Date: 20/08/2009

Source: Congress of the People

Title: Cope: Botha: Address by the Cope MP in the Parliamentary debate on local government

Honourable Speaker , It is the State's responsibility to ensure that the citizens of this country receive quality services. When the executive promises to deliver services to the citizenry it has to first ensure that it has both the capacity and the resources to fulfill its constitutional mandate. The ruling party cannot justify its failures by blaming it on the third force or even worse on the previous administration. An administration they were part of.

It is public knowledge that approximately ninety percent of municipal water treatment facilities which treat bulk water supplies from dams and rivers needs replacement. Sewerage systems in Gauteng are said to be operating at 102 percent over their capacity - a situation that is untenable and a time bomb that if not attended to will collapse ablution in that busy city region.

In places such as Mthatha, although the water and sewerage systems are within the city, the e council has no control over the provision of these services. The sanitation services are rendered by the district authority of the OR Tambo District Municipality while the King Sabata municipality oversee power and roads. This unwieldy situation was brought about by the by the ANC controlled OR Tambo supported by the provincial government in 2003. It was not motivated by any desire to ensure efficiency of service delivery but was driven by the political desire to punish the UDM controlled municipality. This situation has unsurprisingly therefore - resulted in the collapse of services in the town with the City bursting at the seams as there is no planning that has been put in place for the ever growing population that has now more than doubled from 400 000 to more that a million people. This conduct of placing party politics above the interests of citizens is at the heart of the crisis at local government. This same behavior results in the appointment of incompetent ANC deployees to run municipalities and the appointment of dubious ANC connected contractors to deliver services.

Honourable speaker, while COPE wishes to condemn the violent destruction of property by the protesters we are equally convinced that this citizen have legitimate complaints and demands. They have been let down by successive ANC governments at local level. They are equally shocked that government's first reaction has not been to listen but to condemn and to duck responsibility by blaming the so called previous administration.

We are of the view that the ruling party has created unrealistic expectations which are not matched with deliverables. Let us remind you honourable members that it was the ANC conference in Stellenboasch that resolved to address the challenges of cross border municipalities. This was resisted by its allies the SACP who went on to mobilize the community of Khutsong until this decision was reversed. Has government learnt anything from that fiasco? It seems not if you look at the response to these genuine problems. Ironically its is this lack of a backbone that gives communities an impression that if you are unruly you will get your way and you are in fact rewarded by government. An example of this shocking value system is that of Jomo Mogale a teacher who rendered the schooling system ungovernable in that community leading to his dismissal. Today he is reinstated and branded a good teacher by the current populist administration.

The government will not solve these problems by continuing to transfer functions to municipalities without the commensurate budgets. The revenue bases of the municipalities are shrinking and their populations are growing. This situation coupled with non payment for services has reached crisis proportion and requires long terms solution.

COPE calls for a national indaba where all sectors of civil society will come together to deliberate on the solutions to this crisis so that government can stop using stop gap measurers to solve what is an endemic problem requiring joint problem solving by the whole nation.

We believe that three critical things must be addressed:

1) An audit of all municipal management must be done to root out managers who are not qualified to run municipalities. While at this hundreds of suspended officials need to be dealt with swiftly so that they cease to be a burden to the fiscus. Stories of managers who are paid millions to stay at home or managers who are in posts for which they are not qualifies are simply too many.

2) Multimillion rand projects that have been awarded to incompetent companies owned by civil servants need to be reviewed and stopped in order for the resourced to be redirected to service delivery. This action need not wait for any summit but at the summit a report on how this is progressing must be given.

3) Government must out in place an early warning system to avoid unnecessary take over of functions belonging to local government as a crisis management solution that ends up undermining the independence of the local government sphere especially in the context where the ANC is set to lose many municipalities at the 2011 polls. Talk of reducing local government powers cannot be taken lightly any more. The summit proposed must also examine this legislation and its real intentions to ensure that the constitution on will not once again be undermined by an ANC that is afraid to lose power.

Thank you Honourable speaker