Hon Chair Tau, hon members of the NCOP, representatives of Salga, we, the Mpumalanga provincial legislature, hereby declare our profound gratitude to be granted this rare privilege and opportunity to address this esteemed House. Indeed, it is an exceptional honour to address the National Council of Provinces, and we are highly delighted.
From the outset, we also want to express our heartfelt gratitude to our NCOP permanent delegates, namely the hon Boroto, the hon Mashile, the hon Themba, the hon Nyambi, the hon Watson and hon Sibande, for their dedicated visit to our province during the provincial week of September 2009.
They came to ascertain, inter alia, the actual causes of the service delivery protest action that was manifested in the various local municipalities, particularly at the Mkhondo Local Municipality, to assess the type and quality of service delivery being rendered in the municipalities. They also came to further determine the course of action the Mpumalanga provincial leadership had undertaken to deal efficiently and effectively with the factors that had given rise to the violent protest action.
We hereby confirm that the aforementioned NCOP permanent delegates interacted with various stakeholders in the province, namely the provincial speakership, provincial presiding officers and the secretary of the legislature, on issues such as the overview of oversight work between the legislature and the NCOP. This incorporated, firstly, overseeing the national departments that are rendering service delivery in the province; and, secondly, dealing with the matter of section 76 Bills, especially the issue of timing, when the Bills are referred to the province. This is critical because many a time Bills are referred on short notice and are written in English, which really inconveniences the public when they speak the vernacular.
Over the past few months, the province has experienced a number of service delivery protests in some of our municipalities. These protests have challenged the government, but I want to assure you that we have our finger on the pulse and we are doing everything we can to deal with these challenges.
It is unfortunate that during these periods of unrest we experience acts of violence, destruction of property and, in some instances, loss of lives. The estimates we have received so far puts the damage to state property at about R90 million. We hope we shall never have to go through this pain again.
During this period one thing that has been very clear is that we are committed to working with communities to resolve all these problems - that we will stay in those communities until these problems have been resolved.
The provincial executive, led by the honourable Premier David Mabuza, has worked tirelessly to restore calm and order in the affected municipalities. Today, standing here, it is encouraging to note that we are beginning to see positive results in dealing with community issues.
I am quite aware that you are very concerned, hon members, about the situation in the province - and, indeed, if the media reports are anything to go by, then you have every reason to be worried - but I must hasten to add that the good stories have not been told; only a negative picture has been created.
Whilst the gloomy picture is painted of a local government falling apart, I must tell you that a lot of hard work has been done by the province to improve our municipalities. Today, as we speak, more than 70% of the households in the province have access to clean water, more than 71% have access to electricity and many more have access to basic sanitation and decent housing.
As we are all aware, the ministerial task team visited all the municipalities and interacted with different stakeholders. Some of the key findings of the task teams have indicated the following. There is tension between the troika plus one; there is factionalism, external influence and limited political management of oversight by councils; there are high vacancy rates in critical positions; and there is a lack of critical skills, such as technical finance, project management and planning. All these have contributed to the challenges that are faced by our municipalities.
The performance of such municipalities has not been very good. This has forced the government to make some interventions as prescribed by legislation. The MEC has had to institute section 106(1)(a) or 106(1)(b) of the Local Government: Municipal Systems Act, Act 32 of 2000, as well as to invoke section 139(1)(b) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.
The following four municipalities were put under administration: Mkhondo, Pixley ka Seme, Thaba Chweu and Lekwa. I must state that this was the last resort after we had tried numerous interventions to assist them. We hope that we will not have more municipalities put under administration in future.
The Mkhondo Municipality has been plagued by silent tensions between the municipal office bearers and its community. That is why our NCOP delegates, together with us, had to do the site visits. The brewing tensions resulted in protests organised by the concerned group of the community on 15 June 2009.
A memorandum was subsequently submitted to the municipality, with details of concerns and allegations that we felt were very genuine. The key issues raised in the memorandum can be summarised as follows: allegations of fraud, corruption and maladministration; nonadherence to supply-chain management policies; abuse of the allocation of credit cards; lack of service delivery; public-participation processes not being followed; and nepotism in appointments. Hence, section 139(1)(b) was instituted with regard to that municipality.
As I conclude, we believe that if all stakeholders really read the report thoroughly and accepted the 17 recommendations as reflected on the report, we would succeed not only in normalising the situation but also in eliminating the causes of poor, or lack of, service delivery.
On 22 April 2009, our people again, for the fourth time, put their confidence in this glorious governing party, the ANC, the ANC of O R Tambo, Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela, and led today by President Jacob Zuma. We dare not fail them.
Kindly allow me to quote from the Freedom Charter as adopted at the real Congress of the People in Kliptown on 26 June 1955, where our forebears said the following:
There shall be houses, security and comfort!
All people shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security;
Unused housing space to be made available to the people;
Rent and prices shall be lowered ...
Slums shall be demolished, and new suburbs built where all have transport, roads, lighting, playing fields, crches and social centres ...
Fenced locations and ghettoes shall be abolished ...
Through these unwavering commitments, which were made 54 years ago, the human dignity and self-esteem of our people shall indeed be restored and the frontiers of poverty and inferiority completely eradicated. We support the report of the Provincial Week as tabled. Hon Chair, I thank you very much. [Applause.]