Chairperson of the NCOP, President of the Republic, His Excellency Comrade J G Zuma, Chief Whips, Deputy Chairperson of the NCOP, hon premiers, members of Salga, MECs, hon members and ladies and gentlemen, the past few months have seen a spate of violence in township streets throughout South Africa in response to the state's systematic failure to deliver on long-standing promises of housing and social services. The cause of the discontent and frustration, however, runs much deeper than housing and social services. The poor have felt that they were increasingly being marginalised economically, socially and politically. They felt that the government was seemingly unwilling to listen, let alone act on their concerns. They have increasingly seen protest as the only viable alternative in order to get the attention of the state.
Rates boycotts, alongside other forms of community protests, which were historically linked to the grass-roots struggle of communities against the apartheid government, have once again surfaced as a tactical tool in the ongoing conflict between municipal authorities and their constituencies. The availability of affordable and uninterrupted basic services, huge infrastructure backlogs, problematic political and administrative interference and financial mismanagement have emerged as the main reasons fuelling the protests.
This led the recent State of Local Government Report to conclude that municipalities are in a state of distress. This report makes the following findings: a lack of responsiveness on the part of officials and councillors to issues raised by communities; tensions between the political and administrative sections of the municipalities; ward committees that are not fully functional, leading to poor communication with communities; financial mismanagement and allegations of fraud and corruption; poor planning, maintenance and management of infrastructure, resulting in poor service delivery; and the integrated development plan, IDP, and budgeting processes that are not aligned in some municipalities.
In his address in Khayelitsha on 20 October 2009 to all executive mayors and mayors of all 283 municipalities, the President of the Republic, Jacob Zuma, mentioned the importance of municipalities and their proximity to the community. The President mentioned that municipalities were the first door that our people knocked on when there was a need for assistance from the government. Following his address and the commitment by the ANC to a better working system of local government, an intervention was made in both Tshwane Municipality, by strengthening the executive committee of the metro, and the Lekwa Local Municipality in Mpumalanga, where an administrator was appointed to address issues that led to the intervention.
The picture of municipal service delivery has been inconsistent. It is important to state that the problem is not exclusively a local government problem, as other spheres of government play a fundamental role in our system of intergovernmental relations.
Local government is the coalface of service delivery and, as such, even problems associated with other spheres of government are apportioned to local government. This calls for greater urgency in strengthening integrated and co-ordinated governance machinery. The IDP must be the basis upon which all government plans sit. Local government must be the centre of gravity.
Much has been achieved since 1994 with the provision of basic services to the majority of our people. Major progress has been made with regard to the provision of basic water and sanitation services as access to basic services increased from 59% of the population in 1994, to 94% of the population in March 2007. Households with access to basic sanitation increased from 50% in 1994 to 71% in 2006.
Whatever the situation on the ground, access to basic water supply services improved from 59% in 1994 to more than 80% in 2009, implying that 71% of the backlog has been addressed, which is well ahead of the Millennium Development Goal of halving the backlog by 2015. In fact, reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation is the seventh of the Millennium Development Goals.
In terms of sanitation, 4,2 million households do not have access to basic sanitation, although 1,16 million households were serviced from April 2004 to September 2008. This means that access to sanitation has increased from 66% of households in 2004, to 74% of households in 2008. However, the provision of sanitation is characterised by a huge backlog of 3,2 million households that need to be attended to. In order to register significant progress in this area, it is noteworthy that there are currently 8 315 households in informal settlements, mainly in the Free State province, that are still using the bucket system as a form of sanitation. Although the number of households using buckets in the informal settlement sector is not known, the considered number of households in these areas would mean that an unacceptably high number of households using buckets could be found in these informal settlements. What is apparent is that there are growing expectations among the communities in informal settlements that the bucket system in these areas will also be removed, as is being done in formal or established settlements. Thus the expansion of sanitation services to the unserviced population is slow.
The historical mission of the ANC has always been, and continues to be, the creation of a united nonracial, nonsexist and democratic society. This then means that our central task, as a liberation movement, is the liberation of Africans in particular, and black people in general, from political and economic bondage. This means uplifting the quality of life of all South Africans, especially the poor and the marginalised. This classification then forms the largest part of the character of the national democratic revolution.
The demise of apartheid in 1994 left South Africa with an indelible social and economic legacy of the abhorrent system of apartheid. Virtually every social indicator portrayed the extreme inequalities of racial division, underdevelopment, poverty and unemployment.
After the country's first democratic election on 27 April 1994, the new, democratic government identified the local government sphere as critical in rebuilding local communities and redressing the legacy of apartheid underdevelopment, as the basis for a democratic, integrated, prosperous and truly nonracial society. Due to closer location to the people ... [Time expired.] [Applause.]