Hon Chairperson, firstly, I would like to thank hon Fubbs for the motion. I think this is a very interesting debate, one that we have had before in the third Parliament but one in terms of which the issues cannot be overemphasised. I am also glad that the hon Fubbs emphasised social development and not only pie-in-the-sky things that one normally talks - Asia, Japan and the rest of the world.
However, I want to submit that the challenges that are posed by the global economic crisis and the developmental state are challenges that we accept. We know what happened globally; we know what happened in the US; and we know that that has had an impact on the South African economy, to a lesser extent because we had a very good banking system.
However, what I want to submit to the hon Fubbs through you, Chair, is that it is not only external factors that are going to cause us not to meet this "Manna from Heaven" developmental state that we want, but also internal factors and internal weaknesses in the way government implements a number of programmes that are put on paper. I will refer to this a little later on. The situation in South Africa is no different to that in any other part of the world.
As I said, while we might not have felt the adverse effects of this crisis as harshly as other countries did, there is no doubt that it has impacted negatively on us. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost, while hardly any are being created; people are losing their houses and assets; and more people will be pushed into poverty.
However, we have just had the hon Sogoni present his report of the Standing Committee on Appropriations which this House accepted, and we saw how departments were not spending money. It has been reported by Treasury that Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal have already blown their budgets to the tune of R5,8 billion - R5,8 billion! They have run up R260 million a year on cellphone calls, travel and accommodation bills, costing our taxpayers money. Regarding education, Dr Brown from the Treasury said that South Africa spends a lot on education, but the outcomes don't reflect it.
Closer monitoring would allow for early interventions to deal with these challenges. We are also told that overspending worries the Treasury. It hits the provinces' bank balances and can slow down service delivery for years ahead, especially as the slowdown on the economy, owing to the global financial crisis, has put pressure on the provincial income. When looking at investment, what South Africans need is a return on their investments. Taxpayer money of R767 billion needs to be spent wisely. All of us in this house, in government and in the executive have to ask ourselves if we are doing enough to enough value for money. The simple answer to that is no.
We welcome the monitoring and the evaluation, but until and unless we sort out internal weaknesses in the way in which our government operates, we are not going to have this developmental state we talk about. However, I think we need to look for a seed of a hidden opportunity in every instance of adversity. And that seed for us is to sharpen our pencils and be alive to the global economic crisis ... [Time expired.] [Applause.]