Hon Deputy Chairperson, Deputy President hon Motlanthe, Ministers, MECs, Members of Parliament, members of the NCOP and the legislature, Speakers, executive mayors and everyone gathered here today, thank you for the opportunity to address you.
The hon Kiviet remarked that the Western Cape never had a homeland. Well, we have one now. Almost half of the Eastern Cape has fled their province to look for a new future in the Western Cape, and we care for them.
Despite the turnaround strategy of local government, we must acknowledge that we have a crisis regarding service delivery in the majority of municipalities. We have municipalities that are plagued with violent protests owing to bad service delivery.
Firstly, we need the political will to turn the situation around. Secondly, we must join hands and learn from each other's successes. In the words of President Zuma when he spoke in Khayelitsha last year, and I quote:
We must find ways of attracting the best technical, managerial and financial minds to our municipalities, even to the most remote, to effect a turnaround.
Deputy Chair, there is only one way of attracting officials who fall into this category: Appoint them on merit, fit for purpose, and stop cadre deployment. Since December 2000, capacity at our municipalities has been destroyed.
The President further stated in Khayelitsha, and I quote:
Secondly, we must deal with the fact that many municipalities face a deep crisis of governance due to political power struggles. These battles for control over resources render the affected municipalities effectively dysfunctional.
We are not here to throw stones, but we must accept the fact and join hands to better the situation. We must accept the fact that almost all municipalities in the Northern Cape and a number in the North West and the Free State are technically bankrupt.
On the other hand, the small town of Laingsburg in the desolate Karoo, which has minimal job opportunities and a large population of poor people, wins one award after the other. On a lighter note: What is the difference? Perhaps it is the fact that the DA and the ANC have joined hands to run the town for the people, and not for political gain.
We must develop a culture of dedication amongst councillors. They must be dedicated to work for the people who voted for them and not prioritise self- interest and misuse political power. The people outside - in our towns, villages and those in the remote areas - expect their councillors and us in government to take responsibility to deliver the theme of this week: Working together to speed up the delivery of services to our people.
We must not be like the ANC councillors of Matlosana Council in Klerksdorp, who are in the process of buying 500 Fifa Soccer World Cup tickets out of taxpayers' money for themselves, their staff, their families and friends. That is not all. They are also planning free transport, food and tracksuits. What a disgrace! Are they working together to speed up the delivery of services for our people or are they purely set to enrich themselves and discard their voters? We must portray good leadership and make a success of good governance.
That was the negative part. Let's look at the positive aspects. With regard to reaching out to help each other, I am pleased to say that the Western Cape is already working with other provinces and sharing best practice. We also have excellent intergovernmental relations with some Ministries in the national government. At the national Cabinet lekgotlas, which Premier Helen Zille attends, she has been pleasantly surprised at the extent to which she has been able to advance political alternatives and that there is mutual respect between spheres of government.
In a document titled "State of Local Government in South Africa", it is stated that 21 of the 30 local municipalities in the Western Cape fall into the category of highest performing municipalities, which represents 87,5% of the total in South Africa. Not one of these municipalities is considered vulnerable.
Let us look at the Tswelopele agricultural project of 400 hectares, a project in which 137 farmers started an irrigation scheme. Every farmer received five hectares in a venture with the Department of Agriculture and a strategic partner. Then, as usual, nothing happened. The farmers asked: Where is the seed? Where is the fertiliser? The government told them to buy their own.
The farmers went to the bank and loaned money for seed and fertiliser. Then they wanted to plough. What happened then? The department then said: Stop, stop, we are going to consolidate again. So everything stopped, and the farmers were blacklisted because they could not pay their loans.
A project of Social Development's food security programme worth R33 million came to a grinding halt. Everything stopped and the irrigation equipment was vandalised. We cannot work like this here. This is not working together to speed up the delivery of services to our people.
The DA is now asking questions. We want a proper assessment to be made of the position of the Tswelopele agricultural project. We want a report to be submitted within a month's time to determine the viability of this project and the way forward.
In this process, we have made poor people even poorer. One of the speakers reported here yesterday that the challenge we have in local government is extreme and that we must invest in training our officials in order to bring back expertise and knowledge. It has been proven in municipalities that are successful that, firstly, expertise must be brought back; secondly, a stable political surrounding has to be established; thirdly, corruption has to be addressed and marginalised; and fourthly, effective credit control systems have to be implemented.
The NCOP had the opportunity to visit many centres and I had the opportunity to visit the clinic at Penge. What a heartbreaking experience it was to see devoted staff doing their utmost to keep the place going. It is a hospital fitted with two modern operating theatres, brand-new equipment - not used; two dental chairs with brand-new equipment - not used; a children's intensive care unit fitted with brand-new equipment - never used before; and excellent X-ray equipment in an X-ray room where the ceilings are falling in. All of this is not used because there is no staff.
We desperately need to find ways to staff that hospital before it is in total ruin. We live in a country where sickness runs rife and we have a huge hospital standing dormant because there is no staff. That is pathetic. We should look at means of changing the system to ensure that doctors who have studied medicine on government bursaries do time at locations such as these, rather than accepting the money they furnish to pay off their debt to the state and leave the area. We should look at paying higher allowances to doctors working in remote areas to encourage them to work there.
To a question as to when last a Member of Parliament visited Penge, the answer was simply, and I quote:
In the 10 years that I have been working here, this is the first visit by Members of Parliament.
If that is true, then I ask myself once again: Are we working together to speed up the delivery of services to our people?
It is also sad to see the manner in which the previous Deputy Chair reduced democracy by failing to answer hon Harris's democratic request to apply the same norms to every party addressing this gathering. I thank you. [Applause.]