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Date: 28/10/2004
Source: Western Cape Provincial Government
Title: M Fransman: Conference on Western Cape Community Development Workers


ADDRESS BY WESTERN CAPE MINISTER OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND HOUSING, MARIUS FRANSMAN, ON THE OCCASION OF THE CONFERENCE ON WESTERN CAPE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT WORKERS, Cape Town, Civic Centre, 28 October 2004

Programme Directors,
The Premier of the Western Cape, Mr Ebrahim Rasool,
Provincial Local Government HOD, Shanaaz Majiet,
Director General of the DPS&A, Prof Richard Levin,
Mayors and Deputies of Western Cape Councils,
Senior Managers of all spheres of government represented,
Community Development Practitioners,
Invited Leadership and Provincial CDW 'Task Team' Members,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I must join the Head of the Department of Local Government in welcoming you to this very important workshop in the process of putting in place the Community Development cadre in the province.

I need to also welcome the wisdom guidance especially during this phase of the process by the Premier. It is that kind of incisive input that helps to lessen the load for those of us who have to trawl and bring to fruition programmes of this nature.

The United Nations in September of 2000 declared on its millennium statement that, "We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from abject and dehumanising conditions of extreme poverty. We are committed to making the right to development a reality for everyone and to freeing the entire human race from want."

The same declaration makes explicit remarks to the vulnerable groups and the emerging democracies in our continent, all undertakings aimed at ensuring that every human being gets their fair share of resources and opportunities to development. In itself, this sounds good, almost revolutionary, given the world trends and active campaigns against this sort of tendencies or commitment even by sovereign states.

Addressing the Joint Houses of Parliament in what was termed 'The Millennium Debate', President Thabo Mbeki referring to the sought glory of the African continent he said, "Critical to the achievement of this objective is the inculcation in all our minds of the understanding that all of us? have a common objective to bring together our resources and various strengths into the pursuit of the common objective to achieve our own sustained socio-economic development".

In a direct statement prior to the announcement of the UN millennium statement, President Thabo Mbeki raised to the Body that, "The questions that these poor billions ask is - what are you doing, you in whom we have placed our trust, what are you doing to end the deliberate and savage violence against us that, everyday, sentences many of us to a degrading and unnecessary death! Those who stand at the gates are desperately hungry for food, for no fault of their own. They die from preventable diseases for no fault of their own".

It is these poor billions the world over, the millions of them found in our country, that our efforts and attempts are easily for the survival of humankind. The world has during the last century especially become quite small, easier to feel the ripples and rumbles taking place in other nation states.

We have learnt quite early in our democracy that, those impoverished millions found in our country are rightfully impatient and uncertain at times of whether their plight would ever be attended to and ended permanently. It is also glaring to us that, we might very easily miss an opportunity to deal with and pay due attention to the psyche of all in our society.

It was against this brief background that the President in his state of the nation address in 2003 announced that as a government we will work towards having the sort of multi skilled persons who will assist in making sure that government responds timely and precisely to those issues that people need.

It is demanded of us to act swiftly and innovatively, for, in any democratic state, the upholding of basic human rights constitutes a fundamental corner stone in the prosperity of such democracy.

In his closing remarks to that UN Millennium Summit, President Mbeki summed up the concerns or consequence of what could be perceived as complacency by the well-off and unaffected leadership, the civil service and humankind and said, "I, like the poor at our gates, ask the question - will we, at last, respond to this appeal! All of us, including the rich, will pay a terrible price if we do not, practically, answer - yes, we do!"

The Non Governmental Committee on Development which addressed the UN member states on the Summit echoed our President's remarks and urged, "What is required now is a globalisation of conscience on the part of those who benefit from this new system, above all on the part of the more powerful actors of international community, particularly in the industrialised world. If decisive action is not taken - within a precisely defined time - ? serious threats to international peace and security will result and may reach a state in which they cannot be contained by political means".

Any responsible government that places to high regard the issue of international solidarity, peace and stability is forced to do something to mitigate against these forces from within its borders.

As the South African government, we have done our level best in dealing with regional peace and stability, introduced measures and programmes in our country that seeks to end poverty.

Yet, it appears that one of the greatest challenges we face is that of ensuring that people do not feel alienated on matters of governance.

We must accept that we have not completed the process of creating a new society, memories of yesteryears, memories of struggle, the divided past and underdevelopment have not been erased.

Let us not forget that all of us in one way or another carry with us a series of bad habits from the apartheid history. We were all born in that society, the children of that environment.

Whilst we were able to destroy apartheid as a law, we have not been able to wipe out with the same sense of urgency those habits from our consciences.

What we require is that all of us in what ever we do, look upon our actions as a moral necessity. It is my view that in democratic state, the only way to learn dignity to administrative work is to liberate it from the bureaucratic style, its constraints and methods.

The CDW programme is but one of many programmes aimed at addressing that chasm.

The modus of getting this CDW programme to be practical has since the President's announcement been worked out and I am aware that other provinces were quicker to move on this instruction than ours has been able to.

In May of this year, the national Minister of Public Service and Administration, Hon Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi announced during one of her press briefings that already, nationally there were 495 learners enrolled on the CDW learnership programme.

Using the same figures and time frames, nationally, the CDW learnership programme should today have in excess of 1200 learners.

This is not taking into account the Western Cape figures which in terms of our plans will enlist at least 200 learners by February of next year.

Over the past few months, I have been privileged to have been part to numerous debates which sought to assess the issue of CDWs, and I must say we have managed to sanitise any misconceptions that might have attempted to cloud the noble intentions of this programme.

I can state with certainty that those who have been tasked to deal with this programme have done an excellent job in dealing with instead of avoiding those uncomfortable questions that have been surfacing.

If I could take you just a couple of steps back, the instructing comment on this matter from President Mbeki in February of 2003 said, "we are determined to ensure that government goes to the people so that we sharply improve the quality of the outcomes of public expenditures intended to raise the standards of living of our people". I may well add that it is the poorest among our people that we must pay a targeted attention to.

President Mbeki on the same address sharply raised the reason of why we must go the route of CDWs and said, "it is wrong that government should oblige people to come to government even in circumstances in which people do not know what kind of services the government offers and have no means to pay for the transport to reach government offices".

This programme also lends itself to necessary tensions/ potential tensions have surfacing between civil servants (as we know it at present), between CDWs and municipal management, potential tensions between Ward Councillors, communities and CDWs.

All these I want to describe as necessary tensions, ours is not to find a blue print? rather learn trough action.

A strategic question that confronts this programme is a move towards a single caring state and a new type of civil service. In the 10th year of our democracy, we must pose the questions:

* Were we able to teach the people, down to the humblest sections, the art of governance and administration of the state, not only through books, but through immediate practical application, everywhere in the experiences of the poorest of the poor?
* Put differently, is the old state apparatus filled to the core with routine, pen pushers, lack of decisive actions (decision making) left still intact?
* What is the possible danger of bureaucracy becoming a special layer, this indeed has over centuries been seen as a danger of universal tendency?
* Is there a danger that public and private sector workers are trying to think that what they are doing as a specialised and professional function, removed from the dynamics, intrigues, and social impact issues of our people?

This programme is based on a need and knowing the politics and the dynamics of our country and the world, we have a pool of people who despite not being paid have marched on to render what could be termed Samaritan support to others.

Prof Levin of DPS&SA would for instance be very much aware of the efforts aimed at bridging this gap which have been embarked upon in the past, these range from proclaiming the setting up of 'One Stop Service Centres', the installation of Government Information and Technology Officers (GITOs), the Batho Pele policy, and various other programmes which assumed the outreach approach such as the Imbizos.

Throughout all the exploration of these endeavours, the absence of thoroughly skilled persons who would sustain these programmes did not seem of primary concern.

When I say not of primary concern I am not meaning that it was not rated as important necessarily, rather, from my own point of view there seems to have existed an assumption which took for granted that these selfless multi skilled persons would probably be happy operating outside government.

Through dialogue in the recent months, at times by accident, it has become quite clear that be it that these people operate solo or are located in other structures outside government, there is a common objective, thus the need to work together.

It has become clear also that we must nurture and build our social capital. For, the right human resource reserves are worth more than your monetary ones, 'someone once said, with good people what can you not achieve'.

Paying tribute to a batch of community development workers, President Thabo Mbeki said whilst addressing them at the Award Ceremony for the Community Builder of the Year in 2000, "In a country where apartheid had sought to destroy our very humanity and reduce people to the status of being less human, what generations of community builders and freedom fighters have done is to assert the nobility of each and every human being".

During the same address, he continued to state that, "As we create a sense of common belonging, our community builders among us are driven by a sense not of exclusion but of embrace". These community workers are found in diverse forms.

The idea of learnership is in understanding that these people have differing capacities, that they, until them being appointed have been driven by interest and capability to those sectors they are familiar with or critical to the wellbeing of their communities.

The learnerships would seek to address that, and hone in them the kind of a generalist skill or capacity that would allow them to unlock the broad range of government services to the people.

Of critical importance to highlight, Programme Director, as I work myself to the purpose of this workshop is that it is incumbent upon all of us dealing with this programme, in this house and elsewhere in the country to bear in mind that we are seeking and building a means of bringing government services effectively to the people.

We must also be aware and guard against this cadre of people, themselves being turned inside out by the bureaucratic machine and the staying mentality of government or labelling them to be pursuing political party agendas. Che Guevara, once noted that, "As I have already said, in moments of great peril it is easy to muster a powerful response to moral incentives. Retaining their effect, however, requires the development of a consciousness in which there is a new scale of values. Society as a whole must be converted into a gigantic school".

These CDWs, for the communities they serve will be people of unquestionable repute, trusted and readily recognised because of their efforts and sterling achievements over the years often with meagre resources. But, we must also endeavour to find space in this programme to use these workers to inculcate their values particularly to the youth as Che advised.

We must find a way to turn this opportunity into something big, something that will change the complexion and workings of our society.

We must find time to think of the sustainability of the programme, not at the theoretical level, but when more when it is being rolled out, to candidly assess its effectiveness and sharpen our strategies.

Mayors represented here would recall both during my Policy Statement to the Provincial Legislature and when I met them with the Premier that the emphasis was on making sure that municipalities aligned themselves such that people found them easy to access.

We mentioned that the success of the policy strategies we pursue as provincial and national government would have to find practical expression at their level.

The theme that I took to the legislature for my Local Government Budget Vote was:
"Development Local Government: An Opportunity to Deepen Democracy and Enhance Service Delivery".

To my understanding this is what the programme we are meeting on is about, seeking to deepen democracy and enhance service delivery.

The President characterised these CDW cadres on his announcement as, "A public service echelon of multi skilled community development workers who will maintain direct contact with the people where these masses live".

That in my books is the deepening of government, making sure that tentacles reached so far deep to the most vulnerable in our society.

The incumbent in this room in the form of yourselves is expected therefore to assist in shaping up the CDW programme and its rollout process in the Western Cape.

This workshop will provide you with an opportunity to be brought to speed on the extent to which nationally the government has moved on the subject.

Experiences to be shared by those provinces who have undertaken this initiative would help sharpen your input as experts of the social and developmental dynamics of our province.

Admittedly, there is a whole range of people undertaking government funded and non-funded community development work in your respective municipal precincts, given that you cannot enrol all of them to the programme, you must within this workshop find ways and means in which each municipality could best benefit, encourage and direct those efforts.

So, there must be some sort of a forum that will enable you to feed and draw from your own experiences and the solutions that others may have found for problems.

In this workshop, you must equip yourselves to be the drivers of this programme, to popularise and advocate on its behalf, above all, to find other creative ways of supplementing the intention so that you can bring your municipality closer to the people. Find a way of assessing your own institutional arrangement in terms of their alignment in aiding the work of the CDW to be deployed there.

You must find candid ways, through which you will be able to take charge of the debates on this matter. I must say it will be a sorry state if, even one among you in councils and civil service, leave here to campaign against the programme an perpetuate confusion among people. It would also be a sad day if anyone of us sitting here is still experiencing some discomfort on the issue of CDW.

In closure Programme Director, I would like to impress upon the delegates here that all of us, the elected and the employed, have a great deal of duty in assisting the intentions of this programme.

This attempt of bringing government closer to the people and the efforts of many in our societal fold who each day tirelessly work to bring relief to the dehumanising living standards of the poor must propel us to unite our efforts in doing something about the mindset of others for whom such situations might not strike a chord.

The South African state at all levels owes a lot to those who no longer have the energy to go and solicit government support. Those that poverty has condemned into a state where they seem to be waiting for the inevitable, that one day, they might not wake up. Each night when they go to sleep with hunger pangs, the next day has only one purpose, to find food, to survive, to have some energy.

Former President, Mr Nelson Mandela also made a clarion call to all South African including attendees of the 1999 Community Builder of the Year Award Ceremonies to the effect that, "We need a concerted effort by all South Africans working together: rich and poor; workers and employers; government, business and community organisations, in a national crusade to speed up delivery of services; to create jobs and end poverty; to combat crime and corruption and to remove the effects of past discrimination".

For us to be the kind of government with the resources at our disposal and still have scores of street children and a significant number of our population hungry, another significant number still illiterate, graduates who have become redundant and themselves functionally illiterate from not doing a thing since they graduated resonates negative growth. It is this kind of scenario as sketched above that as municipalities we must not be content with only this initiative.

We must creatively find ways within the resources we have to do more, realign ourselves with the intentions of this programme, to render excellent and timely service to our people.

Many of them are on the brink of losing hope, many among them were at the forefront of fighting for these freedoms we enjoy, yet we have forgotten about them, or they seem to have become a burden, the ones to be avoided, the ones to be stifled and condemned further to a state of despair.

This kind of mentality must stop. To a great deal, it is worse than the pernicious state of affairs we lived under, not that things were better then, but its aggravated because we are failed by our own. The German Philosopher Frederick Engel once noted that, "The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest? the dissolution of mankind into nomads, of which each one has a separate principle, the world of atoms, is here carried out to its utmost extreme".

Such a state of indifference cannot be allowed to perpetuate. This CDW programme provides us with an opportunity to do what Che Guevara as I quoted earlier suggested, give impetus to a social mindset change revolution.

Here is a kind of worker or person who is thrust to deal with this enormous challenge, if we sit back and say let's see them try on their own to overcome this challenge, then we might as well not start!

I am making this hearty plea to you because I am convinced we can and must do better.

My recent visit to Cuba over the past couple of years has revealed that we too can, drawing from the strong fundamentals of our liberation struggle, climb out of the rut of indifference and rise up to take the challenge of working towards our common goal, that of poverty eradication.

All candid persons among us in this room know that challenges of this nature are bigger than the capability of an individual, we therefore must avail ourselves to preach and effect the underlying intention of getting South Africa to be a nation working together, to implore among our people that they take charge of their destiny, to help this process and effect a turning point in the course of our struggle to achieve a better life for all.

The Cuban model of doing things has in it many a lessons that we can adapt to address our foremost challenges in South Africa. The intricacies of downloading such a paradigm to the kind of state we have require a fertile ground, a state of mind that is caring for the good of all, not the kind of anarchism guised as robust engagement by some opposition parties in our country.

We indeed share similar basic values with the Cuban society, viz. social justice, equality and freedom.

The three fundamentals constitute the essence of programmes of the Cuban government and dates to the beginning of the Revolution. In our own land, COSATU for instance uses the slogan that "an injury to one is an injury to all"? the Cuban poet Jose Marti penned in his diary a phrase which preludes that of COSATU which read, "Men has no freedom to watch impassively the slavery and dishonour of fellow men, nor their struggles for freedom and honour".

The common denominator for all CDWs is clarity on the social, cultural, political and the economic environment. It would require a great deal of capacity of sacrifice and analysis which would enable them to make meaningful contribution on all levels with theory, practice and action.

They will be selected solely by application of the principle that the best would come to the fore, and the best should be given the opportunity for development, they will set themselves real concrete tasks and will receive new experience in learning from the best school of learning? our people.

The major concerns in this phase are the creation of a people centred society. The type of person that we need would essentially be human, someone who shares the pain felt by the poor in our midst, who would rejoice on the new flag of hope, prosperity, democracy and freedom that is raised elsewhere in the world.

It therefore would baffle me that some among us would only regard themselves as conveyer belts or mere conduits of these good news and intentions only, to be the managers of these special cadres and not themselves activist and agents for change.

All of us must roll up our sleeves and be ready to donate time to do community service, for that would be the measure of the maturity of our own selves.

Something practical, not to reserve ourselves for the rare privilege of debate on these matters of national and global importance, but to also go to the ground and actively participate in bringing about the fruits these programmes must bear.

I am looking forward to take part in some of the commission discussions in this workshop and cannot wait for the practical suggestions that would be the outcome of the vigorous and robust interactions the atmosphere in this room seems to be promising.

I thank you!

Issued by: Department of Local Government and Housing, Western Cape Provincial Government
28 October 2004
Source: Western Cape Provincial Government (http://www.capegateway.gov.za)

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