Date: 12/12/2006
Source: Department of Provincial and Local Government
Title: Mufamadi: Vuna Awards Ceremony
Remarks by Minister F S Mufamadi on the occasion of the third annual Vuna Awards Ceremony
Programme Director, Ms Nikiwe Bikitsha
Our host acting Mayor of Johannesburg, Councillor Nkele Ntingane
Honourable Minister of Arts and Culture, Dr Pallo Jordan
Deputy Minister Nomatyala Hangana
Honourable Premiers of Mpumalanga, Mr Thabang Makwetla, and Sello Moloto of Limpopo
MECs from our nine provinces
Mayors and Councillors from all our country's municipalities
Members of Parliament and Members of Provincial Legislatures
Traditional Leaders of our people here present
Representatives of our Partner-Organisations the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the National Productivity Institute and the South African Local Government Association
Directors-General and other senior officials from our three spheres of government
Managers and other officials from over three spheres of government
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Allow me to join the Acting mayor in welcoming you to the city of Johannesburg. I do so without seeking to be party to the submission of the city's credentials to the Vuna Awards Adjudication panel.
On behalf of the Ministry and the Department of Provincial and Local Government (dplg), as well as the co-sponsors of the Vuna Awards, the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), the National Productivity Institute (NPI) and South African Local Government Association (SALGA), I wish to acknowledge this overwhelming outpouring of solidarity which is manifested by the attendance of so many esteemed guests who come from far and near. You have come to celebrate with us, on an evening that belongs to the municipalities who felt confident enough to throw their names into the hat.
When we introduced a new system of local government six years and seven days ago, we did so in order to reaffirm our commitment to give the assault on poverty and underdevelopment, pride of place in public policy. To that end, we reduced the number of municipal entities from the 1 200 that were busy going nowhere, to the 283 municipal jurisdictions which promise to become spaces of opportunity for all our people.
What we said on the second anniversary of the Vuna Awards, remains as true today as it was then: municipalities are variable in their capacity to wrestle with challenges. Some of our municipalities continue to struggle under the weight of challenges whilst others are indeed distinguishing themselves as pall-bearers of the national effort to put our development trajectory on firm anchorages. We celebrate these municipalities because their achievements so far, confirm the reliability of the accelerated progress which our people expect from government.
We are here this evening, to celebrate local government practitioners ? public representatives and administrative cadres alike, who are fighting deprivation with passion and professionalism, putting human welfare at the centre of all the work that they do. These are icons of excellent performance whose laudable deeds are worthy of emulation by all of us.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to congratulate all those who participated in the provincial Vuna Awards during the month of November. We commend them for sharing with us their achievements, thereby making it possible, in the present, for all of us to peer into a future of bright possibilities.
The last Vuna Awards contest took place when our special programme of support for local government, "Project Consolidate," was little over a month old. We introduced Project Consolidate for the express purpose of giving municipalities access to a much larger pool of expertise in various functional areas of governance. Indeed, the project gave us the platform to harness the civil sphere, in its various dimensions, to the national task of making our country, a better place to live and do business in.
If today the prospect of inclusive development is looking brighter than ever before, it is thanks to the generosity of many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that gave so much of what they have. They committed their knowledge base to the empowerment of those of our people who lived through the devastating effects of the exclusionary policies of the past.
We have mobilised and physically deployed experts to 61% of the Project Consolidate municipalities. The deployees possess a combination of skills which give them the possibility to add value in the following functional areas:
* service delivery and infrastructure development
* local economic development
* municipal financial viability
* municipal transformation and institutional development
* good corporate governance. We have also been able to get positive responses from at least two private sector companies who have come to understand that well managed local jurisdictions are indispensable to their own bottom-lines. These are providing project management training to local government officials and the impact of their work is beginning to be felt. In all, our deployment per province ranges from 36% in KwaZulu-Natal to 93% in Mpumalanga. The distributional pattern of deployment per focus area is 60% technical, 38% in financial management and 0,7% in local economic development planning.
Comparative data gleaned through our monitoring and evaluation systems shows that a significant number of our municipalities have posted impressive rates of performance. For instance, out of a total of 179 water services authorities at local government level, 165 are providing to some, nine are providing to all and five are not providing free basic water at all. With respect to those households that are indigent, 74% of the total national indigent baseline is receiving free basic water. In addition, R6,75 billion has been committed to municipalities in the 2006/07 financial year, benefiting 238 municipalities. Some of the projects initiated in terms of this programme entail public-works packages that provide additional engines for growth.
Needless to say, the programmes are giving impetus to (dplg) advocacy function which stresses both the need to support local government and to ensure that our three spheres of government function as a seamless system of delivery. In this regard, I wish to record our profound appreciation for the responsiveness displayed by some sister-departments. Already, at least two sister-departments have formulated sector master plans which constitute frameworks for inter-sphere co-ordination.
Many more national and provincial departments have taken part in the Integrated Development Plans (IDP) engagement process in 2005 as well as in 2006. Thus, we see in practice, developmental concerns at municipal level animating operational changes, which take the conduct of intergovernmental relations to a qualitatively new level.
Madam Programme Director, ladies and gentlemen, I am convinced that on current trends, we are bucking the continental trend: as a country we are on course to meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving levels of poverty by 2014. Of course, this long-term, high-minded goal begins with such demonstrable steps as we have already undertaken in our national context.
However, as a result of our having succeeded to overcome some of the old problems, new ones have sprung into life. For instance, in the nodal municipalities we have significantly increased the number of people who are beneficiaries of our social security system. Our focus on poverty alleviation, legitimate though it is, has tended to precede from presumptions that under-call the potential of these rural and urban development nodes to work their way into the productive domain.
Working with the Business Trust, we are completing a process of drawing up economic profiles for the 13 rural development nodes and the 8 urban renewal nodes. The profiles will form the basis of Action Plans to guide the work of all spheres of government (including state-owned enterprises), in these geographic spaces. It has become urgently necessary for us to find innovative ways of moving nodal communities from reliance on welfare hand-outs to active involvement in productive economic activity. It means that our package of support measures for nodal municipalities will prioritise assistance in entrepreneurship mentoring, financial management and economic development planning.
In terms of our focus going forward, all this means that the post-Project Consolidate scenario cannot be characterised by the scaling-back of the baseline of support for our local government. We shall have to get better organised, equip ourselves with the institutional and governance instruments necessary for improving the quality of support to local government. At the same time, municipalities must improve their own capacity for autonomous action. They need to prepare for the day when they may have to be on their own!
Ladies and gentlemen, all of you who graced this occasion deserve my best wishes for a restful festive season. Please, take a well-deserved rest so that next year, you can come back fresh enough to get down to the business of forging a better future for our country and our people.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Provincial and Local Government
12 December 2006
Source: Department of Provincial and Local Government
Title: Mufamadi: Vuna Awards Ceremony
Remarks by Minister F S Mufamadi on the occasion of the third annual Vuna Awards Ceremony
Programme Director, Ms Nikiwe Bikitsha
Our host acting Mayor of Johannesburg, Councillor Nkele Ntingane
Honourable Minister of Arts and Culture, Dr Pallo Jordan
Deputy Minister Nomatyala Hangana
Honourable Premiers of Mpumalanga, Mr Thabang Makwetla, and Sello Moloto of Limpopo
MECs from our nine provinces
Mayors and Councillors from all our country's municipalities
Members of Parliament and Members of Provincial Legislatures
Traditional Leaders of our people here present
Representatives of our Partner-Organisations the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the National Productivity Institute and the South African Local Government Association
Directors-General and other senior officials from our three spheres of government
Managers and other officials from over three spheres of government
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Allow me to join the Acting mayor in welcoming you to the city of Johannesburg. I do so without seeking to be party to the submission of the city's credentials to the Vuna Awards Adjudication panel.
On behalf of the Ministry and the Department of Provincial and Local Government (dplg), as well as the co-sponsors of the Vuna Awards, the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), the National Productivity Institute (NPI) and South African Local Government Association (SALGA), I wish to acknowledge this overwhelming outpouring of solidarity which is manifested by the attendance of so many esteemed guests who come from far and near. You have come to celebrate with us, on an evening that belongs to the municipalities who felt confident enough to throw their names into the hat.
When we introduced a new system of local government six years and seven days ago, we did so in order to reaffirm our commitment to give the assault on poverty and underdevelopment, pride of place in public policy. To that end, we reduced the number of municipal entities from the 1 200 that were busy going nowhere, to the 283 municipal jurisdictions which promise to become spaces of opportunity for all our people.
What we said on the second anniversary of the Vuna Awards, remains as true today as it was then: municipalities are variable in their capacity to wrestle with challenges. Some of our municipalities continue to struggle under the weight of challenges whilst others are indeed distinguishing themselves as pall-bearers of the national effort to put our development trajectory on firm anchorages. We celebrate these municipalities because their achievements so far, confirm the reliability of the accelerated progress which our people expect from government.
We are here this evening, to celebrate local government practitioners ? public representatives and administrative cadres alike, who are fighting deprivation with passion and professionalism, putting human welfare at the centre of all the work that they do. These are icons of excellent performance whose laudable deeds are worthy of emulation by all of us.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to congratulate all those who participated in the provincial Vuna Awards during the month of November. We commend them for sharing with us their achievements, thereby making it possible, in the present, for all of us to peer into a future of bright possibilities.
The last Vuna Awards contest took place when our special programme of support for local government, "Project Consolidate," was little over a month old. We introduced Project Consolidate for the express purpose of giving municipalities access to a much larger pool of expertise in various functional areas of governance. Indeed, the project gave us the platform to harness the civil sphere, in its various dimensions, to the national task of making our country, a better place to live and do business in.
If today the prospect of inclusive development is looking brighter than ever before, it is thanks to the generosity of many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that gave so much of what they have. They committed their knowledge base to the empowerment of those of our people who lived through the devastating effects of the exclusionary policies of the past.
We have mobilised and physically deployed experts to 61% of the Project Consolidate municipalities. The deployees possess a combination of skills which give them the possibility to add value in the following functional areas:
* service delivery and infrastructure development
* local economic development
* municipal financial viability
* municipal transformation and institutional development
* good corporate governance. We have also been able to get positive responses from at least two private sector companies who have come to understand that well managed local jurisdictions are indispensable to their own bottom-lines. These are providing project management training to local government officials and the impact of their work is beginning to be felt. In all, our deployment per province ranges from 36% in KwaZulu-Natal to 93% in Mpumalanga. The distributional pattern of deployment per focus area is 60% technical, 38% in financial management and 0,7% in local economic development planning.
Comparative data gleaned through our monitoring and evaluation systems shows that a significant number of our municipalities have posted impressive rates of performance. For instance, out of a total of 179 water services authorities at local government level, 165 are providing to some, nine are providing to all and five are not providing free basic water at all. With respect to those households that are indigent, 74% of the total national indigent baseline is receiving free basic water. In addition, R6,75 billion has been committed to municipalities in the 2006/07 financial year, benefiting 238 municipalities. Some of the projects initiated in terms of this programme entail public-works packages that provide additional engines for growth.
Needless to say, the programmes are giving impetus to (dplg) advocacy function which stresses both the need to support local government and to ensure that our three spheres of government function as a seamless system of delivery. In this regard, I wish to record our profound appreciation for the responsiveness displayed by some sister-departments. Already, at least two sister-departments have formulated sector master plans which constitute frameworks for inter-sphere co-ordination.
Many more national and provincial departments have taken part in the Integrated Development Plans (IDP) engagement process in 2005 as well as in 2006. Thus, we see in practice, developmental concerns at municipal level animating operational changes, which take the conduct of intergovernmental relations to a qualitatively new level.
Madam Programme Director, ladies and gentlemen, I am convinced that on current trends, we are bucking the continental trend: as a country we are on course to meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving levels of poverty by 2014. Of course, this long-term, high-minded goal begins with such demonstrable steps as we have already undertaken in our national context.
However, as a result of our having succeeded to overcome some of the old problems, new ones have sprung into life. For instance, in the nodal municipalities we have significantly increased the number of people who are beneficiaries of our social security system. Our focus on poverty alleviation, legitimate though it is, has tended to precede from presumptions that under-call the potential of these rural and urban development nodes to work their way into the productive domain.
Working with the Business Trust, we are completing a process of drawing up economic profiles for the 13 rural development nodes and the 8 urban renewal nodes. The profiles will form the basis of Action Plans to guide the work of all spheres of government (including state-owned enterprises), in these geographic spaces. It has become urgently necessary for us to find innovative ways of moving nodal communities from reliance on welfare hand-outs to active involvement in productive economic activity. It means that our package of support measures for nodal municipalities will prioritise assistance in entrepreneurship mentoring, financial management and economic development planning.
In terms of our focus going forward, all this means that the post-Project Consolidate scenario cannot be characterised by the scaling-back of the baseline of support for our local government. We shall have to get better organised, equip ourselves with the institutional and governance instruments necessary for improving the quality of support to local government. At the same time, municipalities must improve their own capacity for autonomous action. They need to prepare for the day when they may have to be on their own!
Ladies and gentlemen, all of you who graced this occasion deserve my best wishes for a restful festive season. Please, take a well-deserved rest so that next year, you can come back fresh enough to get down to the business of forging a better future for our country and our people.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Provincial and Local Government
12 December 2006
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