No, it is not us who said don't have heroes... [Laughter.] ... that you can quote. It is not our fault, please. We appreciate all comments on the National Planning Commission's diagnostic report. Members have understood the purpose of the report. We established the National Planning Commission, NPC, for good reasons. We felt that the country needed a team of people who were not part of the bureaucracy. The 25 independent commissioners were assigned to take a dispassionate view of our country to tell us where we are and how we can get to the prosperous society we seek, using their expertise in various disciplines. Hon Shenge makes an observation that the NPC holds the potential to arrest the bureaucratic practice of making excuses and passing the buck. That is indeed the value of the NPC. If we were to do this ourselves inside government, we might be tempted to make excuses and pass the buck. We want all South Africans to confront the reality mentioned in the report and make their inputs, so that we can together enhance our vision for a prosperous society by 2030. Of course, I did notice that this report is being read and quoted selectively. I urge hon members that they should make a constructive contribution in enhancing the report and contribute to enhancing the national plan of the country. They must not use it for narrow political reasons.
We will continue with our programmes of people-centred governance. We will visit communities to gain a first-hand account of governance, as outlined by hon Deputy Minister Pule. Our helpful hands-on visits have enabled us to discover shocking conditions under which people are living, for example in the Khanana settlement near Gugulethu right here in Cape Town. [Interjections.] It is quite telling that no DA Member of Parliament has ever raised the issue of the living conditions of those residents in this House and suggested solutions. [Interjections.]
In continuing with our quest for improved service delivery and a better life, we will pursue the sustainable development model as outlined by hon Ruth Bhengu. She reminded us of the context and background in which our social transformation takes place and that, during the apartheid era, services were provided to communities along racial, class and geographical location divides. I quote her:
In the past, First World services were preserved for the rich communities in leafy suburbs. Townships and peri-urban communities received substandard services and poor communities in rural areas received no services.
We will now move away from simply building houses for the poor and work towards building more united, nonracial and integrated communities across our cities and towns. [Applause.] This will certainly take time and effort, but work has been ongoing to ensure that new human settlements are more nonracial and involve the creation of mixed-income communities. This project is a big test for the new "nonracialists". We want to see how many will actively support us on this route. I think it is important for hon members to appreciate that when we talk about service delivery, we must not talk about it as if it has been there all along, from time immemorial. Other areas only started getting delivery - the bulk of the country - after 1994. [Applause.] So, we are dealing with a huge area that was not there before, and when you talk or are critical about service delivery, you make the point as if these people are failing to bring service delivery and so forth. There was influx control, and therefore the infrastructure in the cities and towns was not intended to carry the number of people it is carrying today. [Applause.] That is the reason why, after the influx control was taken away, people came in big numbers, and there is no space for them to stay in the cities. Therefore, they create informal settlements. That is as a result of what happened before 1994. That is what we are correcting; that is what we are dealing with.