Greetings and salutations, Hon Chairperson of the NCOP, Ministers, Deputy Ministers, guests and fellow members.

Honourable Chairperson, municipalities under ANC rule have become a family business with jobs for pals, incompetent and unqualified managers and little or no co-operation between various spheres of government.

Increasingly, our people have been forced to take to the streets, burning tyres and barricading our roads. The ringing of these alarm bells are sounds that parliament cannot ignore.

Sadly, I ask you Hon Minister, is this a good story to tell, or is it a nightmare?

Are you, Hon Minister, serving the department of co-operative governance and traditional affairs, or the ANC's municipalities of corrupt governance and traditional affairs?

In 2009 and as confirmed by the 4th Parliament in its Legacy Report, the Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, told us that protests arise due to the dissatisfaction with poor service delivery, financial mismanagement and allegations of fraud and corruption, coupled with complaints of poor communication with communities. When the DA took power in 2009 in the Western Cape, we listened and immediately started working with the municipalities in the Western Cape to root out these very issues that the ANC left us with and to become increasingly service driven.

And 5 years later, Hon. Minister, we have seen change in the DA run Western Cape but we have also seen degeneration around the rest of the country.

And you can see it in the election results in 2011 and this year. Where the DA governs, the DA’s support levels are consistently ticking up – people have given the DA chance, and they like what they got. In contracts, almost everywhere the ANC governs, it is rapidly losing support – especially in the big metros across the country.

Many ANC-run municipalities, Hon Minister, are in a precarious financial situation, suffering from a lack of skilled financial management. In the 2013/14 financial year, 14 more municipalities were place under administration. Almost all of these municipalities under ANC control.

In acceding to the Democratic Alliance’s request for an investigation into the qualifications of the CFO's employed by municipalities, it was revealed that of the 278 CFO's, 170 did not possess adequate qualifications.

This was indeed a shock to you, and Luthuli House, but not to the DA, or the residents, who suffer daily at the hands of incompetent, unqualified senior officials. The fact of the matter is that this sad state of affairs is a direct result of the ANC’s corrupt and fundamentally destructive policy of cadre deployment. The party does not put delivery first – it puts  the deployment of cadres above all else.

In a report delivered by the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) to the Portfolio Committee on COGTA this year, it has revealed that in the quarter ended March 2014, Municipalities were owed R93.4 billion for municipal services as compared to R84.2 billion for the same period last year. The largest component of this debt relates to households that haven't paid their bills, which accounts R57.5 billion, business owe R19.3 billion other debtors owe 12.5 billion. And government owes R4.1 billion.

In the ANC run Gauteng, municipalities are owed the highest amount at R40.9 billion.

It is clear, municipalities are been crippled with its failure to manage and collect its debt and your interventions have been lacklustre.

Seriously, Hon Minister, is this "Together making our municipalities work effectively and efficiently ". I think not.

The recent urgency supported by your department, in invoking Section 139 (1) (c), to dissolve failing municipalities, was embraced and applauded as a step in the right direction, in the instance of Mooi Mpofana,  Ngaka Modira Molema, and Inkwanca.

Yet, in failing to immediately dissolve the Madibeng and Mogalakwena municipalities, the ANC is using its majority to exercise Luthuli House's will over parliaments prerogative and using the organs of the State to settle political scores within the ANC.

A case in point, is the ANC-run Msunduzi Municipality, in KZN. In 2009, this council was in the red for R750 million, and was placed under Section 139 (1) (b), and rightfully so. However, Hon Minister, currently Msunduzi's book debt is nearing the R2 billion mark, it is besieged with service delivery protests, in Woodlands and Copesville, and the Councils have wasted R18 million on a Red Brick Road, outside the City Hall and a further R 36 million sponsor to a privately owned soccer team.

Yet again, COGTA's silence on corrupt governance is deafening.

Honourable Minister, let us face the facts. As stipulated by your department 1 out of 3 municipalities are failing. 1 out 3 are average and 1 out of 3 are effective, but the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Committee differs with that , having identified 135 municipalities that are in distress - noting, that none are within the DA run Western Cape.

Exercising strong political will to strengthen the capacity of local municipalities, implementing sound management systems and improving executive oversight on administrative implementation is how we lead where we govern. On this note, let me congratulate the 29 out of the 30 Western Cape municipalities for achieving clean audit results in 2013, a true reflection of co-operative governance at work.
 
The fact of the matter is that the A continues to govern better at local government level as the ANC continues to disintegrate at local government level – as is so obvious from the chaos at Mokgalakwena municipality in Limpopo.

This debate title is  “Together making our municipalities work effectively and efficiently”. Well, in conclusion Hon Minister, the only way to work together to make municipalities work more effectively and efficiently is clearly to Vote DA.

I thank you.