loudest, but the one who can act and be accountable. [Time expired.]