Date: 10/06/2010
Source: The Public Protectors Office
Title: SA: Madonsela: Address by the Public Protector, at a media briefing on the FIFA Soccer World Cup, Johannesburg

Chairperson, Ms Doreen Gough
Members of the media;
Deputy Public Protector Adv Mamiki Shai;
Chief Executive Officer Mr Themba Mthethwa;
Senior Managers in My Office;
Ladies and Gentlemen

It is an honour to reprise this platform which you generously
afforded me shortly after my appointment. As a team, we are
particularly honoured that you considered Public Protector affairs
to be newsworthy on a critical day such today. In less than 36
hours FIFA's first World Cup on the African continent, will be
kicking off. Within minutes thereafter, we'll experience another
historical moment when our national pride, Bafana Bafana will
vanquish Mexico.

As previously promised, my office intends to have these media
briefings every three months. This is a valuable platform and
opportunity to provide and you and hopefully members of the public
with a brief account on the progress my office is making in
delivering on its constitutional mandate and on the promises we
have made since my assumption of office.

Chairperson;

We specifically want to account on the progress we have made in
delivering on the promises made to Parliament and the people of
South Africa since I took office in October last year.

The starting point was a thorough mandate analysis in response
to concerns that you and other stakeholders, including Parliament,
had raised about the office's full utilisation of its
constitutional mandate. This process yielded two key outcomes,
namely:

(1) a book entitled "Constitutional and Legislative Mandate of
the Public Protector"; and

(2) a revised mandate which clarifies that the Public
Protector's power and responsibility transcend investigating and
incorporate the duty "to take appropriate remedial action" (section
182 (1)(c) of the Constitution).

The revised mandate became the key driver behind a process we
then undertook to review our institutional vision and Medium Term
Strategic Plan. The outcome of this process was a draft ten year
vision, Public Protector 2020 and Medium Term Strategic Plan:
2010-13. This was then subjected to extensive stakeholder
consultations that commenced with document circulation and
invitation of stakeholder inputs in December 2009. We then had
face-to-face stakeholder consultations in all nine provinces and a
final one in Pretoria at the end of March 2010.

I thank you and other stakeholder once more for the valuable
inputs that shaped the final product, Public Protector Vision 2020
and Medium Term Strategic Plan: 210-2013. The valuable insights we
gained from this process affirmed the Zulu proverb that says
"Injobo ithungelwa ebandla", which means a successful project
requires collaboration.

The purpose of today's interface is accordingly twofold. We seek
to provide feedback on delivery against our constitutional mandate
and promises, the focus being investigations and reports finalised
during the period under review. We also seek to obtain feedback
from you and the public on our performance against the mandate and
promises.

You will recall that when I took office, I undertook to strike a
balance between the bread and butter cases that impact people's
every day quality of life and the cases that deal with integrity
and good governance. I also promised to strike a balance between
promptness and rigor. This was premised on the understanding that
the value of the institution of the Ombudsman, which is what the
Public Protector is all about, is to promote access to justice for
persons that feel wronged by the state bearing in mind the time and
expense involved in pursuing justice through the courts, while
transforming the state to promote good governance. I also undertook
to enhance access for all and earn the trust of all persons and
communities.

The strategic planning has crystallised our institutional
commitments into the following three firm promises to the people of
South Africa and Parliament:

(1) to be accessible to and trusted by all persons and
communities;
(2) Prompt remedial action; and
(3) Promoting good governance in the conduct of all state
affairs

These service delivery promises, which are our strategic
objectives for the next three years, are backed by two corporate
objectives that seek to renew business systems and processes to
ensure efficiency and effectiveness, while leveraging our people
and stakeholder relationships to generate an optimal performance
and service focused culture.

Our service delivery promises are further anchored on our new
vision which is to be:

"A trusted, effective and accessible Public Protector that
rights administrative wrongs and consistently acts with integrity
to ensure fair, accountable and responsive decision-making, service
and good governance in all state affairs and public administration
in every sphere of government."

The ultimate goal, as we've said before, is to play our role of
strengthening democracy by ensuring that the state is accountable,
operates with integrity and is responsive to needs of all of the
people of South Africa regardless of diverse circumstances and
needs.

Today's feedback primarily focuses on reports issued since I
took office six months ago. You'll notice that there are many
reports. Today we are specifically releasing 18 Reports.

However, in future as we live up to our promise of prompt
remedial action, there'll be fewer reports. We'll focus on using
the ADR powers given by the Public Protector Act (PPA) and other
mandate statutes, to settle so that complainants can be assured of
both promptness and a concrete remedy. We will only use a report as
a last resort where the competent organ of state refuses to accept
my findings or there's a disagreement on appropriate remedial
action.

We've already started to prioritise complaints resolution,
primarily through the early resolution mechanism established in
November 2009 and general use of the ADR mandate under the PPA and
the PDA.

Needless to say, we will not settle any conduct and/or integrity
matters, without a report where there is proof of wrongdoing. This
includes the mandate in terms of the Executive Members' Ethics Act
(EMEA), where the Public Protector is compelled by law to
investigate and report with recommendations.

The reports that we release today provides feedback on how we
are addressing the promise of prompt remedial action while
transforming the state to promote good governance. At the heart of
the approach we are adopting is that there should be justice for
every administrative wrong and that there should be no impunity for
improper conduct. We also seek to ensure that all contact with the
state strengthens good governance and respect for the rule of the
law to avoid future similar service failures and/or improper
conduct.

I must state upfront that some of the early cases do not fully
comply with the promise of rigor and righting all administrative
wrongs. But as we go forward, there are very clear improvements.
The following provides a few examples you will find among the
18cases released today and other key activities we have undertaken
during the last six months.

Accessibility and trustworthiness

The Public Protector is compelled by Section 182 (4) of the
Constitution of the Republic of South Africa to be accessible to
all persons and communities. We consider accessibility as
transcending physical proximity and as incorporating
trustworthiness.

Access enhancing activities in the last six months have included
stakeholder engagements that have sought to elicit the needs and
views of all communities with a view to enhancing our
trustworthiness and responsiveness. You'll note this when our
annual report is released. We've also continued to add more
regional offices to improve the proximity of our services to
historically marginalized communities, particularly, particularly
rural communities. For example, we opened a Regional Office in New
Castle, KwaZulu-Natal in December, 2009 and another in
Phuthaditjhaba in the Free State, in April; this year. This brings
the number of regional offices to 9 and the total number of Public
Protector offices or service points to 19. We will be opening
another regional office in Mthatha, shortly, although we are
struggling with accommodation. Our budget is also an impediment
with regard to effective access and as such some of the provinces
only have a provincial office as the only service centre.

The use of Mobile Clinics and the media, particularly radio,
also continues and is being enhanced. We are also leveraging
stakeholder relations to expand platforms for marketing our
services. In this regard, we also thank you for the support you
provide. Stakeholders that have offered platforms and other forms
of assistance include Traditional Authorities, the South African
Police, the South African Local Government Association (SALGA),
some of the provincial law societies and one provincial Bar
Counsel.

In October this year we'll launch the Public Protector Good
Governance Week, we promised earlier. The idea is to have a focus
week during which all eyes are on this institution and what it does
to strengthen our constitutional democracy and how it does that.
We've chosen October because it is the 15th Anniversary of the
Public Protector. Advocate Selby Baqwa was appointed on the 15th of
October in 1995.

With regard to projecting ourselves as a trustworthy
institution, I am of the view that ordinary people with warranted
complaints against government but that can't afford legal fees to
challenge the state should see us as a dependable institution to
help them fight their cause. Independence and impartiality are a
must in this regard not only as a reality but also in terms of
perceptions.

Prompt remedial action

Through our ADR focus and the Early Resolution Mechanism I
alluded to earlier, we ensure that all the bread-and-butter cases
such as those concerning social grants, identity documents, civil
pensions of retired public servants and appeals to the High Court
are resolved within a day and up to three months. Our ADR powers of
conciliation, mediation and negotiation are primarily used for this
purpose. The important thing is that the Complainants don't just
get a report but get a rectification of the service that had failed
before we came into the picture.

The driving belief behind our approach to righting
administrative wrongs is restorative justice. When service fails
and citizens hurt, we seek to restore complainants to as close as
possible to where they would have been but for the service failure
or improper conduct by the state. You'll agree with me that people
cannot eat reports or use them as IDs.

Statistics from my office show that between November and
December 2009, 254 of cases received (91.7%) were resolved within a
record period of three months.

Between January and March 2010, 137 of the cases received were
resolved within a months, 123 were finalised within two months
while 37 matters were put to rest within one day.

I believe that our work not only brings a speedy end to the
suffering of our people but will also helps government in its own
quest for ending poverty and poor service delivery. It will also
contribute towards government's achievement of its own service
goals, including Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

An example in this regard is the case of a pensioner who after
41 years of service reached a dead end when trying to get his
pension pay-out from government. He was told that his pension had
been paid to someone else. It took my office's intervention to
release his pay while the state sorted out its mistakes as he was
an innocent victim.

Who can forget the plight of a 22-year-old from Alexandra, who
missed out on a bursary to further his studies after sitting for
matric examinations in 2005 because the Department of Education in
KwaZulu-Natal failed to release his matric results because,
according to the Department of Home Affairs, he had a duplicate ID.
Within a month of this office's Early Resolution (ER) intervention,
he got the ID. However, we are still dealing with the systemic
service failure that this case is merely a symptom of. In this
regard, I've written to the Minister of Home Affairs and
recommended a specific systemic intervention. The intervention
seeks to balance the human rights of the Duplicate ID victims whose
lives have come to a stand still, with the responsibilities of the
Department of Home Affairs regarding the verification of
identities. There are many other cases that you will note in the
supplied CD, where ER and ADR are delivering on the promise of
prompt remedial action.

Good Governance and Integrity

Good governance remains important. This is pursued primarily
under our Executive Members' Ethics Act (EAMEA) mandate and
mandates in terms of the Protected Disclosures Act (PDA) and the
Protection of Access to Information Act (PAIA). Again there are
several cases in this regard. One of them involves a Premier who
failed to follow internal human resources policies. We'll be
releasing more reports in the next few days.

It is also important to note that in every investigation we
address the specific complaint and any systemic service, governance
and administrative failures.

Included among the reports released today is are cases dealing
with municipal services, where we have found the state wanting and
ordered remedial action that incorporates compensation for
consequential damages. A case in point is one where the
municipality wrongfully awarded a title deed to a property
belonging to a complainant. Another notable case involves failure
by a provincial Department of Education to provide decent
classrooms and toilet facilities.

A provincial case dealing with waste management combines issues
of prompt remedial action and broader government responsibilities
regarding environmental rights. In this particular case we settled
on the immediate concerns of the complainant and made
recommendations regarding the need for proper hospital waste
management in province concerned.
As we've said before, a lot of service delivery failures a symptom
of systemic governance and administrative failures within organs of
state.
Chairperson;

In the words on my counterpart in the Canadian province of
Ontario, "I have had to make some very tough decisions, to refocus
the office...." in the last six months. Fortunately I've been
working with an amazing, professional and hard working team. The
support of the public, media community and government has also been
outstanding.

I'm the first to say that there's still a huge gap between the
promise and our action, particularly on the issue of promptness and
rigor.

With the kind of team I have and the restructuring we've just
done, I believe we'll soon be making the difference we seek to
make. I've also met my counterpart in the UK, the Parliamentary and
Health Ombudsman. We have agreed to enter into a bilateral
agreement that will see our institutions operate as partners to
improve our services.

Thank you once more for the privilege to address you. Fact
sheets of all the reports are in your packs with a limited number
of hard copies available for browsing.

Finally, let's support Africa in addition to our unwavering
support to Bafana Bafana.
Go Bafana Bafana Go!
Go Africa Go!

Thank you