Hon Chairperson, I would like to start by correcting hon Mushwana who alleged that hon Ndude suggested that the municipalities are incapacitated. It is, in fact, the ad hoc committee report which states that the municipalities are incapacitated.
Cope welcomes and supports the ad hoc committee report on service delivery, but wishes to draw the attention of the House to specific concerns which, notwithstanding the recommendations of the report, will remain a challenge for the government.
It goes without saying that appropriate institutional arrangements and intergovernmental relations are a cornerstone of effective and efficient service delivery co-ordination. This supposed appropriate institutional arrangement is often predicated on the assumption that there is a stable political environment within which such institutions exist and operate. However, in some of the communities we visited it cannot be said that the conditions for a stable political environment are conducive to smooth service delivery.
This was the experience we had in Thembisa, the informal settlement in Johannesburg. Four residents had erected shacks on one stand without even one of them holding a title deed. Only one of the four shacks had been provided with electricity. Furthermore, electricity was illegally connected to the other three shacks, which means that if one resident is not home, the rest cannot have access to electricity. This is a recipe for social conflict and has the potential to trigger protest in these areas.
Short-term solutions to the current crisis that do not contribute positively to a permanent long-term solution should be discarded. These are simply contributing to the mounting crisis in these areas.
To illustrate my point further, I wish to draw the attention of the House to a potential time bomb. A large number of people in this country, particularly in the low-income groups, have been allocated houses to which they hold no title deeds. In fact, they do hold title deeds, but the irony is that these houses are occupied by people who are either politically connected or who use force to occupy them illegally.
This was the experience in Diepsloot, where a number of people occupied houses illegally. They are even busy extending these houses, yet the rightful owners are in the queue waiting to get houses. The challenge is that the people who hold the title deeds are neither able to gain access to their houses, nor are they entitled to join the housing waiting list. Such incidences are on the increase and critical attention must be paid to this impending disaster.
The situation is further exacerbated by people illegally selling RDP houses without registering such transfers with the Deeds Office. This will make it difficult for both the government and the Deeds Office to trace the legal owners of these properties in the future, as illegal transactions continue without transfers being registered.
Lastly, I wish to draw attention to the issue of bulk municipal infrastructure funding. As a consequence of historical circumstances, South Africa inherited an enormous backlog in bulk infrastructure. Even though municipalities are capable of providing water and sanitation through their allocated budgets, they cannot fully address these backlogs within the regulated timeframes and context of their own normal operational budgets.
Cope therefore wishes to call on the government to create a special fund to address these backlogs. If this does not happen, we may in future have to ask the question which Ringo Madlingozi asks in his song: "Whose song will the future sing?" Thank you. [Applause.]