Date: 30/11/2006
Source: Northern Cape Provincial Government
Title: Peters: Vuna Awards
Keynote address by Mrs Dipuo Peters, Premier of the Northern Cape, on the occasion of the annual Vuna Awards, Carnarvon
Programme Director,
MEC of Local Government and Housing, Mr Boeboe Van Wyk,
Mayors and councillors,
Senior management,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen:
We are gathered here today to acknowledge and celebrate the significant contribution made by all of us towards the national effort of achieving a better life for all our people. We are here to recognise the Northern Cape municipalities that have notably strived for service delivery excellence, but to also implore those who fell short in qualifying to continue trying their level best.
The second democratic elections which were held early this year showed an increased voter turnout of 48,4 from the previous local government elections. This indicates the willingness of our people to play a critical role in the affairs of local government.
Such a positive indication gives all of us in government an impetus to accelerate our efforts towards ensuring more effective service delivery having the full support of the people we serve.
Informed by the benchmarks we set for our municipalities over the next five years, three overarching strategic priorities for local government will be implemented during that period. These priorities constitute a combination of mainstreaming our practical hands-on support to all municipalities.
Strengthening and repositioning our structural and governance arrangements with regard to how we interact with local government and refining the local government policy environment and giving more attention to enforcement of the law.
Mainstreaming hands-on support to local government must mean undertaking specific tasks and actions by both national and provincial government, State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and other key stakeholder in a manner that is reflected in the core business and organisational processes of these institutions.
Part of this is that mainstreaming incorporates a vision of what must be achieved by local government in 2011. In this regard we need to ensure that South Africa should have a viable system of local government focused on service delivery and development amongst others.
We must be on course through local government towards meeting the 2014 targets. The most important action that we have undertaken include specific high level priority actions which have been identified to give effect to mainstreaming hands-on support to local government.
We as the provincial government departments must reflect concrete support actions to municipalities in the strategic and business plans and streamline support to local government. Provincial government need also to priorities their local government support by including key tasks in the Provincial Growth and Development Strategy (PGDS) and continue together with national departments co-ordinate, facilitate, direct and monitor the priority hands on support of government to local government.
The South African Local Government Association (SALGA) in this regard has a very crucial role to play in strengthening and supporting municipal political leadership. It is imperative that all this support is informed by the concrete actions identified in the revised Integrated Development Planning (IDP).
Building the technical capacity and capabilities of municipalities through the mobilisation and deployment of appropriate technical expertise will be short term to medium term. As we seek to integrate and co-ordinate our work better, we must identify the roles that will be played by each one of us at national and provincial government in order to assist our municipalities.
Thus our key mission should be to drive the process of co-ordinating municipal service delivery and ensuring collaboration so that all players, national and provincial departments, parastatals and municipalities make the most impact within the municipal space.
Our challenge as government now is to achieve co-operative government by working together to co-ordinate infrastructure provision and service delivery so that in each municipal area, everyone knows who is doing what and what the timeframes are for implementation.
In this way, housing developments will not take place where Eskom has no immediate plans to roll out power and the provincial government has not made provision for schools and clinics and the municipality's application for Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) funding has not been made on time.
In this regard there are key initiatives that have been put in place to ensure such co-ordination namely the Intergovernmental Relations Act which came into effect on the 15 August 2005, this was followed by the Strategic Plan for Local Government (2006 to 2011) which was adopted by the national Cabinet Lekgotla.
This outlines key strategic priorities for local government for the next five years (2006 to 2011). The presidential Izimbizo since 2005 has had a great impact in dealing with performance culture within municipalities that can be complemented with community empowerment which is what we are about here today.
Programme Director, the Vuna Awards inspires us to strive for even better performance in our quest for excellence in serving our people. It is very significant because it is designed to encourage and spur on action in our municipalities to enhance and revolutionise service delivery to our communities.
The competition which began in 2003 provides us with an opportunity to celebrate municipal excellence and benchmark municipalities against the best in their categories.
The awards measure performance in a number of areas such as infrastructure development and service delivery, local economic development, municipal transformation and institutional development, financial viability and good governance.
As government we have set ourselves the task to eradicate poverty and inequality, to build prosperity, to promote the social, political and economic empowerment of all our people through delivery of quality services, community participation, promotion of local economic development and smart administration.
We were bound in ensuring that we put in place and operate a system of governance that addresses those key imperatives.
This vision has committed us to tackle poverty by beginning to eradicate the vast backlogs in basic household infrastructure and service delivery which we had inherited from our apartheid past.
It is common knowledge that municipalities are at the coalface of government delivery, the first line of government delivery and are the ones who will make a dent in government efforts to bring a better life to poor communities.
Our municipalities are the closest we get to our people and they should take the lead in addressing the critical issue of how we provide services to our people. Some municipalities are faced with a serious challenge of a lack of public confidence.
I want to reiterate my previous assertion that in order to meet our development goals there will have to be special attention to strengthening local government. There must be continued co-operation of all three spheres of government to ensure that each and every district and municipality has a realistic IDP, a credible Local Economic Development (LED) programme, the material and human resources as well as the management and operational systems to implement these IDPs and LEDs.
We must ensure better integration of planning and implementation across the three spheres of government as a priority for the term of the new local government.
We also need to empower local government to meet its developmental and service delivery obligations, drawing lessons of project consolidate, the hands-on programme of support for local government.
This includes urgently dealing with the shortage in many municipalities of properly qualified managers and professional and technical personnel. This will put us firmly on the path to the realisation of our collective vision of a better life for all.
The commitment to pursue a developmental local government has in essence ensured that we formulate longer term desirable state of municipalities whilst dealing with pressing imperatives such as viability, integration of local development plans, setting up and ensuring operation of advisory networks thereby deepening public participation
Programme Director, in these 12 years we have also learned that for local government services to be sustainable we have to develop a partnership with our people.
They must take active part in planning, implementing, operating and maintaining these developmental programmes.
They must own them and control them. It thus becomes our duty to inform, educate, mobilise them and empower them to take that control.
The challenge is for all of us to become active agents of change, to become builders of a new people centred society, working together, united in action to push back the frontiers of poverty.
We, therefore, extend our hand to business, religious communities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), unions and all freedom loving people to work together with us in the interest of our common destiny and or common future.
We seek to socialise local government to its assigned mandate of providing services, creating conditions for socio-economic development and therefore addressing poverty through locally driven economic development initiatives.
In line with our Constitution, we had prioritised the basic needs of our people especially the improvement in the provision of water and decent sanitation, electricity, waste removal, proper roads and transport, improvement of basic municipal infrastructure and the building of houses to facilitate government's plan of building sustainable communities and the upgrading of informal settlements by 2014.
All of us provincial government, local government and the rest of civil society and patriotic individuals should act together now to eradicate the indignity of joblessness, poverty and hunger by making local government work better. We have the task of changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of our people.
We shall not rest until we have effective and efficient local government machinery in place throughout the province that is responsive to the needs of our people and improve their quality of life.
We will remain actively involve on matters that will permanently improve the capacity of local government to help accelerate social transformation.
In conclusion, we have joined together in the sphere of local government to reflect and rejoice to some formidable responses to objective challenges against service delivery, to learn and commit to cross-pollinate and improve.
We wish to encourage those who took part to continue doing so, showcase the good work of municipalities and to urge those who did not take part that participating in this competition will help them to enjoy the confidence of their communities particularly the poor.
I thank you!
Issued by: Office of the Premier, Northern Cape Provincial Government
30 November 2006
Source: Northern Cape Provincial Government
Title: Peters: Vuna Awards
Keynote address by Mrs Dipuo Peters, Premier of the Northern Cape, on the occasion of the annual Vuna Awards, Carnarvon
Programme Director,
MEC of Local Government and Housing, Mr Boeboe Van Wyk,
Mayors and councillors,
Senior management,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen:
We are gathered here today to acknowledge and celebrate the significant contribution made by all of us towards the national effort of achieving a better life for all our people. We are here to recognise the Northern Cape municipalities that have notably strived for service delivery excellence, but to also implore those who fell short in qualifying to continue trying their level best.
The second democratic elections which were held early this year showed an increased voter turnout of 48,4 from the previous local government elections. This indicates the willingness of our people to play a critical role in the affairs of local government.
Such a positive indication gives all of us in government an impetus to accelerate our efforts towards ensuring more effective service delivery having the full support of the people we serve.
Informed by the benchmarks we set for our municipalities over the next five years, three overarching strategic priorities for local government will be implemented during that period. These priorities constitute a combination of mainstreaming our practical hands-on support to all municipalities.
Strengthening and repositioning our structural and governance arrangements with regard to how we interact with local government and refining the local government policy environment and giving more attention to enforcement of the law.
Mainstreaming hands-on support to local government must mean undertaking specific tasks and actions by both national and provincial government, State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and other key stakeholder in a manner that is reflected in the core business and organisational processes of these institutions.
Part of this is that mainstreaming incorporates a vision of what must be achieved by local government in 2011. In this regard we need to ensure that South Africa should have a viable system of local government focused on service delivery and development amongst others.
We must be on course through local government towards meeting the 2014 targets. The most important action that we have undertaken include specific high level priority actions which have been identified to give effect to mainstreaming hands-on support to local government.
We as the provincial government departments must reflect concrete support actions to municipalities in the strategic and business plans and streamline support to local government. Provincial government need also to priorities their local government support by including key tasks in the Provincial Growth and Development Strategy (PGDS) and continue together with national departments co-ordinate, facilitate, direct and monitor the priority hands on support of government to local government.
The South African Local Government Association (SALGA) in this regard has a very crucial role to play in strengthening and supporting municipal political leadership. It is imperative that all this support is informed by the concrete actions identified in the revised Integrated Development Planning (IDP).
Building the technical capacity and capabilities of municipalities through the mobilisation and deployment of appropriate technical expertise will be short term to medium term. As we seek to integrate and co-ordinate our work better, we must identify the roles that will be played by each one of us at national and provincial government in order to assist our municipalities.
Thus our key mission should be to drive the process of co-ordinating municipal service delivery and ensuring collaboration so that all players, national and provincial departments, parastatals and municipalities make the most impact within the municipal space.
Our challenge as government now is to achieve co-operative government by working together to co-ordinate infrastructure provision and service delivery so that in each municipal area, everyone knows who is doing what and what the timeframes are for implementation.
In this way, housing developments will not take place where Eskom has no immediate plans to roll out power and the provincial government has not made provision for schools and clinics and the municipality's application for Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) funding has not been made on time.
In this regard there are key initiatives that have been put in place to ensure such co-ordination namely the Intergovernmental Relations Act which came into effect on the 15 August 2005, this was followed by the Strategic Plan for Local Government (2006 to 2011) which was adopted by the national Cabinet Lekgotla.
This outlines key strategic priorities for local government for the next five years (2006 to 2011). The presidential Izimbizo since 2005 has had a great impact in dealing with performance culture within municipalities that can be complemented with community empowerment which is what we are about here today.
Programme Director, the Vuna Awards inspires us to strive for even better performance in our quest for excellence in serving our people. It is very significant because it is designed to encourage and spur on action in our municipalities to enhance and revolutionise service delivery to our communities.
The competition which began in 2003 provides us with an opportunity to celebrate municipal excellence and benchmark municipalities against the best in their categories.
The awards measure performance in a number of areas such as infrastructure development and service delivery, local economic development, municipal transformation and institutional development, financial viability and good governance.
As government we have set ourselves the task to eradicate poverty and inequality, to build prosperity, to promote the social, political and economic empowerment of all our people through delivery of quality services, community participation, promotion of local economic development and smart administration.
We were bound in ensuring that we put in place and operate a system of governance that addresses those key imperatives.
This vision has committed us to tackle poverty by beginning to eradicate the vast backlogs in basic household infrastructure and service delivery which we had inherited from our apartheid past.
It is common knowledge that municipalities are at the coalface of government delivery, the first line of government delivery and are the ones who will make a dent in government efforts to bring a better life to poor communities.
Our municipalities are the closest we get to our people and they should take the lead in addressing the critical issue of how we provide services to our people. Some municipalities are faced with a serious challenge of a lack of public confidence.
I want to reiterate my previous assertion that in order to meet our development goals there will have to be special attention to strengthening local government. There must be continued co-operation of all three spheres of government to ensure that each and every district and municipality has a realistic IDP, a credible Local Economic Development (LED) programme, the material and human resources as well as the management and operational systems to implement these IDPs and LEDs.
We must ensure better integration of planning and implementation across the three spheres of government as a priority for the term of the new local government.
We also need to empower local government to meet its developmental and service delivery obligations, drawing lessons of project consolidate, the hands-on programme of support for local government.
This includes urgently dealing with the shortage in many municipalities of properly qualified managers and professional and technical personnel. This will put us firmly on the path to the realisation of our collective vision of a better life for all.
The commitment to pursue a developmental local government has in essence ensured that we formulate longer term desirable state of municipalities whilst dealing with pressing imperatives such as viability, integration of local development plans, setting up and ensuring operation of advisory networks thereby deepening public participation
Programme Director, in these 12 years we have also learned that for local government services to be sustainable we have to develop a partnership with our people.
They must take active part in planning, implementing, operating and maintaining these developmental programmes.
They must own them and control them. It thus becomes our duty to inform, educate, mobilise them and empower them to take that control.
The challenge is for all of us to become active agents of change, to become builders of a new people centred society, working together, united in action to push back the frontiers of poverty.
We, therefore, extend our hand to business, religious communities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), unions and all freedom loving people to work together with us in the interest of our common destiny and or common future.
We seek to socialise local government to its assigned mandate of providing services, creating conditions for socio-economic development and therefore addressing poverty through locally driven economic development initiatives.
In line with our Constitution, we had prioritised the basic needs of our people especially the improvement in the provision of water and decent sanitation, electricity, waste removal, proper roads and transport, improvement of basic municipal infrastructure and the building of houses to facilitate government's plan of building sustainable communities and the upgrading of informal settlements by 2014.
All of us provincial government, local government and the rest of civil society and patriotic individuals should act together now to eradicate the indignity of joblessness, poverty and hunger by making local government work better. We have the task of changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of our people.
We shall not rest until we have effective and efficient local government machinery in place throughout the province that is responsive to the needs of our people and improve their quality of life.
We will remain actively involve on matters that will permanently improve the capacity of local government to help accelerate social transformation.
In conclusion, we have joined together in the sphere of local government to reflect and rejoice to some formidable responses to objective challenges against service delivery, to learn and commit to cross-pollinate and improve.
We wish to encourage those who took part to continue doing so, showcase the good work of municipalities and to urge those who did not take part that participating in this competition will help them to enjoy the confidence of their communities particularly the poor.
I thank you!
Issued by: Office of the Premier, Northern Cape Provincial Government
30 November 2006
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