Chairperson, the more things change, the more they remain the same. This is true about parties such as the DP and the New NP, which daily profess to have shed and relinquished their old and discredited discriminatory practices, but reveal their true colours whenever transformatory legislation, which seeks to redress the injustices and inequality of the past, comes before this House.
The White Paper on Local Government identifies integrated development planning as a key tool for promoting and realising developmental local government. Fundamentally, an integrated development plan represents a process through which municipalities establish strategic frameworks and development plans for the short, medium and long term. This planning system is a new and radical departure from the racially based planning programmes of the past dispensation, which were imposed on our communities without consultation, and at times with force, such as the discredited black local authorities which were forced upon our people during the 1980s.
Unlike in the past, the new approach encourages democracy, transparency and accountability by forcing municipalities to subject their development plans to public participation and evaluation. The prevailing problem has always been the uncertainty as to the precise status of integrated development plans at local government level.
At the moment there are various planning-related processes and documents that have some legal status and meaning at the local government level. These include structure plans, town planning schemes and land development objectives. Therefore, if integrated development plans are meant to be the most important output of the integrated development planning process, then it needs to be given an unambiguous status in law.
The relationship between integrated development plans and other existing documents then needs to be clarified. This is precisely what is intended by the Local Government: Municipal Systems Bill in regard to this subject.
In terms of the Bill, municipalities are legally required to adopt a single, inclusive and strategic plan for the development of the municipality. Integrated development plans are therefore elevated to the status of the principal strategic plan of a municipality. An integrated development planning approach has many benefits. The following are some of the important benefits.
It enables municipalities to align and direct their financial and institutional resources towards agreed policy objectives and programmes. It is a vital tool to ensure the integration of local government activities with other spheres of development planning at provincial and national levels by serving as a basis for communication and interaction.
It serves as a basis for engagement between local government and citizens at local level, and with various stakeholders and interested groups. When I say ``citizens at local level'', I am also a citizen at local level, as opposed to what Ms Botha has said here, namely that we are not citizens at local level - that we take decisions and therefore are not at local level.
It enables municipalities to weigh up their obligations and systematically prioritise programmes and resource allocations. In the context of great inequalities, an integrated development plan serves as a framework for municipalities to prioritise their actions around meeting urgent needs, while maintaining the overall economic municipal and social infrastructure already in place.
It assists local government to focus on the environmental sustainability of their delivery and development strategies, because sustainable development is development that delivers basic social and economic services to all, without threatening the viability of the ecological and community systems upon which these services depend. Therefore, integrated development planning will assist local government to develop a holistic strategy for poverty alleviation. [Applause.]