Hon Chairperson, hon members, many speakers who came to this podium shied away from looking at the oversight instruments that are available along the three spheres of state, which deserve to be reinforced. I beg your indulgence, hon Chairperson, to look into this matter this afternoon, but before I do that, let me quote the President of our country when he said:
You will recall that during the inauguration we committed ourselves to the service of the nation with dedication, commitment, discipline, integrity, hard work and passion. We called for faster service delivery. We said the dreams and hopes of all the people of our country must be fulfilled. We said there was no place for complacency, cynicism and excuses.
These are the words of the President opening the ANC Lekgotla on 15 to 18 January 2010, drawing the line on the sand for all elected and deployed cadres to serve the population diligently. He warned that "there must be no social distance between the people and their government, and the people must not be ignored." He said, "We should identify the weaknesses and work out the correction measures and rectify them."
The Ad hoc Committee on Co-ordinated Oversight on Service Delivery visited many local municipalities to identify these weaknesses in line with this injunction and constitutional imperative, which outlines the framework for oversight by Parliament in terms of section 55(2) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.
It is common cause, at least among those who participated in this oversight fact-finding mission, that many weaknesses have been due to the social distance between the people and their government, particularly in many of the areas visited by the ad hoc committee. I will draw your attention to one thing I'll come back to, hon Wenger. The hon Waters, hon Smith, hon Ndude, hon Steyn would attest to the fact that the toilets in Du Noon do not meet the national standards. That is the problem.
I think we must collectively agree that our oversight function must focus on how we can pressurise all three spheres of government to maintain and perform their functions properly instead of throwing stones at them. Because the more we criticise them, the more we weaken them. We should instead support them. I suggest that this throwing of stones is, in fact, especially by those who live in glass houses, and does not make sense either to them or to us.
Members of Parliament who went to Taung in the North West and those who came with us to Thulamela and Molemole in Limpopo will confirm that there are huge dams, the Taung and the Nandoni Dams. They are full of water, but the villages around them have no water, no water in the taps, no water for irrigation and there is no water for the animals.
Hon Chief Whip, there has to be a way, in terms of the Constitution, to make us in this Parliament work with our colleagues in the provincial legislatures and standing committees at local level. There is absolutely no reason why these people should sit there hoping that one day, God willing, this water that they see in this dam will come to their homes when they vote every five years. Our colleagues, who provide this oversight function, see this thing everyday and do nothing. I think this throwing of stones here is not helping. And this function of the ad hoc committee that this Parliament has created must continue rather than come to an end as a once- off event.
Section 55(2) of the Constitution states that the National Assembly must provide for mechanisms to ensure all organs of state in the national sphere of government are accountable to it. What is this oversight function that we provide that makes these departments account to us when these things are there for 16 years and we always talk about them in this podium but do nothing?
This is a constitutional imperative given to us as an oversight function, but we talk about it and do nothing. This means that the ad hoc committee must submit a clear report of its findings to this House for Parliament to demand an explanation of incomplete projects originally created to better the life of affected communities.
Similarly, all relevant portfolio committees of this House and those of provincial legislatures must take steps to follow these matters up in order to correct these weaknesses so that the dedication the President spoke about, the commitment that we are supposed to show in our tasks, the discipline and integrity, hard work and the passion that we deployees of this nation must show in our work will be seen in practice, not only on the podium. [Applause.]
Hon members, councillors reported that state-owned enterprises, especially Eskom and the water boards in particular, are a law unto themselves. They choose which villages to electrify; they choose which villages will get water, without talking to councillors, without even due regard to the mayor of the town.
When these fights between the mayors and councillors with the communities take place, all these other spheres fold their arms as if they have nothing to do with that fight. Yet Eskom is the provider of electricity, water boards are in charge and not local authorities, and yet the communities fight against councillors because they are the face of government nearest to the people. What is the oversight function of Parliament in this regard? Remember, water and electricity are a national competence. When people fight for water and electricity, we behave as if it has nothing to do with us.
It is important to note that these councillors, although they have their weaknesses, also have their problems, including corruption. There has to be a way which will insist on the structural and institutional co-operation between councillors and traditional leaders. We were told that there are townships, hon Sexwale, that are built between towns and outside villages.
Those people who are regarded as the poorest of the poor in the village are taken out of the social network of the villages, away from the villages, which means they have nobody to look after them because they do not belong to the traditional leader or the town, so it is a township in the middle of nowhere.
We create, suddenly, social problems that have nothing to do with what they experience in the village. Do you know what the problem is? These people cannot negotiate a livelihood outside the village because the only skills they have are those skills they acquired from birth in the village, and suddenly they must depend on social grants outside their villages where there is no work. Why is it allowed for townships to be built outside the village nowhere close to the town? We saw this thing with our own eyes when we visited North West and Limpopo. Why is it allowed?
We were horrified in Molemole Municipality to learn that a corpse had been in a mortuary for months because the traditional leaders would not allow that Zimbabwean citizen to be buried anywhere in the village, not because they could not bury that person, but simply because they had a fight with the councillors who want to regulate land use planning. Now this dead person could not be buried. We had to abandon our task and create a negotiating process to reconcile the two people for the dead person to be buried.
The point here is that we must create a mechanism to regulate the working relationship between the traditional leaders and the councillors, especially with relation to land, commonages, graveyards, grazing land and even fields for the cultivation of food. The majority of people in townships do not work, anyway, so the land available must be put to use to produce food for food security. [Applause.] [Time expired.]
Debate concluded.