Deputy Speaker, I would like to welcome the Minister to the world of local government: Nyambose, thank you for stepping into the shoes of the choirmaster.
We regret that he is unable to be here himself to drive this Bill as enthusiastically as I am sure he would have done. It is also with great pleasure that we express our appreciation to all the political parties for accepting the Bill. This is in spite of the fact that they are disgruntled, as we can see from the qualifications they are conveying to the House today.
One of the things that the Minister did quite robustly was to confront the reality that for 10 years we have been in a truly democratic local government and that the problems that the people express to us, as we do our work on the ground, needed a response. This Bill is, therefore, one of the first steps in what has arisen from that process.
We have listened to the people, as the ANC has always done, in order to be able to rectify the mistakes that have occurred in the process of governing. This is an important tradition that explains why the ANC will be 100 years old in January 2012.
Not only does it adapt well, it adapts as a result of listening to others. We also listened to those in the public hearings who expressed their views on a number of the problems confronting local government.
Despite the process undertaken by the Ministry and department to invite stakeholders to express their views on the Bill, we also felt it was necessary that we request the Minister to send the Bill to the National Economic, Development and Labour Council, Nedlac. That institution could then exercise its authority over matters that some in the labour movement and municipalities suspected might, in fact, fall in the realm of bargaining council issues.
As a result, when we received it back, as we did, there was a degree of satisfaction that some of those fears had been satisfactorily addressed. This is because Nedlac is one of our key institutions that ensure participation of key stakeholders in our system of governance.
That process was very instructive and useful; it showed Parliament itself to be in co-operation with other institutions outside its sphere. I think that is a very important process and we must not lose sight of its significance.
It is absolutely catalytic, but we have no illusions about this Bill. It was never presented to us by the Ministry and department as a panacea or that it contains solutions to the multitude of problems that confront municipalities. Rather, it was presented as being significant.
The existing legislation in some instances was not being properly implemented and some of the provisions were not sufficiently tight and often vague, therefore easily allowing for unacceptable practices to take root.
We agreed with the Minister's proposal in the Bill that he must be allowed to further regulate areas that require regulation. We have agreed with his role that the relationship between the three spheres must be co-operative. In instances where there is need for further regulation, it should be allowed and this Bill provides that space.
We also agreed with the suggestion that the skills requirements - the competency requirements - must be tight so that we make it unacceptable that people in positions of responsibility continue if they do not have those skills.
Their employment, in certain circumstances, will be rendered null and void should they continue to be in those positions later on. We also, as members have already said, are tightening accountability and ensuring compliance generally with the law.
This means accountability in the sense that the decisions that are taken must be taken properly after it has been satisfactorily found that there isn't any indication that they might in fact violate the law in any sense.
Not to pretend otherwise, we ourselves, in processing the Bill, had to satisfy ourselves that the fears that were expressed to us as a committee were, in fact, justified or not. We undertook a robust debate and discussion with the support of the state law adviser office and other legal representatives of the department, so that we satisfied ourselves that we were not threatening the integrity of the negotiations, as often takes place in the bargaining council.
We also wanted to satisfy ourselves that the requests for consultation that the Ministers sought were legitimate and appropriate. While some in the labour movement still have concerns about this, we felt relatively certain that the exercises we undertook to consider the degree and extent of the consultation were sufficiently limited not to go beyond the boundary that otherwise belongs to the power play that the Constitution itself allows in the negotiation process.
That area was an important one and constituted an important part of the work that we did. We must also express our appreciation to the many stakeholders who came in to talk about their concerns regarding the relationship between the council itself, the municipal manager and the administration.
Whilst those concerns were legitimate and we felt that the provisions in the existing legislation were appropriate, we nonetheless felt we needed a better and much more robust follow-up for its implementation and that that would make a difference.
Although the law itself is intended to provide changes in behaviour, the ANC, of necessity, as it has already done in the national general council, has given guidelines to its candidates who are going to be councillors. This is so that they can understand what is expected of them.
It is, therefore, inaccurate and completely wrong and, in fact, it is amazing that people speak about things they have hardly read about. They could not have bothered to do so, otherwise what they said here would not have been seen as inappropriate.
Members feel some of the provisions that bar certain political office bearers from acting, must be extended to what hon Lorimer calls "politically active trade unions". This is actually naive because I would have thought that because the Constitution allows for trade union activity in the workplace, the Constitution itself was appropriate for regulating those affairs.
This does not need to be the case, and how do you prevent people from acting politically if you claim to be a democrat, or if you claim to respect the Constitution?
Hon Lorimer, I think it is also important to accurately represent the views expressed in the processing of the Bill. The provision for communicating on a regular basis, quarterly and/or within 14 days, in certain instances, is an important one.
We acknowledge that it is absolutely crucial that the Minister and MECs must receive quarterly reports and that we must not extend the reporting requirements unnecessarily to burden municipalities, which is one of the biggest problems. You have heard them expressing that with more frequent reporting the timing given there for quarterly reports be appropriate.
The costs may have come up in a comment someone made, but that is not what the official record of our meetings will reflect. We are also not surprised that you quote municipal independence. If you read the Constitution properly, our Constitution is clear about this relationship and it makes no room for doubt. It says that, whilst the relationship between these three spheres is distinct, they are interrelated and interdependent, and so we cannot talk about any one of those as being independent.
The reason we argue that this Bill is catalytic is because of what it is going to help us do beyond these elections. Most importantly, however, it also illustrates the significance of co-operative governance that we are referring to in its formulation.
The reason the DA lost the court case in Overberg, is because it ignored one of the key injunctions of the Constitution for co-operative governance - that the courts must be the last resort. The ANC intervened to plead with the DA to withdraw from this case and allow the council to operate properly. They refused and rejected the overtures of the ANC which were being expressed in the spirit of co-operative governance. The result is that the Supreme Court, as well as the Constitutional Court, taught them a lesson; that you do not do that. It was clear that the actions they were taking were politically driven and had nothing to do with the proper sorting out of relationships in that municipality in Overberg. It is indicative of their failure to appreciate in practice the Constitution of which they often want us to believe they are the champions.
We are expected to co-operate, as we have done to date, in the processing of this Bill because it really signifies the challenge that we face as the ANC in building local economies and creating more decent work and sustainable livelihoods.
We have to work towards improving local public services and broadening their accessibility to the rest of the people; to build more united nonracial, integrated and safer communities; to promote more active community participation in local government and to ensure more effective, accountable and clean local government that works together with the national and provincial government.
There is no doubt that by working together we will build better communities. The spirit of co-operation that we think we have achieved in processing this Bill will enable us to achieve better results as further initiatives arising from the Local Government Turnaround Strategy come the way of Parliament and see the light of day in municipalities where it matters most. I thank you. The ACTING MINISTER FOR CO-OPERATIVE GOVERNANCE AND TRADITIONAL AFFAIRS (Mr E N Mthethwa): Thank you, hon Deputy Speaker and thanks to all who participated. I think the chairperson covered at least one or two points which needed further clarification.
It is a pity that the hon Groenewald is no longer here and has left; I wanted to assure him that, in fact, the ANC is not a virus. If he understands, it's vitamin A, N, C. So, if he understands that he would know what we are talking about. All in all, I think all members have made their contributions and everybody supports the Bill. We think that we will continue to make local government everyone's business. Thank you very much. [Applause.]
Debate concluded.