Madam Deputy Speaker, hon members, comrades and friends, our area of deployment as Members of Parliament and Scopa, in particular, is to make sure that the public purse is utilised for intended purposes, as appropriated for by this House. In doing so, we analyse the past performance and financial conduct in our public entities and departments in order to produce the future outcomes that deliver value to citizens whose hard-earned money we are enjoined by the Constitution to oversee.
That is why we interrogate the report of the Auditor-General with keen interest. If the above supposition is correct, we then have to reflect and honestly answer the question: Are we, as Parliament, heeding the call to ensure that we perform clean audits of our departments and entities over which we are charged to perform oversight? Is it morally defensible that 15 years down the line after democracy, corruption in our governance structures remains something of a pandemic?
All of us here have no option but to root out corruption in all its manifestations, lest our dream for an equal society and a better life for all remains just that - a dream perpetually deferred. The time has come for this House to raise the bar on its oversight role without pondering on party-political positions.
Firstly, we need to send a very clear message out there, to all accounting officers, that they must take the work of this Parliament and its committees very seriously. We shall no longer allow shoddy preparations when appearing before Scopa or any parliamentary committee, and we will demand timeous and honest answers. Some of them simply just go there and lie. Scopa, being charged to lead, can not tolerate that anymore.
It is not our business, though, to name and shame people, but we expect administrators and managers to manage public funds and to work efficiently. In this regard, we would like to endorse the call by the President for a corruption-free society.
We all agree, even with the worst of the opposition, for the first time, that this debate has matured. The report firstly came in August or September last year. Scopa raised the matter very sharply, and we see that everybody is talking about it and it is also a subject of the media. When the member from the DA proposed this matter, we said: "Oh my God, this is opportunistic!" We were still seized with the matter and were dealing with it as effectively as possible.
There is a need for senior public officials to maintain high standards and professional ethics. We cannot compromise on that one. There is a need for regulations regarding financial disclosure, which are aimed at preventing incidents of conflict of interest before they occur.
That's where we have a problem with the current regulations, because our job, as I have alluded to earlier, is a post-mortem issue. We come after the act has been committed. In this regard, we appeal to the implicated departments for an early-warning sign.
The new regulations require that there must be quarterly reports. That is where we expect the departments to come on board so we can check these things, because ours is really a post-mortem, but a very useful one in that by interrogating them - some of them understand what it means to appear before Scopa - we shape future occurrences.
The regulatory initiative did not occur in a vacuum. It is underpinned by political objectives and choices. We have documents in this regard, and they are ready to govern. In 1992 we said, on professional ethics in the Public Service, that public servants should be impartial in their functioning and should be accountable to both Parliament and the broad community they serve. The ANC further said in its National General Council in Pretoria in 2005, that we needed to investigate measures to deal with potential conflicts of interest. The ANC is equally serious about this. Like I said, if you have followed the interrogations and the public hearings we've had, you will realise that the ANC is as robust as any other party in those hearings, and we want to own it because it is in our interest; this is our government. We want to see the ANC winning its fight against poverty and corruption and to make sure that we realise our long-standing dream of making a better life for all.
That is why we are very serious about this. We said that we want to investigate measures to deal with potential conflicts of interest relating to access to work in the public sector.
Furthermore, in Polokwane, we resolved on ethics and the integration of the Public Service. Furthermore, with regard to the development on policy, post- tenure, the cooling-off period - I know hon Singh has referred to it - it is our policy. We are raising it as the ANC because we want to make sure that people are accountable; they don't use their positions to enrich themselves. We use every resource the country can amass to better the lives of the people. I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. [Applause.]