Chairperson, firstly, I would like to thank the PAC for donating their three minutes to me. Let me thank members for the comments and advice they gave.
Many of the comments that have been made are meant to enhance the work that we are supposed to do and they have been very valuable indeed. It shows the focus of members on their work of oversight and I think as a department we need to take account of their observations and improve in those areas.
I will, however, deal with some of the issues that have been raised. The first one is the Thusong Centres. I had the opportunity to go to Paarl this morning to meet with the community at one of our Thusong Mobile Centres. I also went to Mbekweni to meet with the communities there. They are really doing good work, and one thing good about it is the co-ordination and the working together that exist between the province, the national government and the local municipality. They are doing very good work. I was there with the head of department. The MEC could not come because he had another assignment, but it was very co-ordinated work.
Now, the department is not doing work on a partisan basis. We are working very well with the Western Cape and with all its municipalities. We provide communication back-up and communication services to them. So, to accuse the department of being an ANC mouthpiece is disingenuous in this case. However, I will come to that point later; let me deal with the rest of the issues.
The other issue that I wanted to deal with is the issue of staffing. In fact, if it was up to us, the department would have been given more money because we understand that we are supposed to communicate throughout the country - not only in urban areas, but in the deepest rural areas where there are no facilities whatsoever. We are supposed to be present there.
We are supposed to give services and support to provincial government, local municipalities, national departments and everybody. So we have to have personnel at almost all the places where we are supposed to do that work, and that is why our budget for personnel might seem out of proportion to the budgeted amount.
The other amount is not in proportion to what we are supposed to be doing. The focus should be on the additional amount that we need in order to execute our services wherever we may be.
Another issue is that Parliament should also focus on the parliamentary offices so that the department is able to provide this information to all your constituency offices throughout the country as a means of reaching out to communities.
The last point I would like to address is the conflation between party and state. [Interjections.] I hope you listened very carefully to my speech. I never spoke about that. We try to be very careful not to conflate the two. I am very happy that the DA has now begun, and I will now speak as an ANC representative in Parliament, not as a Minister ... [Laughter.] [Interjections.] You created the conflation, so you cannot accuse me of conflating it!
The first point is that the ANC is 100 years old. If you look at the history of the ANC - I think you are following it and not only reading the policy papers - you will see that among the first crop of leaders of the ANC there were serious writers and journalists. They were working for newspapers and some of them ran newspapers. Therefore, for more than 100 years the ANC has understood the role of the media. It understands the separation it needs to make between what it does in the state and in the party. We thoroughly understand media freedom and we are very careful. [Interjections.]
I am very happy that you have been able to identify that the ANC is concerned about the capacity of government to reach citizens, and it is a legitimate concern. It is a legitimate concern because the ANC is the only political party in the country that has such a wide reach. It has members in the most remote parts of the country and the people will always raise their concerns about what the government does. The ANC is the majority ruling party. It has to be concerned about the capacity of government everywhere, whether it is delivering services for water or anything else.
However, the delivery of information to citizens is critical in order for citizens to access the necessary information so that they can make choices. It is the role of this department. We are not a newspaper or media magazine. We are a government communication service ... [Interjections.] ... that provides information to citizens in diverse ways in order to reach all citizens. Our objective is to ensure that all citizens can access the services that we are supposed to provide. [Interjections.]
So, the ANC discusses its policy paper in the same way as the opposition can discuss the ANC. They have the right to discuss the ANC government. However, the ANC also has a right to discuss its own government and the weaknesses that it has in terms of communicating with citizens. This is because it is the ruling party and has to determine future policies on to how to reach citizens in the most effective way so that it can deliver services. So, as the ANC we are not apologetic about that.
Hon members will recall that as the department, we are very careful not to comment in a manner that will suggest that we are commenting on behalf of the ANC. We are very careful about doing that. You may check all our statements and check everything. We try to make sure about that, despite provocation in many cases. [Interjections.]
We try to avoid a situation where we would be seen to be speaking on behalf of the ANC. The ANC has its own spokesperson and its own media machinery. It is able to respond adequately to the issues that are raised. We respond on behalf of government institutions, including the Western Cape government, the DA municipalities and the IFP municipalities, as well as everybody else.
Lastly, I think there may be four political parties in this Parliament that are older than this Parliament and they are the ANC, the IFP, the PAC and Azapo. The rest have been formed in Parliament. [Applause.]
So, they don't have any experience. Yes, individuals might have participated in the fight against apartheid, but none of these parties fought against apartheid. As parties they have no right and no authority to speak about the fight against apartheid, except as individual members of that party. Thank you. [Interjections.] [Applause.]