House Chairperson, first and foremost I must say that in South Africa we have 283 municipalities. Protests have happened in about 31 of them. Therefore, if you look at the scale of the issue, it is not as big as it has at times been made out to be, and the impression that sometimes is being given.
Having said that, since January we have managed to consolidate the information, to check what the causal factors for these protests are. We have managed, under the leadership of MECs, to visit each municipality in South Africa. Not only that, we have managed to gather information which we can say with confidence is the best information obtained in South Africa to date. That information is the one thing that has enabled us to say that this is the state of local government in South Africa.
Having done this, we then managed to ensure that we looked at the causal factors, as I have said. One of those is the issue of social distance between government at the local level and the people. On the other hand these are the issues that are the responsibility of national government in respect of housing, which comes out strongly in the demands of the people on the ground and other issues that are not the responsibility of municipalities.
Also, they raised issues of service delivery. The issue of corruption has been raised very strongly, of nepotism, as well as mismanagement of finances. Having looked at all those, we had a national local government indaba that took place last week on Wednesday and Thursday. Following that, we are now in the process of developing a turnaround strategy that will be ready by the end of the year.
I must say to the other side of the House that they have actually dismissed, almost removed, one of the finest administrators, Shanaaz Majiet. We have taken her into the department now. She is going to be playing a critical role in ensuring that South Africa is turned around in relation to what is happening. [Interjections.] What you have removed, we have taken. We are saying one man's poison is another man's meat. That is what we have done as government. Thank you very much.