Deputy Chair, the interventions that we are making already in regard to local economic development are quite serious, because the revenue for municipalities has gone down. This situation has been compounded by the fact that there was the problem of the global recession.
When revenues for municipalities in South Africa were conceptualised in terms of intergovernmental fiscal relations, the thinking was that 95% of the revenue of municipalities was going to be generated by them. Only 5% of nationally raised revenue would be due to them, which they get. But the reality, as we speak, is that almost 40% of municipalities' income is dependent on grants. Others are almost 100% dependent on money from other spheres of government. Clearly, something has to be done. I can tell you that we have not managed to crack local economic development in South Africa over the past 16 years. It has been seen more as tenders, and so on, than actual utilisation and empowerment of people on the ground.
There are two things that we are doing. The first one is that we are involved in a programme called the Community Works Programme. We have an amount of about R500 million, where we are looking at intervening in areas of municipalities to ensure that people are able to create jobs, and that jobs are there on the ground.
The first intervention is that we are looking at a situation where, by 2014, there must be at least two wards per municipality. We must be able to have that.
The second intervention is in regard to the co-operatives. We are saying that if you read the Local Government Turnaround Strategy, it is very clear: It says that there must be a co-operative in every ward, a co- operative where people will say that these are the resources that they have - land and other things - and how they are using them to generate income rather than waiting for the big truck of government to deliver services.
They are asking, "What can we do in our own area of jurisdiction?" And government must be able to help there because in the past people were helping themselves, but today people are waiting for the government for everything, including disciplining their children! Clearly, we are building a society of lazy people who can't do things on their own, and that could make us uncompetitive across the globe.
That is why we are saying we want to come up with co-operatives in every ward so that people are able to generate income, looking at the resources that they have and what they can do that can be useful. We are moving those programmes so as to ensure that economic development and resources that are prevalent in local areas are utilised, not by the few but by the majority of the people of South Africa. They are part of the economic activity; but as you see them now, they are not.
Those are the two interventions that we are making, and we believe that they are going to be able to go a long away in ensuring that South Africa becomes a nation at work. Thank you very much.