Remarks by the Minister of Provincial and Local Government, Sydney Mufumadi at the Excellence Awards gala dinner hosted by the Institute for Local Government Management of South Africa, Port Elizabeth

Honourable Premier Nosimo Balindlela
President of the Institute for Local Government Management of South Africa, George Seitisho
Members of the National Executive Committee of the Institute for Local Government Management (ILGM)
Honourable MECs
Your Lordship, the mayors here present
Councillors and senior managers from all the three spheres of our government
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

Introduction

This gala dinner, which is integral to your 11th Annual National Conference, gives us the much welcomed opportunity to interact with professionals (and) practitioners whose daily work affect many people's everyday lives in tangible ways. Indeed, the livelihoods of all our citizens depend on how you do what you do.

By hosting this dinner, you have made it possible for us to wine and dine with people of distinction: men and women who are oriented on the ethos that places high value on excellence. To the masses of our people, the outcome of your conference has the same material value as another gathering, which is taking place thousands of kilometres away from this venue. As you know, Heads of State and Government including our own President, Thabo Mbeki, are meeting in New York. They are meeting to ruminate on the pre-eminent topic of global concern; discussing how to extricate humanity from the morass of underdevelopment and poverty. This is a matter, which has been exercising the collective mind of our state institutions, at least since 1994.

As they take stock of global progress, I am certain that the world leaders will again remind us that on current trends, ours is the only continent that is not likely to meet the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals. Such a finding has implications for us; it must have a shaping influence on the decision, which your conference will adopt when it brings its business to a close in two days time.

As an organisation of local government practitioners who are operating within the South African national context, each one of the 283 local spaces is the epicentre of your business. This is where the social achievements of our democracy must be manifested.

President, I am happy that you chose the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Council as the venue for your conference. There are things happening in this municipality which are emblematic of our determination to construct a better future for our people.

Following the launch of Project Consolidate in 2004, we decided to lay the ground work for improving the financial viability of our municipalities by developing service delivery facilitators (SDF) into 12 municipalities which are meant to serve as pilot sites. In the case of this particular municipality, an SDF was deployed on 15 May 2005. This is part of our general offensive towards immediate delivery and development bottlenecks.

In fairly short order, this municipality has come to constitute a leading edge in our national drive to improve the revenue-raising capacity of our municipalities. As a matter of fact, from 88 percent in the pre-Project Consolidate period, this Municipality's revenue collection rate now stands at 99 percent. The Mayor informs me that the process of reviewing the Revenue Collection Master Plan is at an advanced stage. In addition, the municipality is working toward a new billing system which will be concluded in March 2008.

This is in line with the framework for the implementation of the new Municipal Property Rates Act which will be in place on 1 July next year. This trend is fairly representative of the situation in most of the municipalities where we have been able to deploy Skills Development Facilitators (SDFs). Indeed, the post-Project Consolidate period has seen an increase in the number of people who have access to basic services.

But this means that some of our municipalities are actually performing beyond their underlying institutional capacities. For in reality, they remain afflicted by the problem of low stocks of human capital. Nevertheless, we have a responsibility to hold them up as innovation frontiers in which we are setting up benchmarks of good performance for emulation by others. At the same time, we must understand the ephemeral character of interventions like Project Consolidate and plan accordingly. Not only do we have the responsibility to sustain the momentum which was unleashed by the Project Consolidate, but also, we must work together to reinforce the available skills set and to encourage ongoing accumulation of managerial know-how.

In this regard, I wish to acknowledge with appreciation, the fact that the ILGM was amongst the first organisations to encourage their members to avail themselves as SDFs for deployment into designated municipalities. Your members became torchbearers of the national effort to make our country a better place to live in. We know that we can continue to count on your partnership. It is for this reason that we eagerly await the outcome of your conference.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Provincial and Local Government