KwaZulu-Natal Legislature  

PIETERMARITZBURG: 5 August 2009

Madam Chairperson

The 2009/2010 budget of this Legislature is in the hands of someone whose management of the provincial Department of Health during the last Parliament led to massive overspending without any improvement in the level of service delivery. Quite frankly, such a record does not inspire much confidence. 

The Official Opposition laments the Hon. Speaker’s determination to spend more money on dubious initiatives and activities when money is in short supply due to the economic recession and an expected shortfall in tax revenue, now estimated at between R40-billion and R60-billion.

We in the Official Opposition have been particularly incensed by the Legislature's decision to extend its public participation programmes when the institution is experiencing cash flow problems and when the public participation programmes in question, although funded by the Legislature as a whole, lack its multi-party character.

We have pointed out time and again that initiatives such as Taking Parliament to the People not to allow individual political parties to address the public but serve as forums for the Members of the Executive Council. Sectoral Parliaments are similarly biased in favour of organizations and entities with a similar political outlook to that of the ruling party.

The plans to extend these activities without extending their genuine multi-party character are not acceptable, not least because of the current economic climate. Sectoral Parliaments and Taking Parliament to the People have effectively disintegrated into Taking the ANC to the People at the taxpayers' expense and that expense has now become unaffordable.

The IFP has similarly objected to the building of a new parliament in Pietermaritzburg from the beginning. We could not believe that the ANC would seriously want to transfer Parliament yet again to another location within Pietermaritzburg only a few years after it managed to move it from Ulundi. What the ruling party actually demands is a third parliamentary building in this province, in addition to the Legislative Assembly complex in Ulundi and the current venue in Pietermaritzburg.

One would have thought that having ten parliaments (that is nine provincial legislatures plus the National Assembly) in one country was quite enough. Now KwaZulu-Natal alone will become unique for having three parliament buildings for the temperamental ANC Members to choose from. All this in a provincial legislature with strictly limited competences! All this in a legislature, which (with all due respect) passes few laws!

This has always been an obscene proposition in a province with widespread rural poverty and the highest HIV prevalence in the world. It is more so now in the middle of an economic recession. We in the opposition contend that this Legislature is here to facilitate the people’s access to the basic services. The ANC Members, on the other hand, are obsessing with Parliament’s own comforts. Is this not an obsession with the trappings of power?

The Official Opposition has modestly estimated the cost of the new parliamentary complex at R600-million - this is how much the Mpumalanga province paid for its new legislature. In KwaZulu-Natal this amount could build at least 12 schools and service 12 mobile clinics for 12 communities, each comprising 4000 people.

The ANC’s priorities are clearly not driven by the needs and aspirations of the people of KwaZulu-Natal. By insisting on a new parliamentary complex, the ruling party has proven that it merely responds to the demands of political expediency.

Madam Chairperson, the work is cut out for this Legislature even if it were to stay within a smaller budget. There are things it should and could do while effecting the compulsory 7.5 percent budget cut-back approved by the provincial Cabinet. At very little cost, it could look for innovative ways to:

•     improve o

•     ensure that our website is periodically updated

•     develop career path and retention strategy through an inclusive process of the stakeholders, and

•     capacitate its research and legal units to better achieve their objectives.

But instead, this institution appears determined to follow the sad example of the Department of Health in leading our province into an ever deeper fiscal overdraft. If we are so dedicated to the principles of public participation, why don’t we ask the people who are currently protesting in despair against poor service delivery in municipalities how they feel about a new parliamentary complex and the like?

I thank you.

Contact: Blessed Gwala, 078 690 5777