Hon Speaker, well, that could be a political opinion on whether the time has come or not. Politicians have views about everything and the views of politicians are not always the same. So people could have views about whether it is time, or they are necessary; whatever.
The hon member, I think, should know that democracy is not cheap. It is very expensive and very costly, and it is time-consuming because you have to negotiate and consult to reach consensus or agreement with the majority.
The provinces came into being as a result of a very serious discussion about what happens to power in a state. Should it be centralised in one place and therefore the people on lower levels have no role to play, or should we have a system that devolves power so that people at different levels are able to participate in decision-making? This is what gave birth to nine provinces instead of the four provinces we had before, which were former republics.
So, it was a very deep discussion in terms of how democracy must be exercised in this country. That is why we ended up with three tiers of government. You will have to go back to that discussion and convince people that, democratically, you need to centralise power and not to devolve power. That is a serious democratic issue and we have different understandings as to what one should do with power. Should it reside in Pretoria, or should it be in provinces as well as in local government?
I think we should not confuse some of the difficulties in terms of the implementation and, in a sense, the running of the different levels of government with the existence of the provinces. This gives people at every level an opportunity to take decisions about their issues and about the people they know better.