Chairperson, hon Dudley makes a very significant observation about the complexity of the political economy of our country. But not only that, she also points out to us, in addressing the question of clean audits, that we must locate it within the broader problem that we are seeking to address. In other words, the absence of clean audits is in fact symptomatic of something bigger.
So, the Auditor-General indicates to us, as an example of good practice, that one mayor of Cacadu proved very effective in bringing about clean governance in the district, because he played a critical oversight role and provided leadership in the area. This he did after receiving feedback from the Auditor-General and others, and in the process of managing the administration.
The mayor told us as a committee, in our interaction with him, that their chief financial officer, who was critical to this process, was poached by a municipality with bigger financial muscle, namely the metro. So, they were confronted with a problem that their staff was poached, which created a gap with regard to their capabilities.
So, this reflects the fact that the problem of the differently financed municipalities - the rich vs the poor in the areas that we are operating in - has an effect on the ability of the poorer municipalities, largely in rural areas, to attract and retain effective professionals at a variety of levels, including the area of running finances, etc. That is the broader picture we must address.
In other words, the underdevelopment - the skewed nature of development in our country - is partly to blame for this. We have to look at the historical reasons.
Secondly, the rural-to-urban migration is an important factor. The fact that professionals are leaving the poorer municipalities of the rural areas to move to urban areas and so on, creates this gap. Thirdly, migration from the public to the private sector is becoming an important factor in looking at what is happening at these municipalities. When we speak about the absence of clean audits, we must look sufficiently into the reasons for the absence of skills that people are talking about, including of leadership. Obviously, this is compounded by the fact that, like in any institution, each municipality must create an environment in which it is able to retain and keep the professionals and skilled people that it does get from time to time. They must make sure that these professionals stay in the area, and they must deal effectively with these issues.
There's no doubt that in the absence of such an environment, such professionals become vulnerable to poaching not only by richer municipalities, but also by provincial and national departments. This denudes the municipalities of the capacity they need to handle these issues.
The Auditor-General makes an important observation, that there is a paucity of skills in the country generally, in national and provincial departments, and more so at a local level. Some of the ideas that we are debating and discussing regarding a single Public Service, inducting and training all public servants into systems that will enable them to migrate across the three spheres, will go towards addressing this issue in the long term. That is an important aspect of what we are debating and discussing today.
The Minister is correct, dealing with clean audits requires a comprehensive overall approach. In other words, we should be able to manage the issues of debt collection, for example - keeping the resources you have and using them for service delivery. This is going to make a big difference. In other words, clean audits will only be effective as a vehicle for improving not only service delivery, amongst other things, but also general good governance in those municipalities.
The country must address the problem of capacity not only at municipal level, but generally. We are dealing with backlogs of human resource development in this country that have major implications for our work across the board.
It is as a result of underinvestment not only in the past 15 years, but also before that, that we do not have sufficient numbers of professionals across the board. We've spoken about the poor quality of performance, at tertiary level, of the people we need in various areas of our work. This partly manifests itself in the poor and not-so-clean audits that emerge from municipalities, so the initiative is crucial to contributing to a national strategy for developing human resources at municipal level.
Let me start with you, hon Tozamile Botha. When you were deployed as a director-general in the Eastern Cape and a comrade from head office requested you to come and account, you said to the comrade: Nithe mandiphathe. Ndiphethe. Ndize kuphendula ntoni? [Kwahlekwa.] Usayikhumbula loo nto, tata? [You said I must manage. I am managing. What must I account for? [Applause.] Do you still remember that, sir?] That is what you said, as a deployed cadre. Today you stand here and you object to us doing that. This is the most crucial part of the work that we do. Every town and every city where the DA has won an election, they have removed the people they found there, including the people they claimed were appropriate for those jobs. This is especially the case down here, where they assume that women do not have the appropriate skills.
I don't know how you refer to "cadre development", but it is referred to as such in politics everywhere else. The party that runs the country chooses the people it considers the best, and in the process of choosing such people there will be mistakes. So, those will be dealt with.
Naturally, in working towards achieving the results that we desire, some of the human resource decisions - not only in the public sector, but also in the private sector - do not go the way we want them to. The issue is the responsiveness with which we ought to react when that happens. That is what this strategy does: It announces an initiative that complements our intention to build a very strong, national integrity system. This system emphasises to our institution the necessity to run clean public sector institutions, including municipalities, so that the citizens can benefit from that.
No doubt, I agree with those members who say that we need to be responsive and to respond in time to issues that are raised. This is what citizens on the ground want from municipalities, and this initiative is intended to do that. What's wrong with dreaming?
The importance of the announcement of the clean audits campaign is that the announcement falls squarely into our overall job to continue to learn from the past and, looking ahead, to build the sort of institutions that we would like to be proud of.
There is no shifting of goals here. What is happening is that we have to learn from the past and take new steps in the right direction. In the past, those with experience used to say that when we get lost, we should retrace our steps so that we can see where we went wrong.
We agree with the Minister that in carrying out our oversight responsibilities as Members of Parliament, we must interact with those who work in these municipalities to ensure that a political environment is created for the retention and continued attraction of others to serve on the municipalities to help them carry out their duties properly. Thank you, very much.