Chairperson, Minister and Deputy Ministers, premier, MEC and respective leaders of our provinces, the Deputy President of the Republic, when addressing the NCOP last year, guided us by saying:
As government, we have long recognised the imperative value of partnerships across all fronts. What needs to be emphasised, however, is the need to ensure that we use partnerships to maximum advantage, such as in addressing service delivery challenges.
Achievement of government Programme of Action goals assumes exactly that our efforts are well co-ordinated across the three spheres of government, consciously driven by common imperatives.
An activist NCOP is one that ensures through its oversight and legislative role that there is a speedy roll-out of basic services to the people by passing appropriate legislation that speaks directly to the needs of our people. It further ensures this through oversight work, working with the executive and ensuring that they execute both their constitutional and political mandates to better the lives of our people.
In the effort of today's debate, we want to emphasise a point that is missing. At the level of the executive, there are, indeed, intergovernmental relations, IGR, structures. At the level of legislatures and Parliament there is that legislation, but there is a need to debate in order to make all these IGR structures better co-ordinated and better strengthened to avoid them being a talk show.
The NCOP should be a forum where battles of ideas take place between parties, as any party can talk the way it likes. And also, parties should be guided correctly by their ideological and theoretical focus in implementing and advancing the objectives of the Fourth Parliament.
The main challenge facing our party, the ANC, in the second decade of freedom is how then do we deepen this debate within the context of a national democratic revolution in order for us to create more jobs and decent work, emphasise the eradication of poverty and unemployment, and accelerate programmes to improve the lives of black people.
This debate is not lost, as other parties think it is. It is in a developmental state where we say moving forward is a dynamic process. If our state was a conservative state, yes, we would be locked in one place; we would be static! But because it is developmental, we need to continue to debate to see how we strengthen co-operative governance and the IGR structures.
This would be done to ensure that participation of the people is clear in what it is that they need. And their needs must find expression in the planning - and our planning is not ordinary planning; it is integrated planning.
Since it is integrated planning, it means there is a need for a serious co- ordination of the plans, and the plans can only be well co-ordinated if the intergovernmental framework is well applied everywhere, wherever we are within our three spheres of government.
The three spheres mean that the structures are not separate. You have a national, provincial and local structure. It's like a person - a complete human being - where you have a head, a body and legs. In this context, the legs could be defined as local government. Therefore, they implement or run the programme of both the provincial and the national government. It says: continue to debate and strengthen what you are supposed to be doing!
Ready to Govern and the Reconstruction and Development Programme, RDP, emphasised the need for an integrated approach to governance and accountability for accelerated service delivery. This implies strengthening oversight work by Parliament and legislatures.
The ANC's strategic objective is to promote the transformation of South Africa into a united, democratic, nonracial and nonsexist country. In order to achieve these objectives, the ANC government needs to advance service delivery as it is done in nine provinces; not in eight provinces, in nine provinces - those are the achievements of the ANC government in this country. But the emphasis is that those achievements must not be based on racial or ethnic lines. They should address the spatial legacy that has been left or that we have inherited as a compromise, precisely because we should not forget where we are, fighting the challenges of service delivery.
In sunset clause we said, "We go on with this situation; when we are in Parliament we will address this depth of apartheid, and these are social depths of apartheid." Therefore, there is no time or party that can be blamed, precisely because we are doing what has been left by some of them.
The ANC is committed to the principle and practice of bringing government closer to the people to ensure popular participation in government. What we are here for, in summary, is Chapter 3 of the Constitution, as I have learnt it. However, you still have to contend with the three arms of our state, between which there is a separation of powers.
Many people confuse this with having, federal states. Separation of powers simply refers to legislative, executive and judiciary matters, only in that context. The three spheres of government say: Come together, integrate, and move like a stream towards bettering the lives of the people in this country.
The other issue that needs to be emphasised in co-operative governance and IGR is how we should follow the decisions that are taken at IGR level, because they are there. As I said, we have the President's Co-ordinating Council, PCC, Ministers, MECs, districts, mayors' forums and all sorts of things - where the provincial and national seek to support these municipalities.
What is prevailing is that the debates are held, decisions are taken, but after the meeting, after catering, no one makes a follow-up on those decisions. How then do we follow up on decisions in order to strengthen and implement the outputs of the IGR? I think that is the debate that we need to undertake, moving forward.
So, once that has been undertaken, there will be a way in which there will be monitoring and a follow-up on the decisions. This way will also minimise the application of section 139 across the country. The challenges of this application will be detected in time at the IGR level and proper intervention will be done. If there is no such thing, you will always see section 139 interventions.
As you try to check prior to the application, you will find that there was a meeting, but there were no follow-ups. One other thing is that national government must provide resources to provinces, so that when the provinces intervene in section 139, there are resources to address that chronic problem within our state.
The Ready to Govern document says that "democratic local government should facilitate creation of a strong civil society".
The impression is that you want to take people to be part of your governance, because if you have a strong civil society that guides your planning, and whatever is done in your government, people will move with you.
And if there is that type of civil society that understands, after planning has been done, then we need to go back, in that spirit to say: In terms of your needs, you said you want a temple on top of the mountain; we can't afford that. What we are going to do is to bring a pipe of water to ward so and so. Own it as a community, as a village and as a municipality. This is one thing that is lacking, in our view, in terms of intergovernmental outputs in our country.
Municipalities across the country have been involved in protracted, difficult and challenging transitional processes over the past years. This has further been compounded by a redemarcation issue, after involving each and every municipality.
In conclusion, the ANC will be going to the national general council next month. Amongst many things that will be debated there - which will be taken forward, which other parties should also do - is that we need to review the division of revenue. [Applause.] [Time expired.]