Thank you. Firstly, as you may well know, in the North West the Minister for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs and the President have initiated a Special Investigating Unit, SIU, investigation into all of those municipalities. There have been several arrests and there are cases pending.
Elsewhere, too, through various forms of responding to corruption at municipal level cases have been initiated. Only yesterday you will have seen in the media the case against the Deputy Mayor of Msunduzi, Pietermaritzburg.
Clearly the matter of municipal corruption should not be exaggerated. It is not as if municipal councillors and officials are all corrupt. It is not as if municipal corruption is greater than corruption at the national and provincial levels. I think that to deal with corruption at the municipal level one has to tackle corruption in society as a whole, not least in the private sector.
As you well know, recently, in the last six months, government set up an anticorruption unit led by Minister Baloyi. This will complement the work of the SIU, the SA Revenue Service, the Financial Intelligence Centre, the Hawks, the SAPS, etc.
Corruption is not something that can be resolved overnight, and it cannot be separated from the challenges of dealing with poverty, inequality and joblessness. So, we need a holistic strategy, and not least in our attempt to reduce corruption at municipal and every level is the role of this august House and its MPs in their parliamentary work and also in their constituency work. Thank you.