Thank you, Chair. My clock has been moving the whole time.
It is a fact that everybody in South Africa seems to know - except the members on this side of the House - that local government is in trouble and, like it or not, the buck stops here, with this Minister and his department; nowhere else. It is true, and the Minister made the same point - and let us be fair - that not every municipality is in trouble; there are some very good ones doing a good job.
However, we do not believe you are making sufficient progress, Minister, in achieving the objective expressed in Outcome 9, which is the responsive, accountable, effective and efficient local government system. Now, I am sure you and your colleagues are going to defend what you are doing. You are going to say that nothing is bleak, that you have recognised the challenges and that you are dealing with everything well.
However, I think people are sick to death of listening to this. People are tired of endless excuses of why things are not what they should be. They are tired of listening to promises that tomorrow there is going to be a big change, when that never happens. While we sit and have our Budget Vote debate in this House, countless people outside are very unhappy about the state of their municipalities and what is going on.
Journalists will tell you that there is an avalanche of bad stories that they cannot even print in the press or air anymore. There is just so much of it. This bad news that we hear is actually only a small fraction of what is going on. The reality is that there is an iceberg of local government failure out there. All we talk about is the tip floating above the waterline - that little 5% or 10% which is what people recognise - instead of the 95% underneath that we are not recognising. That is critical, Chair.
Four years ago, things were so bad that the President called the big local government indaba for discussion of a turnaround strategy. This was meant to be the decisive point from which everything would improve. Four years later, we are looking back, asking ourselves whether that has really happened. A whole set of basic objectives were churned out.
Interestingly, we had this thing called "Vision 2014". Let me read these delightful objectives for you. This document proclaims that by next year - we have seven months left before 2014 - all citizens would have access to affordable basic services; all informal settlements would be eradicated; all cities would be clean; all schools would have access to basic services; all municipalities would have unqualified audits, and violent service delivery protests would be eliminated. This is just stuff for daydreaming. I go to bed at night and I have dreams like this. However, this is not meant to be a government programme, really.
Take something as basic as the delivery of toilets. Surely, colleagues, it is a disgrace that, in the year 2013, 13 years after this new system was introduced, we have vast numbers of dwellings without acceptable toilets. The ventilated improved pit, VIP, latrine is the minimum standard. It is disgraceful that the bucket system is still with us - that applies to you, hon members over there, as well as you, hon members. [Laughter.] It is disgraceful that when you open a newspaper every week you read stories of sewerage running down the street of some township or other. It is disgraceful.
In Durban they are now giving people RDP houses with no water and no electricity; you have to go to a standpipe to get a bucket of water, flush the toilet, and the water then goes into an open pit outside where children are running around playing. That is Durban for you. [Interjections.] Well, maybe, then that is you also. If municipalities cannot even get toilets right, what hope is there for more complex infrastructural delivery? That is part of the reason why municipalities are unable to spend the capital grants, Minister. They cannot even build toilets. How can they do anything else? It is outrageous.
Look at Operation Clean Audit 2014. Year after year we hear these pious pronouncements from the department about unqualified audits, but the Auditor-General does not show as much progress. What he does is complain about the lack of political will and the lack of consequences when he makes recommendations. Even if you get a clean audit, Minister, which is a wonderful thing, all we hear is what a wonderful thing is a clean audit. This year the Auditor-General stress-tested municipalities which had unqualified audits against their financial health. He found that 30% of municipalities which had unqualified audits are financially in distress. So let us not raise the bar so high that we think there is perfection once we get an unqualified audit.
The issue of corruption is really a sad one. If you look at what this department has contributed towards solving the problem of corruption since the year 1996, it is probably zero. I do not think they have done anything. I have never heard of anything useful coming out of this department in the 17 years that I have been in this committee, dealing with corruption. Perhaps it is because it has done nothing or maybe it is because it is incapable of doing anything in terms of the new roles assigned by everybody to sort out corruption. They have a minimal role in combating corruption, just a small role.
Corruption Watch, which is the ally, the body created by your tripartite alliance, are not here in the House. They are far more vocal on corruption than you are, Minister, or your team here. They are much more vocal. [Inaudible.] Not according to this, Chair. It is still running here. I still have a credit. [Applause.] [Time expired.]