Hon Chairperson of the NCOP, hon Deputy Chairperson of the NCOP, Cabinet Ministers and Deputy Ministers here present, provincial premiers, NCOP delegates, SA Local Government Association representatives, Mago?i a gabo rena [our Chiefs], distinguished guests and fellow South Africans ...
... ke a le dumedi?a bage?o, ke re tameng! [... greetings to all!] [Applause.]]
I am pleased to be here with you in the week in which Parliament comes directly to the people of the local municipalities of Fetakgomo, Makhuduthamaga and Tubatse.
Rena re re Palamente ya gabo rena ke Palamente ya set?haba, ke ka moo lehono re legong mo, ka gore bont?i bja set?haba sa gaborena gabo tsebe gore pharologano magareng ga Palamente le mmu?o ke efe. Mo go bona, ge o le setho sa Palamente go bolela gore ke wena mmu?o. Bjale ke tla leka gore ke hlalo?e gore Maloko a NCOP le a Palamente ga se mmu?o.
Bona ke bona ba ngwalagong melao e leng yona ye re laolang ka yona naga ye ya gabo rena. Melao e phasi?wa ke Palamente. Se se bolela gore mmu?o o nale maoto a mararo. Leoto la mathomo ke le la Palamente, e legong Phuthego ya Boset?haba le Khansele ya Set?haba ya Diprofense. Ke leoto la mathomo leo moo e legong gona go ngwalwang melao e laolago naga ye ya gabo rena. Leoto la bobedi ke mmu?o, ke leo re le bit?ago le phethago, ke gore moo ke go tloga ka Mopresidente go ya go Matona a Khabinete. Ge re eya diprofenseng, se se bolela gore ke Ditonakgolo le dikhansele t?e phethago, Maloko a Khansele ya Phethagat?o, bjalo-bjalo. E sepela ka wona mokgwa owe go fihla mo go bommasepala. Leoto la boraro ke la t?a bokgaolakgang, ke gore ke dikgolegohoto, baahlodi le bomagistrata ka gore mmereko wa bona ke go toloka molao, eup?a mo?omo wa phethagat?o ke go phethagat?a molao. Mmereko wa Palamente ke go ngwala le go phasi?a molao. (Translation of Sepedi paragraphs follows.)
[Our Parliament is a people's Parliament, and that is the reason why we are here today. Most members of the public cannot differentiate between Parliament and government. They think if you are a Member of Parliament then you are the government. The Members of Parliament in the NCOP and NA are not the government.
They are the people who are making the laws of our country. Laws are passed by Parliament. The state is made up of three integral parts. The first is Parliament which has the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces and that is where the laws of the country are made.
The second leg is the state, which is also called the executive and that starts from the President up to the Ministers in the Cabinet. In the provinces there are premiers, MECs, etc. Then there are municipalities. The third leg is the judiciary which includes the courts, the judges and the magistrates because they are there to interpret the laws of the country. The responsibility of the executive is to implement the law. The responsibility of Parliament is to write and pass laws.]
Therefore, the state is made up of three integral parts. The first is the legislatures, which have the responsibility of promulgating legislation, as well as exercising oversight over the executive. They are the supervisors of the executive. The second leg is the executive and the third leg of the state consists of the judiciary. These are the judges, the magistrates and the courts who interpret the laws of the land.
This is a very important point because it will make it easy for us to understand why the NCOP takes Parliament to the people. That is very important because these delegates to the NCOP are public representatives. They are public representatives! If there is any matter or issue that is of concern to a community or group of individuals, the first port of call is to get hold of a public representative and present the issues to that public representative ...
... moemedi wo wa set?haba e leng leloko la Khansele ya Boset?haba ya Diporofense goba la Ngwako wa Lekgotlatheramolao la Bodit?haba kua Palamenteng goba gona mo mo porofenseng. Ge go nale mathata ao e legong gore a tli?wa ke ka moo molao o ?omi?wagong ka gona goba ka moo phethagat?o o ?omelang set?haba ka gona, felo ga mathomo mo o swanet?egong gore o leke go ya gona ke gore o hwet?e moemedi e leng leloko la Khansele ya Boset?haba ya Diporofense goba la Ngwako wa Lekgotlatheramolao la Bodit?haba. O nape o mo ga?e ka t?ona taba t?e le mathatha akhwi, ka gore bona ba nale maatla le toka ya gore ba kgona go bit?a Ditona, Presidente le Motlat?a Presidente ba ba emi?e mo ba ba hlabe ka dipot?i?o gore ba ke ba hlalo?e gore goreng ba dira ka mokgwa o it?egong.
Bjale ge le ba bodit?e gore mathatha le ka a tlalega go bona, ba tla kgona gore ba boe ba tle go lena ba le bot?e gore mmu?o re o bot?i? it?e gore goreng o sa phethagat?e ditakats?o t?a set?haba, mme o arabile ka gore ... (Translation of Sepedi paragraphs follows.)
[... a public representative who is a member of the National Council of Provinces or of the National Assembly in Parliament or of the provincial legislatures. If there are issues that are caused by the way the law is used or the way the executive delivers the services, the first person to approach is the member of the National Council of Provinces or the member of the National Assembly. You have to explain the challenges to that member because they are the ones who have the power to call the Minister, the President and the Deputy President and ask them to explain their actions.
If you tell them that you will report your challenges to them, they will respond by giving you the answers from the government about why they failed to meet your needs. They will inform you that the government responded that ...]
I am explaining this because it is very important and it will actually help us to deepen our democracy once we understand that we as communities have the power. The power does not only reside in communities during election time; it resides in communities all the time throughout the year. And there is no matter of concern to any community that should not be raised very sharply with public representatives. Public representatives have the authority to exercise oversight and to supervise the work that government does. If that work is not satisfactory, it is the responsibility and duty of public representatives to hold government or its representatives to account.
Indeed, on a regular basis we are called upon to go and answer questions in both the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces - from time to time on a regular basis. That is what we do. Therefore it is very important for us to understand that power lies in us as citizens and communities of this country. However, we need to know how to exercise that power.
Given the accumulated disabilities as well as the competing needs that have to be addressed with limited resources, government has had to identify five key priorities in order for it to ensure that in this term and beyond we correct those priorities. The first of the five priorities is education, because it is the key to solving most of these accumulated disabilities. As government we have decided the best way to improve education is by tackling it from the beginning and to begin with early childhood development programmes: To ensure that the teachers are well qualified and to ensure that all children enrol for Grade R.
Thuto ke sehlare seo se tla phekolago malwet?i ka moka ao re nago le wona bjalo ka set?haba. [Education is the solution to all the problems that we have as a nation.]
The three federations of teacher trade unions, the Suid-Afrikaanse Onderwysersunie, the National Professional Teachers' Organisation of South Africa, Naptosa, and the SA Democratic Teachers' Union, Sadtu, have all committed themselves to teachers being at school on time, teaching for a minimum of six and a half hours, without failure, every day of the week. We have also called upon the learners to be at school and in class for a minimum of six and a half hours, learning. We have also insisted that it does not matter who visits a school during school hours; no learning must be disrupted by anybody. [Applause.]
We have been searching for the leadership of an organisation called the Congress of South African Students, Cosas, in the Gauteng province because schooling has been disrupted since the tragic death of some students of Soweto, who were knocked down by a man called Jub Jub, who, apparently, was under the influence of alcohol. In good, savoury language, he was on the wrong side of sobriety. Of course, he and his fellow offender were arrested for this gruesome accident, because they were racing in the township, in the backstreets of Soweto, completely spaced out on drugs. Even a tragic incident like that one should not serve as an excuse for anybody to pull learners out of schools and take them to court. [Applause.]
At issue in this whole episode is drug or substance abuse. That is the real problem. The second problem is disregard of the laws that govern our roads. The safety of children in residential areas is at stake, because this incident happened in the backstreets of a residential area. Therefore these learners, in honouring the memory of their fellow learners who got killed in this accident, can mount and sustain campaigns against substance abuse and for road safety in residential areas throughout the year. They can conduct such a campaign every Saturday for half the day. [Applause.]
So we are still looking for a meeting with Cosas to redirect their energies, because education is not their responsibility alone. It is a societal responsibility - it is our responsibility as well. Because it is given to young people to be energetic and radical, it is expected that they will go to court. During the march, if they come across a shop selling bananas, they will help themselves to the bananas, and so on. So we need to redirect that energy and guide them properly.
The point I'm emphasising is that no excuse must be allowed to disrupt learning. That's the first step that we need to inculcate everywhere. Today we arrived here in a helicopter. As we were landing, I saw in a neighbouring school that school children came out of their classes in order to take a look at the helicopter. I was in a difficult position, because I thought on the one hand they may learn something, but on the other hand it was a disruption of their classes ... [Applause.] ... which must never be allowed.
That is the first thing which we think is an important priority. We shall put all the requisite resources in this area of improving the quality of education. There is no point in getting excited about matric results if we don't pay attention to the foundation stage. If we correct the foundation stage, all these children will go through matric with ease. That has been the aim of dividing the Ministry of Education into two. We now have a dedicated Ministry of Basic Education, precisely because this is a priority. You see, when you say that you are prioritising, you cannot have a long list of priorities. As human beings we have competing needs. If you have a long list of priorities, they cease to be priorities. That is why, as government, we said that we must have five priorities.
The first one, as I said, is education. The second one is health. The first step that we took, as government, was to reopen nursing colleges, because some time ago ...
... re ile ra fedi?a dikholet?he t?a booki. Bjale re re a di bulwe gore re tle re be le baoki ba bant?i. Se se tla dira gore ge motho a eya sepetlele a babja, a se ke a fihla a tsena molokolokong wo motelele fao e lego gore e sa le a fihla ka iri ya 11 e sale gosasa gomme a be a bonwe ke mooki ka iri ya 6 mathapama. Re nyaka gore bothata bjo bo fele. [Legoswi.]
Batho ba gaborena ba swanet?e go ya dikliniking ka sekgauswi ge ba babja. Ga ba swanela go sepela nako ye telele mola ba swanet?e go hlokomelwa gona fa klining. Ge baoki ba ka bona gore bolwet?i bjo bo swerego motho bo nyaka gore a bonwe ke dingaka t?e kgolo e ka ba gona ba mo ?upet?ago sepetlele. Eup?a ba swanet?e ba dire se morago ga go mo thu?a kliniking. Rena re godile re tseba gore baoki ba kgona le go nt?ha motho meno. Ba be ba go hlaba ka lemao gomme ba go nt?ha leino la go bola. Baoki ba be ba kgona go dira dilo t?e nt?i. Le ga bjale re na le tshepo ya gore re tla kgona go dira gore baoki ba rena ba boele dikholet?heng gomme ba hlahlwe gore ba tle ba kgone go thu?a set?haba.
Bjale, le a tseba gore set?haba se a fela. Se fet?wa ke HIV. Bana ba gaborena ba hlokofala e sale ba bannyane. Bjalo ka naga, re re re nyaka go fedi?a selo se. (Translation of Sepedi paragraphs follows.) [... we have closed down the nursing colleges. These colleges have to be reopened so that we have enough nurses. This will help in curbing the problem of long queues in hospitals, where a patient arrives at 11:00 but is only attended to by a nurse at 18:00. We want this to come to an end. [Applause.]
People should be able to access the clinics locally when they are sick. They are not supposed to walk long distances to get to the clinics. The nurses will only transfer the patients that need the doctor's attention to the hospital. They will do this only after they have attended to the patient first. We grew up knowing that the nurses can also remove teeth. They would inject you and then remove a decayed tooth. The nurses were able to handle many cases then. We believe that we should make it possible for nurses to go back to the nursing colleges to be equipped to help the nation.
You know very well that HIV is killing the nation. People are dying at an early age and we want to bring this to an end as a nation.]
We should be able to launch a campaign, co-ordinated by the SA National Aids Council, to prevent new infections and ensure that our people, particularly the young people - because they are the ones who are active - are aware and take preventive measures to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids. That is why on International Aids Day an announcement was made that this year, on a set date - and the date has since been set - our Minister of Health, Minister Aaron Motsoaledi ...
... o rile ba loki?it?e dikliniking mafelong ka moka gore ka la 15 Aporele re ye re dire diteko t?a madi ka moka ga rena gore re tle re tsebe boemo bja rena. [Legoswi.] Ntumeleleng ke le hlaloset?eng pele. Ge o dira diteko t?e t?a HIV le Aids, dipoelo t?a t?ona e tlaba t?a ka sephiring. Ga go motho yo a tla tsebi?wago ka t?ona ntle le wena. Ke wena o tla tsebi?ago ba bangwe ka t?ona ge o lakats?a go dira bjalo.
Eup?a taba ye bohlokwa ke ye. Batho ga ba tlo dirwa diteko t?a HIV fela ge ba fihla diklining. Baoki ba tlo dira le diteko t?a malwet?i a mangwe a go swana le a swikiri, kgatelelo ya madi, bonyelele, TB, bjalobjalo. TB e a alafega. Motho o a fola gomme a kgona go phela ge a na le yona. Ka fao, a re yeng diklining ka la 15 Aporele gomme re dire diteko. Se se tla re thu?a e le ka nnete.
Bolwet?i bja go swana le kgatelelo ya madi ga bo na dit?hupo. O ka se kwe o longwa ke mala go laet?a gore o na le kgatelelo ya madi. O ikwa o itekanet?e. Motho o kgona go tsoga a be a robale go se na seo a se kwago. Ke ka fao o hwet?ago batho ba gona ba rapalala gomme ya ba gore go fedile ke lehlogonolo. Ke ka fao go lego bohlokwa gore re ye re dire diteko gore re tle re tsebe ka malwet?i a go swana le a gomme re humane kalafo gore re phologe. Ke selo sa bobedi se bohlokwa seo rena ba mmu?o re swanet?ego gore re se hlokomele.
Dilo t?e bohlokwa t?e di a amana. Ke bolela se ka lebaka la gore bophelo ke meetse; meetse a go nwa. Ka ntle le meetse ga go na bophelo. Meetse ao a phepafadit?wego ke selo se bohlokwa bophelong. (Translation of Sepedi paragraphs follows.)
[... said they have arranged for people to have blood tests done at the clinics and other places on 15 April for people to know their status. [Applause.]
Let me indicate that HIV and Aids tests results are treated with confidentiality. You will be the only person to know about your test results and you are the only one to decide whether you want to disclose them or not. It is important to know that at the clinics people do not only do HIV tests but other tests as well. The nurses will do tests for diseases like sugar diabetes, high blood pressure, a disease that affects the feet, TB, etc. TB is curable. Let us go to the clinics on 15 April and do the tests.
People who have high blood pressure feel healthy and they do not even have symptoms. You won't have a stomach ache to indicate that you have high blood pressure. You will wake up and go to sleep without feeling any pain. That is the reason why some people die in their sleep. It is very important that we do tests so that such diseases are diagnosed at an early stage and are dealt with. This is government's second priority.
These things are interlinked. I am saying this because we need water to live; drinking water. It is important to drink water that has been purified.]
That is why, in a comprehensive manner, when we deal with this challenge of health, we must also address access to potable water in terms of infrastructure, because hygiene is a function of access to potable water. Without water, there can be no hygiene. That is why it is interlinked with another priority, and that is the priority to create decent work ...
... gore batho ba gaborena ba be le mo?omo. Ke ile ka re ke tlile lehong gona mo Ga-Sekhukhune, mokgalabje yo mongwe a nkgeregela gomme a nt?hupa ka monwana a re: "Lena le fedi?it?e temo. Batho ga ba sa lema mo magaeng mo." Ke ile ka makala gore na re ile ra feti?a molao wa go fedi?a go lema na. O ile a t?wela pele ka gore: "Batho ga ba sa lema gomme ba letile motente- motente wa lena." Ke ile ka re ge ke mo araba ka re: "Mmu?o ga se o fedi?e temo, ebile mmu?o o re batho ba leme gomme mmu?o o tla ba thu?a ka dipeu, diterekere le meetse a go nwe?et?a." O ile a re motente o bolaya set?haba.
Ga se gore motente ke mokgwa wo batho ba swanet?ego gore ba phele ka wona. Motente o thu?a bao ba se sa kgonago go it?homela ka ge ba ?et?e ba godile goba ba golofet?e goba e le bana. Re lwa le leuba ka motente felo fa. Eup?a re rata gore re thu?e batho ba gaborena gore ba kgone go ikemela ka bobona le ge re dut?e re elwa le leuba ka motente.
Seriti se a fela ge o phela ka go kgopela. Ge re be re elwa ntwa ye ya rena ya tokologo, re be re lwela gore seriti sa gaborena se boe. Gore seriti se se boe, batho ba gaborena ba swanet?e go kgona go iterela ka bobona gomme ba tlogele go phela ka go kgopela maphelong a bona ka moka. (Translation of Sepedi paragraphs follows.)
[... for our people. I was attending a funeral one day here in Ga- Sekhukhune when a man came and pointed a finger at me saying: "You have brought cultivation to an end. People are no longer cultivating the land here in the rural areas." I was surprised and wondered when we passed a law that prohibits cultivation. He further said: "People are no longer cultivating the land because they are waiting for the social grant - your social grant." I answered him and said: "The government never said people must stop cultivation; instead the government wants people to do cultivation and will provide the seeds, the tractors and water." He stated that the social grant was killing the nation.
People should not depend on the social grant. It is there to help those who cannot fend for themselves due to old age, disability and young age. We are providing people with the social grant while we are busy fighting the scourge.
We fought for democracy to restore our dignity. To restore their is dignity, people have to be able to fend for themselves but not depend on handouts their entire life.]
That is why one of our priorities is the creation of decent work. Once able- bodied people are able to fend for themselves and their families, they can plan their own lives and take control of their own lives, and their dignity is restored. They can walk secure within that dignity, unlike when they depend on handouts. When you depend on handouts, your dignity is undermined. In townships we find that your own children have more respect for the man down the road because he is able to give them money to go to the stadium, the cinema, for ice cream, etc. That is why it is important for us to prioritise job creation.
The fourth priority is the fight against crime and corruption - to ensure that our people live in secure environments. There is nothing that riles me more and makes me angrier than when people are attacked in their own homes. It is one thing if you are attacked at the bus stop, the bus station, etc, but once you reach your home, there you should be secure and safe. The fact that people can get attacked in the residential areas is something that we must fight tooth and nail.
We must be able to root out criminals from within our midst. These criminals are our relatives. They stay with us in communities and they are known in communities. Their evil deeds are known to communities. That is why, working together with communities, we should be able to stamp this out. I know many of us make the mistake of believing that as long as it is not happening to me or my immediate relatives but to others, it's none of my business. But of course, logically, once they have exhausted your neighbours they will come to you. It is just a matter of time. [Applause.] That is why it is so important for us to work together, as communities together with the law enforcement units, to root out crime in our midst.
It should be safe for people to walk at night and visit each other without feeling threatened. But of course, we know sometimes even law enforcement officers can go overboard. That is why there is an institution that serves to investigate and ensure that even the law enforcement units operate within the law and do not go overboard.
It is also important to ensure that we fight corruption. Corruption eats away at the limited resources. It diverts the limited resources from the projects on which such resources are meant to be expended. That is why, from government's side, every project must be public knowledge and must be handled in a transparent manner, so that the general public, the communities, must have information about what is expected and what it entails. They will be the first ones to ensure that whatever goes wrong is identified immediately.
If we don't identify mistakes and deal with them at the beginning, we shall miss our destination. These days there are freeways. If you are going to a place and you drive past the off-ramp, it will take you a long time to come back to that place, because motorways have flyovers - that's what they are called. You can fly over your destination. That is why it is important for us to identify wrongdoing at the beginning and nip it in the bud.
I must share this with you: I went to a small town in the Northern Cape called Douglas. In Douglas is a whole township which did not have a sewerage system. They still used the bucket system. The municipality issued a tender and identified an engineering company, which installed a sewerage system and completed it. So there was a toilet in every yard and the sewerage system was in place. But this engineering company got the flow completely wrong. The flow was too steep so the liquids flowed past the solids and the solids remained exactly where they were deposited.
There was such a stench in that township that the municipality had to go and buy padlocks and lock up all the toilets, and they reintroduced the bucket system.
This is inefficiency. The engineering company did the work and completed it, but did it incorrectly. This is inefficiency. Had such a problem been picked up earlier, it could have been corrected much earlier. Now it will take more resources to correct a mistake like that one. In the meantime the community is agitated, because of the stench. Now that the bucket system has been reintroduced, if the night soil is not collected for several days it means that the perfume is also very powerful.
The same applies to an area in Gauteng province, just next door in an area called Orange Farm. There an engineering company was given a contract to install a sewerage system. They installed all the main pipes in the roads and so on, and the cisterns in the yards, but did not connect the yards to the main pipe. It meant that that community, which was the first section of Orange Farm to be provided with a sewerage system, still did not have a sewerage system.
Then other engineering companies were later given similar contracts elsewhere in other parts of this township, and they were able to complete the work and the people were flushing. So, this section of the community, which was supposed to be the first to flush, was still waiting; they were still not flushing. The next thing they learnt was that the same engineering company which had failed to complete the work in their section had since been awarded another contract in another part of the same township. Of course, they went out into the streets to demonstrate, and correctly and rightly so.
We say when something like that happens, the community must indeed raise their concerns sharply. They have the right to demonstrate. Of course, what they should not do is to pull schoolchildren out of their classrooms. That they must not do. They must also not go and burn down a library, because it will take other resources to replace that library; they will need the library. But they must march, they must submit petitions, and they must do all legal things to ensure that their plight is understood. [Applause.]
Now, I am sharing with you these challenges because these are examples of how inefficiency can cost us very dearly. Remember we have limited resources, and we have to address all these challenges. Therefore, when we do so, whatever we do must be of good quality. We cannot afford shoddy work, because what is the point when people still sit without flushing toilets?
Chairperson, the last important priority is rural development. During the previous administration, when we were identified to host the Fifa Soccer World Cup this year, we put lots of resources into the construction of better roads and new stadiums and, of course, the hospitality industry, from the private sector, constructed many new hotels. So, the construction industry created many new jobs in our economy. Even during the global recession, the construction sector of the economy showed positive growth, while all the other sectors were in a downward spiral. So it helped us; it served as a countercyclical measure against job losses occasioned by the economic recession. We lost close to 900 000 jobs, particularly in the mining and automotive sectors, as well as in the luxury goods sector, restaurants, second-hand car dealerships and other sectors. All of those suffered because of the economic recession, but we were helped by the fact that the construction sector experienced positive growth because of this privilege of hosting the Fifa Soccer World Cup.
But what became very clear to us was that all of these new roads and new stadiums were being built in urban areas. We had to ask the question: What about the rural communities? [Applause.] Hence, we felt that this ought to be a priority and it ought to be led by a dedicated Ministry, and that is why we created a new Ministry of Rural Development and Land Reform, to focus specifically on rural communities. In other words, going forward the same allocation of resources that went to this Fifa Soccer World Cup infrastructure must go to the creation or provision of bulk infrastructure in the rural areas of our country, because without bulk infrastructure, if you cultivate your piece of land, it takes you so much longer to take your fresh produce to the market precisely because the road network does not allow for it, precisely because there is no refrigeration storage available to you. That is why we believe rural development must be our next phase in the provision of bulk infrastructure. We must be able to unlock the potential in rural communities by providing the necessary bulk infrastructure and the Ministry of Rural Development and Land Reform leads our government in that regard.
There are interventions that can be made even now by simply co-ordinating the efforts of government. When government operates in silos, and its efforts are not all pooled together, the impact is minimal, because one department will focus on one part of the country and so on. But once its efforts are all pooled together and co-ordinated, we will see the impact with our own eyes within the shortest possible time.
This Ministry of Rural Development and Land Reform also co-ordinates our war-on-poverty strategy. Now, we believe that we cannot hope to deal with poverty simply by issuing social grants. Social grants are a stopgap measure. They are a palliative. They are just meant to cushion temporarily, and the approach of our rural development and war-on-poverty strategy is that we must go, household by household, and identify in each household one or two potential change agents.
It is not helpful for poverty to be passed on from one generation to another. The approach must be such that if a family is living in dire poverty, that generation must be the last generation that lives in dire poverty. We must aim to ensure that the next generation is pulled out of poverty, and there are several ways in which we can achieve that. One of these is that if there is anybody in that family who is of schoolgoing age and has dropped out of school, we must get that person into a school or a further education and training college and support that individual, and monitor the progress of that individual, so we never part with you. In other words, if we identify you in a family, whether you are two or three, and we are able to support you and place you in a school, we will support you throughout, to ensure that you do not wallow in the same level of poverty as your parents. That is the thrust of our rural development approach.
That is why it is so important for this session to be held in a rural community such as this greater Tubatse community, and that such a session should not be a once-off. We must ensure that all the concerns that are raised are addressed in a co-ordinated fashion, because I am sure the competing needs would need a co-ordinated approach. Chairperson, you will agree with me that the sessions and interactions we had with the community earlier on will indeed result in interventions that are targeted and aimed at addressing the specifics of those concerns.
In conclusion, Chairperson, we are convinced that, through practice, we can do it. The time for many words is gone. Now it must be about implementation and what we do. [Applause.]
This brings me to the last point, which is really an issue about governance and accountability. I know I have gone over my allocated time. I plead for just one more minute, Chairperson; I really am concluding.
Our government must act in the most transparent manner, because if people do not know, they will, of course, invent explanations. It is very easy for those explanations to be off the mark and to cause agitation among people, precisely because they do not know. So it is in the best interests of government to share detailed information with communities and citizens, so that, if things go wrong, it should not be because people did not know. Only if we do it that way, in partnership, together, will we be able to succeed in addressing the basic needs of our people.
We have an ethical obligation to our Constitution and to our people to reverse the pattern of poor service delivery. We all know what needs to be done and what can be done to attain a common purpose of action.
Set?haba sa gaborena se swanet?e go phela bophelo bjo bo hlwekilego. Bana ba swanet ?e go humana thuto ya maleba ye e tlago dira gore ba se fetoge ba bangwe ba bao ba tlago phela bophelo bja leuba. A re fedi?eng bohodu gore batho ba tle ba kgone go phela ka khut?o gomme ba dire me?omo ya bona let?at?i le let?at?i ba lokologile gape ba sa t?habe selo.
Ka wona mant?u a ke re ke a le leboga. Le ka moso le dire ka wona mokgwa wo. [Legofsi.] Ke a leboga. [Legofsi.] (Translation of Sepedi paragraphs follows.)
[The nation has to live a better life. The children need a good education to live a better life. Let us root out corruption so that our people live in peace and do their daily work without being scared of anything.
Let me conclude by thanking you. Keep up the good work. [Applause.] Thank you. [Applause.]]