Chairperson and hon members, when the basic services that the government is obligated to provide are not delivered to the poor, it is not just their government policy failure or a waste of taxpayers' money; it is an infringement of their fundamental human rights.
It is so because the Constitution requires the state to promote and fulfil the rights in Chapter 2 thereof, our Bill of Rights. The socioeconomic rights are a special category of rights. They are not full rights, like your political rights or your right to free speech, but rights of access. The state has a duty to realise them progressively. They are justifiable, but they cannot be enforced in the same way that other rights may be enforced.
It is for that reason that the Constitution places a special duty on the SA Human Rights Commission to monitor and assess the progressive realisation of socioeconomic rights.
It is as a result of that task that the SA Human Rights Commission, after concluding its sixth report on economic and social rights, now intends to advise government, especially in the provincial sphere, that its delivery failures constitute an infringement of fundamental rights.
The Constitution requires that the SA Human Rights Commission must ask the relevant government departments, in both the national and provincial spheres, what they have done to realise the rights to housing, health, food, water, social security, education and the environment each year. The response from government departments, however, has been problematic. At the time of the conclusion of the fifth economic and social rights report, the SAHRC reviewed the low response rate from certain organs of state, the poor quality, and questioned the reliability of certain information. It even went so far as to suggest that perhaps its interaction with departments should be abandoned altogether in favour of fieldwork monitoring.
However, the Constitution says it must ask departments for information, and rightly so. The SAHRC attributes the poor response to lack of capacity, amongst other things. It says that there are no mechanisms and there is little commitment in place within the organs of state together to classify and store information.
The SA Human Rights Commission will now assist the departments to develop appropriate systems to capture and manage information that the SAHRC itself will ultimately request from them. Is it any wonder, therefore, that delivery does not take place when the departments responsible are not keeping track themselves?
Delivery in the sphere of socioeconomic rights should take place primarily at the provincial level, where Parliament sends the vast bulk of taxpayers' money every year when we vote for the Budget and the division of state revenue.
The SA Human Rights Commission has now decided to bring the unsatisfactory situation to the direct attention of the Premiers, and to advise them that, judged on human rights standards, non-delivery is unacceptable.
In addition to this, it intends to engage directly with the provincial legislatures. This, I believe, is an excellent approach, for it is a fact that our provincial legislatures do not legislate that much, but they do specialise in oversight. This they do very well, judged on the record of the official opposition MPLs at least.
It is a regrettable fact that the National Assembly does not appear to do justice to the SA Human Rights Commission's work in general, and its socioeconomic reports in particular.
The SA Human Rights Commission appears before a number of portfolio committees, which ought to profit greatly from its socioeconomic work, but these appearances are said to be haphazard and unco-ordinated from its point of view, while the National Assembly as a whole does not appear to engage the commission's reports at all.
We have at our disposal the work not only of the SA Human Rights Commission, but also that of other Chapter 9 institutions like the Auditor- General. The DA now annually analyses the audits of provincial departments provided by the Auditor-General, and draws public attention to trends and patterns. Alarmingly, the latest analysis of the nine departments of health, show the large-scale mismanagement of tendering and procurement procedures. In disturbingly many cases, this appeared to swing bids in favour of departmental employees or their associates. In our analysis, there is a crisis of deteriorating financial probity and corruption which, in addition to the poor management we highlighted last year, was causing many provincial hospitals to fail to provide a decent, acceptable service.
All this happens while the SA Human Rights Commission reminds us that the population dependent on public health services is currently estimated at 80% of all South Africans, and growing, and that we would be well advised - economically and in every other respect - to honour our national and international obligations on the right to health.
We must ensure equal access to quality health services and "we", hon members, means us too. If socioeconomic delivery is not taking place, that is a failure, not only of the ANC-led government - as we are so often reminded - but also of the institutions which are supposed to hold government to account. That, hon members, is us. I thank you. [Applause.]