When you intervene with your views about what you think may not have gone right, the President has the responsibility to listen to you, to give you a chance to express yourself and, if he is convinced, to take your views on board. If he is not convinced, he will reject them and proceed to do what he would have done anyway. In other words, this is correct for the President. Even when others raise concerns about a Bill that has gone through Parliament, he must pause to listen, because this administration has said it operates democratically; it believes in dialogue, even with those it disagrees with, and also with those it claims to represent. That is an appropriate approach. A responsible government does that, sir.
Those of us who come from the civic movement, abahlali [residents], are particularly excited, Deputy Minister, that you will introduce mechanisms for citizen-based monitoring and evaluation to give real qualitative input into how people experience government on a regular basis. In other words, when we record progress, it must be progress as experienced by people, not by numbers that we tick off on a checklist. That is a very great initiative. This is one of the reasons why we as the ANC agree fully with the establishment of this department.
The speed with which the department is emerging is not surprising to us. A good gardener does not pull seedlings from the soil to see what progress they are making in growing their roots. [Laughter.] A good gardener is patient, attacks the weeds, gets rid of them, and improves the richness of the soil for the seedling to grow stronger. My former Premier, Winkie Direko, who is a former Member of Parliament, used to say to me: "My son, hurry slowly, hurry slowly." The Swahili say it differently, "Haraka, haraka haena Baraka." Rush, rush has no luck.