... amongst other things, on the need to speed up programmes to provide water and sanitation, electricity and telephone services to those who are not yet connected; and to realise the Batho Pele principles and improve services from our various arms of government.
In the 2006 local government elections, we further renewed our vision for 2014 and said that we needed to accelerate our pace in improving the lives of our people. In this regard, we specifically said that we were determined to make local government work better in order to build a better South Africa. Deputy Speaker, could I have some water here, please? We need to remind ourselves that it was these electoral mandates that directly informed our decision to review the dispensation of cross-boundary municipalities.
Let us look at the rationale for the eradication of former cross-boundary municipalities. In 2003 and 2004 this government undertook a rigorous assessment of the performance of the new local government system since its inauguration in December 2000. We reached a key conclusion that many people were not feeling the impact of the new system of developmental local government.
It was also this same assessment of all 284 municipalities that directly informed the initiation of Project Consolidate in October 2004. This local government review and our work on Project Consolidate highlighted key challenges and problems facing the 16 former cross-boundary municipalities, which affected five provinces.
It became very clear that these municipalities had very complicated administrative and governance arrangements that led to a number of problems pertaining to the implementation of differing provincial legislation pertaining to health and traffic; the co-ordination of housing and infrastructure projects; the finalisation of integrated development plans, the IDPs, and their alignment with different provincial growth and development strategies; and, lastly, the differing provincial financial management systems impacting on the affected municipalities.
In our view, the combined result of this system of cross-boundary municipalities negatively impacted on our communities and deprived them of the optimal set of services due to them by our provincial governments and former cross-boundary municipalities. It was against this background that this House, the NCOP and all the relevant provinces adopted legislation to do away with all the cross-boundary municipalities. This was facilitated through the enactment of the Constitution Twelfth Amendment Act of 2005, and the Cross-Boundary Municipalities Laws Repeal and Related Matters Act, Act 23 of 2005.
When we passed this legislation in 2005, this government committed itself to ensuring that all former cross-boundary municipalities would be better off than they were as cross-boundary municipalities; that service delivery would also improve and therefore the affected communities would benefit; and that national and provincial government would be mobilised, as well as resources, to ensure a smooth transition and accelerated service delivery at the local level.
In 2006 the community of the Matatiele Local Municipality challenged the constitutional validity of our legislation. On 18 August 2006 the Constitutional Court found that the KwaZulu-Natal provincial legislature failed to facilitate public participation in the legislative process, as required by section 118(1)(a) of the Constitution. It is for this primary reason that we are reconvening here today to correct this unfortunate oversight and to renew our pledge of ensuring that our people in the realigned municipalities reap the maximum amount of fruit of this people's government at all levels.
In 2005 this Parliament and the affected seven provinces engaged in a process of consultation with local communities regarding our system of cross-boundary municipalities and sought to get their comments and views on a range of matters. It is, once again, unfortunate in retrospect that only a single issue has dominated the public discourse, especially via the media, regarding the subject of our consultations with our people.
That issue has been whether communities should reside in a particular province or not. Our understanding of the Constitution, the laws of this country and the programmes of this government is that it is incumbent on every level and component of government to exercise its full developmental mandate to the maximum benefit of our people, regardless of where our people are located.
We therefore recognise that our provinces are differentially endowed with resources and capacity, primarily due to the legacy of apartheid's uneven spatial human settlements and economic development policies. It is for this reason that subsequent to the enactment of the Constitution Twelfth Amendment Act in 2005, national government and the affected provinces undertook various measures to positively advantage the former cross- boundary municipalities and our communities in these areas.
Since 2006, government's institutional response to support these realigned municipalities has comprised a number of elements, including: signing a memorandum of understanding, provincial implementation protocols and service level agreements between and with affected provinces and municipalities to ensure uninterrupted service delivery. The institution ...