Chairperson, the Department of Provincial and Local Government took a step even before the committee did so. We welcome this exercise because it represents an important aspect of the work that we are doing in the field of governance, namely monitoring and evaluating legislation and the impact it has on what it was intended to do, and therefore identifying things that urgently require cleaning up - so to speak. This Bill seeks to do that and does it in an interesting way.
This Bill also represents an important political opportunity for us to reflect on what we must do to address current problems that relate to municipal governance and so on. So, the four Acts that are the subjects of the Bill are an important aspect. The Bill provides the community and the stakeholders that work in this area an opportunity to point out to us those areas that we must attend to, so that we can speed up and accelerate service delivery and ensure that the law does not itself become a hindrance to that provision.
Most importantly, the Bill is an exciting one because it says to us that in those areas where we have provided legislation such as the Municipal Finance Act, some of the aspects of the previous legislation that came before it must then be made to comply with it so that you have a better alignment of broad legislative issues with financial and intergovernmental financial flows, as the Bill suggests.
I am amazed at the remarks that are being made about corruption that relates to ward committees when in fact what we are doing is saying that there is a positive view about these issues. There's important work that is being done without anybody saying anything about the free contribution of people's time, their energy, and their own money. There is no acknowledgment of that contribution that is useful to deepening democracy in this country. All we are doing is going for isolated incidences of corruption that have not even taken place. This is how negative some people can be.
I would have thought that we would appreciate the opportunity for deepening democracy - and nobody ever said that it's going to be a cheap exercise. It's an absolutely important issue to recognise that in deepening democracy we are not going to have it free and it's not going to be available to us in any other cheaper way. It is important to acknowledge the contribution that people are making and, in fact, support them in establishing a deeper, more dynamic interaction between people.
This Bill also provides an opportunity for us to look at other legislation and the relationship between this one piece of legislation and other pieces, so that we have a more coherent system that does not conflict with other pieces of legislation. We therefore welcome this opportunity and those stakeholders that may have missed the bus during the introduction of this Bill in the Government Gazette. The committee is opening up that space. We have already invited submissions. So, members must tell their constituencies to come and contribute. [Time expired.]