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Date : 11/04/2003
Source: Mpumalanga Provincial Government
Title: Mahlangu: Opening of House of Traditional Leaders


ADDRESS BY NJ MAHLANGU, PRIMER OF MPUMALANGA, AT THE OPENING OF THE HOUSE OF TRADITIONAL LEADERS, 11 April 2003

Honourable Chairperson of the House of Traditional leaders Kgoshi Mashile
Your Majesties, the Kings of our people;
Honourable Amakhosi of our province
Honourable Members of the House of Traditional leaders
Honourable Amakhosi visiting our province today
Honourable members of the Legislature
Honourable MECs
Honourable Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am humbled to stand before you in this august House, to talk about those matters that are common to all of us.

We are gathered here today to mark yet another step, which deepens our democracy for which we jointly fought.

As we do so let us remember our great heroes and heroines who fought many battles over the hills and mountains, valleys and plains of this province in order to bring freedom and liberation to our people.

We think of Kings Mswati, Sekhukhune, Nyabela, Silamba, and many others.

The late Comrade OR Tambo, Comrades Lillian Ngoyi, Chris Hani, Govan Mbeki, Fawcett Mathebe, Gert Sibande and many of our fallen heroes need to be remembered at occasions such as this.

Let us remember the profound contributions they made to the struggle for democracy and equality in South Africa.

It is due to the unselfish commitment of such freedom fighters that we now have a Constitution that protects all South Africans irrespective of colour, creed, religion or origin.

The following provisions of our South African Constitution regarding the Traditional Leadership need to be noted.

For the first time in this country traditional leaders are afforded the opportunity to be part of governance of a democratic South Africa since the birth of democracy in 1994.

Section 211 of the Constitution, read with the Municipal Structures Act No 117 0f 1998 affords the opportunity to traditional leaders either to be part of or to nominate a representative to the Local Government in which they reside.

I am not saying that this is enough, but a step in the right direction has been taken.

At provincial level we have Houses of traditional leaders such as the one we have in Mpumalanga where the provincial government can interact with traditional leaders in a collective manner.

In this province I believe we have utilised these provisions of our Constitution to the fullest.

All successions to the throne of traditional leadership and any disputes about chieftainship are being referred, by our provincial government, to the House of Traditional leaders for investigation and recommendation before the provincial government can pronounce on such matters in terms of any legislation.

The working relationship between government and traditional leaders in this province has reached the greatest heights.

We now have offices of the traditional leaders performing important services to the community. We can mention applications for old age pensions, disability grants, child support grants, identity documents, birth and deaths certificates.

These applications are handled in the traditional authorities' offices by our well-trained public servants deployed there in terms of our arrangement with our traditional leaders.

We have gone a long way in equipping these offices of traditional leaders in order to enable them to render quality services closer to our people.

For example people residing hundreds of kilometres from our district offices no longer have to travel long distances in order to get their old-age pensions, social grants and other services, because these services are now at their doorstep in our traditional leaders offices.

We also plan to install computers and improve furniture in our traditional authority offices during this financial year.

To this end we have set aside R1 million. We believe this expenditure will help our traditional authorities' offices to render the quality service to our people.

We have also provided vehicles to this House and traditional authorities in our province to make sure that we comply and give full meaning to the President's call in his JANUARY 8 STATEMENT 2003 in which he commanded all of us to: "IMPROVE SERVICE DELIVERY, SOCIAL, GRANTS MUST REACH THE PEOPLE."

The publication of the White Paper on Traditional Government has given us the opportunity to finalise the protracted discussions about the role and place of the institution of traditional leadership in our democracy.

We are eagerly awaiting the finalisation of this matter by our national parliament. Thereafter, we will follow suit with our provincial legislation once we have national framework legislation on these matters.

As both provincial and national governments, we will proceed from the position that we respect and recognise that the traditional government has a role to play in the advancement of the interests of our people within the context of a democratic setting.

But while waiting for this framework legislation, we have already taken giant steps in improving the lives of our people including that of traditional leaders.

My leaders let me from the outset thank you for having given your full support in working towards the realisation of the dream of a better life.

Let me thank you for the unwavering support you have given to the Mpumalanga Provincial Government.

Allow me also to salute all the traditional leaders in our province for the deep concern they have for the development of our people and communities.

I believe it was through your unwavering support to government and your unstinting commitment to your people that you were able to achieve so much is such a short period.

It shows that you care and want to develop your people.

However, many tasks still remain ahead.

Foremost amongst our tasks is to mobilise the people for reconstruction and development so as to push back the frontiers of poverty and under-development.

Only through the construction of a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous country can we create a better life for all our people.

Our task is also to build on the progress we have made in the past nine years and accelerate our movement towards the goals for which so many of our people sacrificed.

These tasks, also encompass such areas as expanded service provision; improvements in the efficiency of the public service and increased social and economic investment.

Needless to say, these must be located within the broad perspective of poverty eradication.

As we open this august House today, let us keep in mind that there are many tasks that we have to do in order to lead our people to that promise of a better life.

Because we are proud descendants of brave warriors who fought colonialists in defence of their motherland, we cannot renege on the promise of building a truly democratic, non-racial, non-sexists and prosperous South Africa.

My leaders, our ongoing struggle for democracy, human rights and an end to poverty, is part of a global struggle: the struggle of all humanity to create a world in which dignity and peace reign supreme.

That is the only way in which we can fulfil the promise of a better life for all our people.

As leaders, your majesties should protect the rights of your subjects.

As government, we have no doubt that our policies are sound and that they remain a correct response to the practical reality we inherited.

That is why we have been able to bring much needed services closer to our people - all our people, black and white.

As government we are hard at work identifying and retaining, within the public service, the right people to drive the engine of service delivery.

Also high on our agenda, is our determination to attract a new cadre-ship of community development workers, train them properly, and supervise them effectively - and pay them well.

The letter and spirit of Batho Pele must truly inspire these development workers!

Among other things, these workers will help to increase the effectiveness of our system of local government, strengthening its awareness and capacity to respond to the needs of the people at the local level.

After all, it is at local government level that our people are looking to, for effective and efficient service delivery.

And it is in that sphere of government that you, as leaders, interact on a daily basis with councillors.

I want to call for cooperation within our traditional authorities and our elected councillors.

You must consider our elected councillors as your children who have committed themselves to render service to our people.

Where there are misunderstandings between our elected councillors and certain traditional leaders or traditional councillors, I urge that we sit down and discuss the problems.

I want to recommend that there should, at least, be a meeting between elected councillors and traditional authority councillors in every locality, once every quarter.

This meeting should be used to brief one another about the implementation of developmental projects and carrying one another on board about any burning issues, which might have developed since the previous meetings.

In that way tensions between elected councillors and our traditional leaders will be managed at an early stage.

Let us remember that traditional leadership is indigenous to South Africa and to the continent of Africa. Its existence predates the colonial conquests and the apartheid era.

I am glad to announce that a number of our traditional leaders have realised that our function is developmental in nature and they are playing an important role in the development of their communities and of the province.

My leaders, once again thank you for your active participation in the law-making process and in our crime fighting campaign.

In the area of crime prevention, the relationship of AmaKhosi and SAPS in the AmaKhosi-SAPS bilateral is underway.

Once the project is up and running, which we believe will be before the end of this financial year, Amakhosi will play a bigger role in actively eradicating criminal elements within the communities.

I urge both SAPS and the House of Traditional Leaders to speed up the process. I know that recruitment of reservists has started and some are undergoing training.

This is one indicator that this government works together with AmaKhosi. Commissioner Nkabinde and his team will lead the process and ensure that it comes to its finality.

Chairperson, in Mpumalanga we are trailblazers. It is here where we started the Mayor-AmaKhosi cluster, which the White Paper is embracing.

We have been crafting a way forward on many occasions and I am urging that the three District Mayors plus our Sekhukhuni district Mayor and all other mayors give respect to our Traditional Leaders by constantly consulting with them on issues of governance and development.

I am pleased to see a number of traditional leaders engaged in partnerships with the private sector in providing jobs and development in their communities.

Mpumalanga is a Tourist destination and therefore there are many areas of tourist attraction in areas of AmaKhosi. The only thing is that AmaKhosi should engage with the Tourism Authority and get assistance.

The challenge is with the House of Traditional Leaders to start the process of engaging the MTA as part of the poverty alleviation strategy.

We are aware, as government that there is a lack of capacity in our Traditional Leaders as there is with local government.

We are therefore planning to empower Traditional Leaders and our councillors in order to be able to interrogate issues and come out with the best solutions.

We are aware that the House of Traditional Leaders has undergone training on Human Rights and Conflict Resolution.

It is regrettable that some Traditional Leaders, outside this Province, are trying to score cheap political points by alleging that we are using the purchase of vehicles to buy over traditional leaders.

I must help those traditional leaders from outside our province who comment on these matters purely from a point of ignorance.

If they were informed about the true perspective on the matter of purchasing of vehicles for our traditional authorities, staffing their offices and devolving certain government functions to our traditional authorities, they would not be making the uninformed noises they are making.

Chairperson, I must put the correct perspective.

The decision to improve the offices of our traditional authorities, which we have started in 2001, emanates from the Mpumalanga Traditional Leaders themselves. They made that request in 1999.

When I took office of Premiership of this province in June 1999, I held a meeting with all traditional leaders in this province.

Obviously the people who are commenting from outside were not there.

The traditional leaders of this province raised the following concerns and requested me to give them serious attention. The concerns were:

* There was under funding of tribal governments of this province. Traditional authorities were each receiving R10 000 per annum. And this was regarded as totally inadequate for our traditional government in the province to run their affairs
* There was also the lack of efficient and sufficient staff in the traditional authorities offices
* And you had the unavailability of important essential services to the community around the traditional offices
* And the lack of transport for the traditional government of the province.

Since the year 2001, the Mpumalanga government embarked on a process of responding to these demands from our hereditary leaders.

The first step we took around 2001/ 2002, is that we increased the government grant to the traditional authorities from R10 000 per annum per traditional authority to R20 000 per annum per traditional authority.

It is interesting that the same individual who today makes such spurious allegations is the same one who complained that R20 000 does not even amount to the salary of the Premier.

Of course we ignored such remarks from a person who acted like an unguided missile. We continued doing our work.

Since 1999 June to the end of 2002, we have been negotiating with the Mpumalanga traditional leaders to find ways and means of addressing their remaining concerns.

And I am happy that we have eventually agreed that we can deploy 54 officials who were supernumeraries in our government since 1994, to the traditional offices in our province.

We did not need any permission from somebody who is now busy making uninformed comments about our operation with our traditional leaders in our province and unnecessarily putting politics where it doesn't belong.

We agreed that certain services from government should be devolved to the traditional authority offices where our redeployed trained public servants will be performing.

We have also agreed to capacitate the office of the traditional authorities by supplying transport.

I do not know whether to pay attention to this person who decided to comment ignorantly about what we do for our traditional authorities in this province, while he is putting politics into ordinary administrative operation of the Mpumalanaga ANC-led government.

If somebody makes a demand to government, it is our policy in the ANC-led government to give attention to any reasonable demand, which can be complied with within our means and current laws.

We will ignore such people who don't want to see our traditional authorities catered for because such people are not yet cared for in their own areas.

Such statements will not distract us: Statements that are made from an uninformed position.

People must try and ascertain actual facts before making any comments.

On our part we will continue to deliver basic services to our people using the most affordable mechanism. If any person is against that, it only proves the short-sightedness of that individual.

These vehicles are not for Inkosi but for the Tribal Authority to be able to deliver the basic services to the people.

Such opportunistic statements should not confuse AmaKhosi.

Instead, Amakhosi should develop an interest in the agenda pushed by the person who made such allegations.

One of the fundamental tasks of AmaKhosi is to build unity amongst communities and amongst themselves as leaders.

I therefore request the House of Traditional Leaders to go out there and build unity amongst sectors of communities and governance.

AmaKhosi are known to be peace-loving and always pushing the ideal of peace and a conflict-free society.

I put forward a challenge to the House of Traditional Leaders to unite, develop and maintain peace amongst AmaKhosi and amongst communities.

Chairperson, it is now my pleasure to declare open this sitting of the Mpumalanga House of Traditional Leaders.

I thank you.

Issued by Mpumalanga Provincial Government
11 April 2003

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