Chairperson, Minister, Deputy Minister, colleagues, everybody in the public gallery, all entities reporting to Parliament and to the Department of Communications, in last year's Budget debate Cope stressed the strategic importance of the Department of Communications, DoC, and its key role of expanding access to knowledge, information and economic empowerment.
We requested the Minister then to develop a turnaround strategy for the DoC, and to turn it into a proactive dynamic department. We also requested him to make key interventions to drive both government and the agencies reporting to it, as well as the private sector, towards ensuring affordable access to communications and information technology for irrevocable change in the lives specifically of poor communities.
Since then both the political and departmental heads have been axed and we have new incumbents in those positions. May we congratulate the new Minister today on very important immediate interventions that he has made? Amongst others is the very rational decision to revert to the DVB-T2 Digital Broadcasting Platform for digital migration, and to put the SMME sector back into production of set-top boxes. The new Minister appears to be serious about putting the department on the right road, the road to recovery, to ensure that key strategic objectives are achieved.
Can we also add our voice to the others congratulating the new DG, Ms Rosey Sekese? She will find support from our party when she does all the right things, when she achieves key strategic objectives and policy interventions over the next three to four years. It will unfortunately also require a final determination and audit of departmental skills, capacity in the department and organisational restructuring. May we please also just caution that we believe that no interim positions - vacancies - should be filled until those processes have been concluded, notwithstanding the appeal by the President that vacancies in departments should be filled? We believe it would be wrong. We should first conclude those processes.
With the right management structure and the right people in place we have no doubt, we know and believe, that the Department of Communications will be able to deliver on its mandate, namely, to open access to affordable communications highways, in particular affordable Internet bandwidth, which is the lifeblood of the world's knowledge economy.
The budget allocation to the department, including transfers to institutions reporting to it, reached a peak during the previous budget year, and will slowly decline in the years ahead. It will, in fact, decline to the same level as that of the 2007-08 budget year. The department, during the same period, from 2007 to 2008, in fact doubled its staff complement, which resulted in an escalating trend of expenditure on compensation of employees.
What is now necessary is for us to conduct an honest assessment of performance outcomes of the department in relation to its growing bureaucracy - that is mandatory - to make sure that it is not only a growing bureaucracy, but one that actually delivers on these strategic imperatives. I believe, on behalf of Cope, that what is of key importance in this process is that we should look at the Pareto Principle. What are the 20% of the steps that need to be implemented to have 80% of the impact, and not to have the reverse? We have a fantastic strategic report here by the department, but it would seem that 80% of the activities are not going to result in a 20% impact out there in the market. That needs to be determined.
I would like to go back to just a few entities reporting to this department. Firstly, there is the SA Broadcasting Corporation, SABC. We would like to add our voice to those congratulating the SABC, not only on the successful interest that they created in the local government elections, but on their very successful Fifa 2010 World Cup. It was well delivered under difficult circumstances! We also really want to applaud the SABC board and Dr Ben Ngubane on bringing stability to the board, and also to the senior management of this institution.
Progress has also been made towards financial stability in the public broadcaster, although the Portfolio Committee on Communications is still awaiting details about the repayment of moneys borrowed against government guarantees, but that will be a separate session. The board must remain vigilant to ensure that a recurrence of corrupt practices and lamentable tendencies of the past will be arrested completely, going forward.
We welcome steps that they have taken, including the intervention of the Special Investigating Unit, to bring those people who have been identified through investigations to book. That also needs to be processed, going forward.
As far as editorial policy is concerned, I would, strangely, like to add my voice to that of the chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Communications, and say that as Cope we fully support the fact that any changes to editorial policy should be made in terms of the Act. The SABC is a creature of statute, and any changes or tampering with news editorial policies via the back door will be illegal. This includes a disconcerting directive to news reporters, circulated last year, in terms of which the ANC Polokwane resolutions were regarded as the focus area for news bulletins. This is against the law generally and it is against the Constitution.
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, Icasa, has now fortunately moved on - it is focusing in the right direction. Its responsibility is to regulate the market and assess the impact of its regulations. We support them.
I want to make one concluding remark, Chairperson. Ms Graa Machel said earlier this year, and I want to quote from a speech she made ... [Time expired.] [Applause.]