Chairperson, the issue of service delivery is a serious challenge. In South Africa we have conducted the state of municipalities. It has been the most comprehensive process that has been conducted to date. This process of the state of municipalities has revealed a lot of things. Amongst other things it has revealed is an issue of the levels of backlogs in each and every municipality and province in relation to water, sanitation, electricity and refuse removal at a broader level. We have come to the conclusion that for South Africa to reach the Millennium Development Goals on sanitation by 2014, we must provide over 600 000 facilities to each and every household every year; for us to ensure that we have universal access to electricity, we must deliver over 300 000 connections to each household every year so that we can reach the 2014 goal; and for us to have access to water in South Africa, we must deliver over 200 000 connections to each household. Therefore, going forward, this requires a lot of resources, and it is something we are engaging upon.
We are looking at these measures to ensure that we accelerate service delivery. We are also looking at these matters in a way that takes us forward. It is not only this; we are also looking at local economic development. We have to broaden the cake because the tax base and revenue of municipalities have declined over time. About 95% of municipalities were told that they should raise their own revenue. This situation no longer obtains. It is a challenge; it is something we are looking at, going forward.
The issue of fraud and corruption is of serious concern to us. We believe that all of us - without exception - from all sectors and structures of our society and all classes, should come together against corruption. In fact, if we had been speaking in another forum we would have been saying that corruption is an antinational democratic revolution, because it benefits a few at the expense of the majority. This is something that must be tackled and dealt with.
We are developing mechanisms in the turnaround strategy to indicate that we are dealing with this. We will be signing a contract and an agreement - a memorandum of understanding - with the Special Investigation Unit led by Willie Hofmeyr. We are interacting and interlocking with the Hawks under Mr Dramat. Therefore, we are going in big time to ensure that we deal with these things. In this respect, we are calling upon all parties to come to the party. If we can manage to stop this rot, we will have also done so for those coming after us. In fact, they will thank us for having been decisive in dealing with these issues. I thank you.