Deputy Chairperson, hon Chairperson of the NCOP, colleagues in the House, I wish to, once again, congratulate my colleague hon Premier Jenkins on her election as the second Deputy Chair of the NCOP. We have trust and faith in her capacity to manage this portfolio and do us proud. It was a wise innovation for the NCOP to appoint premiers to this post on a rotational basis. The NCOP is a platform for provinces to express their views, raise their concerns and keep in touch with the discourse in different provinces through this forum.
We must commend the NCOP on the outreach programme that takes members out to meet communities. This will help the members to remain in touch with the provinces on whose behalf they serve, and encourage them to keep focused attention on the successes and shortfalls in service delivery, as well as remain true representatives of the people. This programme also demystifies the proceedings in this House and allows people to address the members directly or watch them in session. Thank you for the decision that you have just announced, hon Chairperson; we look forward to hosting the NCOP in November, in KwaZulu-Natal. [Applause.] KwaZulu-Natal has taken a strong stance to strengthen good governance in the provincial departments and strengthen the supervisory role over the municipalities. We have offered support to municipalities where poor capacity has been demonstrated and offered financial and administrative support where it was needed. By and large, we are convinced that most of the municipalities are doing a good job considering the high expectations and limited resources. Many councillors are fulfilling their mandates, despite a few bad apples that continue to give local government a bad name because of their conduct.
We have emphasised the eradication of fraud and corruption and thorough investigations are to be conducted on all allegations, and strong disciplinary action taken on offenders in both provincial and local government spheres.
We are grateful for the support that we received when the province was forced to invoke section 139 of the Constitution in four municipalities, namely uMhlabuyalingana, Indaka, uThukela and uMsunduzi. We have intervention teams in place in all municipalities. Mr Johann Mettler left uMsunduzi for personal reasons. We thank the SA Local Government Association, Salga, for offering us their services, and we thank Mr Mettler for being courageous enough to tackle the deep-seated challenges in uMsunduzi. He did this despite the unfriendly atmosphere that resulted from the tough stance he took to suspend some of the senior managers. We are determined to uproot fraud and corruption at all levels. The arm of justice has swung into action and we have witnessed dismissals of senior managers from the city council. We welcome Mr Sithole who has stepped in to replace Mr Mettler and urge all the members of the council, both councillors and officials, to offer him their best co-operation. We are not done yet; we shall stop when the place has been cleaned up.
We also warned other municipalities that we shall not hesitate to intervene if the situation so demands. I am fully briefed about the controversies around the audit report and the subsequent media reports, as well as the exchanges of various members within eThekwini Council. I am satisfied that the latest matter under discussion is still within the correct processes of the municipal mandate. Once these have been exhausted, the provincial government will exercise its options on whether or not and how to intervene. We are watching the situation with keen interest.
We wish to congratulate the President of our country, His Excellency J G Zuma, on a brilliant presentation of the state of the nation address. His focused approach has seen our government deliver effectively on the electoral mandate. The report on the achievements of government demonstrated good leadership and a clear vision as to where the country is going. We commit ourselves to working hard and delivering on his commitment for job creation. We shall have occasion to elaborate on the subject when we deliver our provincial address on 22 February.
I want to move to an issue that is a little outside the issues as we would have seen them. It was rather unfortunate that in the response to such an address some members decided to drag out matters that had absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. I was disappointed when hon Dr Buthelezi launched a vicious attack on the President and the ruling party, the ANC, accusing both the President and the party of fomenting divisions inside the IFP.
Hon Buthelezi referred to the confidential meeting between the two leaders and the reference of the President to internal matters of the IFP's leadership contests. There had been ongoing discussions between the leaders of the ANC and IFP and it should not be taken as though the meeting that was between these two ...