Chairperson, last year the Minister was a very animated choir master and I remember him waving his arms around everywhere. This year it's fair to say he is rather a prophet because he is promising us all the good things to come. I only hope that we don't have to wait for a long time before prophecies come true, as with other prophets in the past. The fact is that he should start to deliver now on some of his promises.
Having said this, and to be honest with you, I think the department deserves our support today. For the first time we are seeing somebody who is at least serious about doing something to solve the problems in local government and the country's governance at large. A lot of good things are happening, and I will refer to a couple of them.
We approve the creation of the traditional affairs side of the department. For the reasons you outlined, we hope that it will succeed in dealing with the issues you raised.
We also approve the "all of government" focus on local government rather than the exclusive focus of the past. When we visited the municipalities, looking into the service protests, it was very clear that the peoples' objections are not to local government per se, but to governance as a whole. Often they targeted the provincial government more than the local government. The "all of government" protest is necessary. We approve the department's approach to business. It was very previously technocratic and aloof in its approach. Now we have a far more engaging department, a department that is more active in going out to the community. There is less of a "one size fits all" approach and the recognition that more and new approaches are needed to solve our problems. We approve of that.
We also approve of the short-term approach to solving problems and the local government crisis. I refer here to the turnaround strategy and also to the clean water campaign.
Let me now raise some of the problem areas instead of the positives. First, concerning the turnaround strategy, we are very unhappy that you shifted the deadline for submissions from the end of March to the end of April. This does not necessarily signify a wasted outcome but what it does show is weak leadership from the department in driving the process.
Having taken the lead in December to get Cabinet to approve it, to allow process to arise, you now have to shift the deadlines because two provinces were not doing their job. That does not show real leadership. In KwaZulu- Natal, for example, 10 days before the deadline, and before the Minister first met with the municipality to discuss this issue, I wanted to ask the Ministry why that was allowed to happen.
The Minister is right to say that the turnaround strategy is a long-term thing, not a five-minute thing. The question is: What comes next to give support to it, particularly since the problems they are trying to address require resources, both human and financial. We are sitting with the situation where, unless we review the allocation of financial resources in this country, we are not going to solve the problem.
There are huge backlogs in infrastructure. If we continue with the same funding mechanisms as we have now - this applies to the grants and equitable share - we are not going to eliminate these backlogs. So what is the department doing to sustain the turnaround strategy that is likely to deliver and address capacity constraints?
I want to mention the fact that the turnaround strategy is a good thing. It focuses on what municipalities themselves are doing. It does not focus - and I haven't heard enough about this - on what is being done to support their endeavours in areas where there are other problems. I'll give you an example: What is being done about the unpaid government debt to provincial and national municipalities? We hear about it every year.
There was a court case in Gauteng a year ago. We thought that that court case would result in no more municipalities having to sue government. Now Ulundi Municipality is suing the provincial government for R90 million in unpaid debt going back many years. It is very unsatisfactory that this issue has been allowed to happen. I am asking the Ministry: What are they doing about these problems? I am not referring specifically to Ulundi Municipality alone, but to the problem at large. What is being done to enable municipalities to get the resources due to them?
This leads to another concern. Although you have changed your focus - you now call yourselves co-operative governance, with an "all governance" focus - if you look at the work that has been done so far in the first year, it still seems to be "local government". You are talking about the other issues; you are talking about provincial and national government, but I haven't seen anything yet.
I would like to ask this: When have we ever heard of an MEC being sanctioned or brought to Parliament or being dealt with by you in respect of budget overruns? When have we heard about possible section 100 interventions? We know there are provinces where this is pretty much due. The state of some of the provinces is not very different to the municipalities.
There are two municipalities I would like to focus on. [Time expired.] We support the Budget Vote. [Applause.]