Deputy Chairperson, Deputy Minister, members, ladies and gentlemen, the first thing I want to do today is congratulate the department on reducing its number of film stars by appointing senior management - the director-general, DG, and others - in the department. Last year we sent them packing because there was a film star in every post. Now we want to congratulate them. However, I want to raise the point that a vacancy rate of 14% is too high. Vacancies must be filled immediately.
Mr Mofokeng and Mr Mokoena suffered because of a lack of leadership in the department. They were supposed to have been released in June last year. They could not be released because the legal people in the department misled the Minister. We must be very careful about the legal people we employ to advise us in the department. They could only be released this year, a year after it all had happened. I want to raise this precisely because I am concerned about the embarrassment caused when we went to the Constitutional Court and the Chief Justice was so angry in delivering his interpretation of the previous judgment. This was because the Minister's legal advisers misled her. We think this is wrong and such matters must be dealt with immediately. That is the first issue.
Secondly, I want to congratulate the department because they told us that they won't be like the City of Cape Town. They want to deal with the consultants in the department. The City of Cape Town wants to comply and not deliver services to Langa, the Cape Flats, and everywhere else. They can't deliver, precisely because they want to comply with the law. [Interjections.] That is one area that I want to congratulate the department on, because they have too many consultants. We can't be the DA, because the DA wants to comply; they don't want to deliver services to the people. That is an area that I think we need to deal with seriously as the ANC. [Interjections.]
Those are the two issues I thought would be important for me to raise first, before the hon Sinclair and his group and Bloem and his group come back to the ANC because they think they are lost. [Laughter.]