Hon Chairperson and members of the House, you have made very valuable contributions to the work that we are doing. We appreciate the support and encouragement, and the suggestions which have been made. We believe that we will be able to work together as we proceed and go forward. Let me just comment on a few issues which have been raised - just to provide clarity.
My apologies, Chair, if I use wrong titles! I know that in the opposition they have shadows, for example, shadow Minister and so forth. I am not sure if I will be speaking to the shadow President! [Laughter.] If my comment is wrong, please accept my apologies. Let me proceed.
The Leader of the Opposition, hon Trollip, went all over the place. There is very little relating to our work in what he said. Therefore, it is difficult to comment on it. Nevertheless, I also sometimes feel obliged to comment on things, just to clarify issues.
Let me start with the issue of the Bills. I think the House understand how Bills are processed. Parliament passes the Bills and sends them to the President for assent, and after that he certifies them, that they are constitutional and legal. If he is not satisfied, he will send them back to Parliament. That process needs to be followed. You can't do that overnight. It takes time for Bills to be processed.
On the question of the Protection of Information Bill, which is now in Parliament, I am not sure how that comes into this debate. It is being debated somewhere and has nothing to do with this portfolio or the Presidency. I don't know how I should respond to this.
Next week we will be debating the National Youth Development Agency, NYDA. We are not debating it today - the NYDA does not belong to this debate; it belongs to the Presidency. Next week we will be debating the NYDA, and will respond to the issues raised in that debate.
I agree with the issue of the quotations, which took up about 50% of the speech. They are quotations that were made by a wise man and nobody can fault them. Therefore I can't comment further than that.
On the issue of the Premiers and the municipalities, let me start by saying this. You will remember that when we come to Parliament, we elect the President. When we have elected the President, it means that the executive authority lies with him. He then appoints Ministers to have executive authority on his behalf, and they become part of the executive.
The same thing happens to the Premier after he or she has been elected by the legislature. There is no constitutional link between the President and the premiers. Premiers have no oversight or authority over premiers. Premiers are elected by provincial legislatures and they give account to the legislatures. It is only in relation to the Appropriation that the provinces must comply with the national laws, so that they do not pass laws or do anything that contradicts the national laws and so on.
In a system like this, where you have spheres of government, the critical part is to emphasise the co-operative governance portion of it. You should ensure that there is working together and agreement. You therefore work with systems of agreement. The laws passed are sufficient for us to provide a mechanism to work with provinces and municipalities - not in an adversarial manner, but in one which seeks to build a united, coherent state and government. That is what we are doing.
We do not go to provinces to ram anything down their throats. We co-operate with them, hold discussions with them, sit in Minmecs, and ensure that there is understanding. All of them sign documents, showing that they have understood what their roles are. If there are challenges, they come back to us, saying that they think there will be challenges in a particular area. Their experience tells them that they cannot go this way.
That co-operative type of system is one which will seek to improve the system. Once you implement the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation System, there should be rewards and sanctions. It doesn't take away any of those, but should be based on an understandable and focused system.
When I was still in the Department of Public Works in Limpopo during the floods in 2000, we got to a place and found that the bridge was washed away and on all sides people were blocked; they could not move. We tried to make a temporary bridge over the river. One gentleman lost his shoe in the water. He wanted us to go and retrieve it. The river was raging violently. He accused us of not performing, because we could not retrieve his shoe from the river! [Laughter.]
We want to avoid situations like that, where we are all over the place and doing everything. We said at the beginning that we should choose the most critical parts of the things we need to do in order to improve the performance of government and service delivery to our people. We should perfect those. Once we can do them perfectly, we are sure that the impact they will have on society will be bigger than trying to do 100 things and ending up doing nothing.
We are going to build this system incrementally. We are not on a short-term mission. We are trying to change how the state functions from there being bureaucrats to there being revocrats. This involves the whole machinery of state, from local government to parastatals and everywhere else, and not just mechanisms, but culture and thinking. It is a major mission. You have to change how people think and how things must be done. As we proceed, we have to take society and everybody on board.
Lastly, we have indicated that for every step we take, we should try to do a pilot project, learn lessons, perfect the system and implement. Our pilot phases should not take too long. We do them quickly in collaboration with other institutions to make sure that we move with speed.
We said on service delivery, with regard to how we respond to the citizenry, that we would pilot it in Home Affairs. That was our pilot project. We are now satisfied that we have learned sufficient lessons. We know what technologies work and what don't. We also know how the system should work. We can now roll it out to other areas where people depend on queues or the speedy responses of departments. We are getting there.
The Department of Home Affairs won an award from the United Nations for the improvement they had made so far in this short space of time. [Applause.] We are definitely sure that with the steps we are taking, Parliament and society won't regret it. In partnership with you and society out there, we are going to make significant changes and an impact in this country. I thank you. [Applause.]