When I am here in Osuthu I cannot help but remember the days of my youth as I grew up in Osuthu from the time I was born, until I was a young man. It is inevitable that I should remember so many members of the Royal family who all had a hand in my upbringing and in modelling me into the kind of human being which I ultimately turned out to be. I remember my grannies, the Queens of King Dinuzulu who brought me up at KwaDlamahlahla Royal Residence. I remember Queen Nobusenga (OkaNjwaphu) and Queen Nomphosholo (OkaMavumengwana) with whom my sister, Princess Morgina Phikabesho and I resided. I remember Queen Bangwayo (OkaSonkeshana) here at Osuthu Royal Residence at whose residence I stayed whenever we were here at Osuthu Royal Residence.

I of course remember several Queens of King Dinuzulu and several Queens of King Solomon Ka Dinuzulu all who had a hand, in one way or another, in my upbringing. I remember several of my cousins with whom I grew up and with whom I attended school. Our school was first named Osuthu Primary School. It was later to be named Mpumalanga Primary School. I remember my uncle, the Prince of KwaSokesimbone, Prince Mshiyeni ka Dinuzulu who paid for our education and brought us up after the death of his brother, the King of KwaDlamahlahla, King Solomon ka Dinuzulu. I am saddened by memories of my uncles, cousins, aunts and grannies who are no more. I am always touched to see Princess Alice Sibhaxa ka Solomon with whom we stayed with the two grannies I mentioned above.

It is also natural that when I am here I should remember that my mother, Princess Constance Magogo Sibilile Mantithi Ngangezinye Thombisile ka Dinuzulu spent her youth here under the firm hand of Queen OkaSonkeshane. She often told us how they use to leave at the crack of dawn to look after the cornfields (sorghum) and to hoe mealie fields at far away places, quite distant from the Royal Residence. She mentioned places like kwaDalala. She was so proud of the iron hand of Queen OkaSonkeshane who brought her up together with her brother the Prince of Kwasitholani, Prince Matholegwaqa ka Dinuzulu and their young sister Princess Qhobithambo Selina ka Dinuzulu.

I can go on an on reminiscing about the days of my youth when I grew up here. I am grateful to be invited by our Mayor for the Zululand Municipal District, Ms Zanele Magwaza, to be the Guest Speaker here on such an auspicious occasion, when we are all here to attend the inauguration of the Osuthu Public Water Scheme. She has done me a great favour in asking me to address those who are attending this historic event with the rest of us today.

I am delighted to be here today at the opening of the Osuthu Public Water Scheme. This project is an example of local government working at its best. It is gratifying for me to see this municipality launching such important projects, which clearly demonstrate how the local government of this region is delivering services to its citizens.

I commend Her Worship, Ms Zanele Magwaza for the measure of leadership she has given in this municipality. The Zululand District Municipality, I believe, is a model and template of people-centred delivery. The approach adopted here is a practical ‘from the ground up’ one, which is what I have always sought to promote.

Initiatives, like the one we are unveiling today, will serve to address and alleviate the widespread rural poverty, and the inequitable distribution of services in KwaZulu-Natal. This project is part of the Water Services Development Plan for the Zululand District Municipality, which aims to provide rudimentary water supply and sanitation to everyone in the region.

The Osuthu Public Water Scheme will complement other recently announced initiatives, including the R16 billion allocated to build clinics in Osuthu and the programme to build and tar roads in the areas. Many of these projects cut across provincial and local competences. Credit must be generously given to all public representatives, across the political divide, for their commitment to uplifting the lives of people who live in poverty.

I understand that with extra funding the timescale of the completion of these regional water schemes could be reduced. There are compelling reasons to make these extra funds available. Primarily, lack of access to safe water is at the heart of the poverty trap as it is the poor, especially women and children, who suffer most in terms of illness and lost opportunities.

As I grew up here in the heart of the Kingdom, I know how many water-bourne diseases our people have suffered and even died from unnecessarily over the years. Over many years we always knew that when summer rains come, our people are going to fill up local hospitals because of unclean water, which they had to consume when rains came.

More than any other issue, the delivery of clean water to the rural poor has been the hallmark of transformation in post-apartheid South Africa. Virtually all writings on the delivery of clean water to rural people around the world now emphasises the point that it is rural women who benefit most from the provision of these supplies.

The main benefit, apart from family health, is freeing women from drudgery and enabling them to participate in other activities. Where projects fail, it is women who have to carry the burden of maintaining the health of their families, and undertake the extra labour of returning to traditional sources of water.

We also know that water and sanitation projects are more sustainable when women have the ongoing responsibility for their operations and maintenance, as they are more committed, since they are adversely affected by project failure.

It is for these reasons that I hope that this funding can be made available, because success will have a positive domino effect to stimulate other developmental projects.

Steady progress is being made to give content to our constitutional mandate to deliver essential services to all. Access to clean water is one of the most important basic rights of our citizens. Water literally spells life. As many of you will recall, this basic human right was denied to many South African’s during the apartheid era.

One of my most vivid childhood memories was watching our womenfolk here and elsewhere, drawing water with such grace and ease of movement, balancing the precious pails of life on their heads. The graciousness with which one watched, as they moved with the pails of water, often made one not appreciate the hardship which is entailed in carrying these pails daily. Quite often they carried these pails of water up to three times a day, and very often after travelling several miles.

This quintessentially African image has often been romanticised in countless paintings, sculptures and motion pictures. Yet this common scene, which repeats itself daily in the lives of every rural community in South Africa, also speaks of the grinding hardship that millions of women experience in the rural areas.

Life was, and still is for many, very difficult. Apart from drinking purposes, vegetable gardens had to be watered on the homesteads. This physically strenuous work largely falls on women. Many women still have to walk long distances, often with their children, in both the burning heat of summer, and the icy cold of winter, whilst carrying either a pail of water or a bundle of wood.

It was with this harsh reality in mind that some of the earliest development projects I embarked upon, as Chief Minister of the erstwhile KwaZulu government, were sustainable water projects. Providing access to clean water to our rural communities was, without doubt, one of the most important challenges I faced. When we established the Joint Executive Authority with the Province of Natal, as it was then, we then established Regional Services Councils for the sole purpose of making these basic services, such as electricity and water, available to our people.

This was a time when waterborne diseases were rife, and the packaging plants for purifying water were scarce in the rural areas, and were not as highly developed as they are today. I am therefore delighted today to participate in the unveiling of this project, which represents an important milestone in our cherished dream of building a province, free from poverty, disease and want.

Yet this progress must not blind us to the fact that millions of South Africans’ lives are blighted by HIV/AIDS, unemployment, poverty, crime and corruption. I believe the weak link is the inability of the state to deliver the promised better life for all. The nation is stronger, but the delivery capacity of the state is becoming weaker. The gap between policy theory and implementation continues to widen.

One of the major factors still impeding municipalities, such as this one, fulfilling their developmental mandate is that South Africa does not have the benefits of a properly structured federal system of government. When I argued for a federal government in the constitutional negotiations, the issue seemed remote and far removed from the most pressing issues to many people. We can now see clearly how it affects people on the ground.

One could argue that the present unitary system with weak provincial and local government represents the worst of both worlds.

Properly capacitated, this municipality could have done even more for the people of this area, in terms of delivering additional services. These are services which should not only be rightly administered by municipalities, but should also be owned and delivered by municipalities.

And more work still must be done to ensure every person has access to basic facilities such as hospitals, clinics and schools. I believe services such as clinics, hospitals, schools and police stations should be run by local government. More power must be placed in the hands of municipalities, such as Zululand, which can deliver. By placing power in municipalities, we give power to people to change their lives.

Despite, the impressive strides South Africa has undertaken over the last decade, the plight of the poorest has worsened. The million job losses since 1994 have hit African labourers hardest, in the most vulnerable sectors of construction, mining, and the labour-intensive sectors of manufacturing.

That is why we must stimulate rural development, and reverse the trend of urban migration. Policy-makers must craft a strategy to promote sustainable development in rural areas as a priority.

Our rural communities still need facilities such as banks, water, affordable electricity, roads and the support of Local Economic Development (LED) through the creation of self-employment schemes.

We must provide co-operatives as both job creation, and poverty alleviation tools. They must be provided with equipment, such as tractors, to maximise agricultural output and enable people to move from subsistence farming, to commercial farming. Such measures are the nuts and bolts of the principles of self-help and self-reliance, which I have always maintained are the only way to provide sustainable development.

There is one thing that one needs to emphasise on an occasion like this. That is that we, as public representatives, are put where we are by you, the voters. We do not go into office with bags of money of our own! You elect us to administer funds, which are taxpayers’ money. The wisdom you, as voters, need to exercise is to choose people that are capable of delivering services financed by government revenue. In other words, who can honestly administer your own taxpayers’ money.

You must be wise in choosing people that are not corrupt, and that will not use taxpayers’ money to line their own pockets. That is why we chose a leader of Ms Zanele Magwaza’s calibre to lead the Zululand District Municipality. As all of us are aware, she has been the talk of the whole Country, not just KwaZulu Natal, and this is just because of the manner in which she has been so outstanding as far as service delivery to all our people is concerned.

The Auditor’s report for the Zululand Municipal district has just been issued, indicating that she has spent the revenue entrusted to her by us who elected her with prudence and honesty.

There are today people who are being projected as being the right people to be supported with your votes. An impression is given that they have lots of money for projects that they will shower on our Communities. There is no political party that has money of its own. Government revenue does not belong to the ANC or the IFP. Government revenue is taxpayers’ money, and those who are elected to office merely administer these funds, as they deliver services to people that elected them.

I want to remind people here that when I was the Chief Minister of the erstwhile KwaZulu Government, I delivered services to the people of KwaZulu. What is remarkable is that of all the then self-governing states, KwaZulu, as it was then, received the least funding per capita than any other self-governing territory or the so-called “independent states”. Some of the things that have been constructed such as Colleges of Education, KWAGQIKAZI, ENTUZUMA, EMBUMBULU, EZAKHENI, EMADADENI, ESHOWE and others were closed down by the National government, while we still need teachers to teach our children, even today.

People who favour the ruling party for whatever reason, should not talk as if we now have a new breed of messiahs, who are for the first time coming here, to do more than we did for the people of KwaZulu. This is very cheap propaganda by acolytes of the ruling-party and we have a lot of them making all sorts of extravagant promises to our people just now.

I want to say that the people of this Province know what I have done for them. There is no reason for me to advertise these things anew, just because there are latter-day messiahs who are presented to you as the saviours of the people KwaZulu Natal or of South Africa.

People can always trust me to continue to choose competent and reliable leaders of Ms Magwaza’s calibre to continue the work I started long ago, when I was at the helm of the erstwhile KwaZulu government, to deliver services to all our people.

My government was not corrupt. I have never been accused of any action, which qualifies as a form of corruption. Because of the honesty to which I am committed, I was the only head of any of the self-governing states and so-called independent states who delivered money to the democratically elected government in 1994.

Next year, we are likely to have another local government election. I just want you to remember that throughout my long period of service amongst you, I have never cheated you, or used even one cent of your public funds to line my own pockets. I am today very proud that this young lady, who is my protégé, Ms Zanele Magwaza, has been so honest in administrating public funds, your taxpayers’ money.

So do not be deceived by some of the people who are touting for their favourites who have never served you for as long as I have done so. People of Osuthu know how the Princess obeyed the King, her brother, to marry my father. People of Osuthu know that the King tasked me with a certain mission to serve his people. I am still on that mission. People of my age normally feel that they must retire and rest. I am not going to retire, as some people suggest, as long as the people still feel that I need to continue to serve them. I am at present in good health and I thank God for that. I also believe that I have not yet accomplished the MISSION that the King had in mind when he decided to task me even before I was born.

Even though people are by nature turncoats, I however do not expect that people of Osuthu should be the ones who are the first to turn against me. I do not expect you to support me merely because I am the son of the King’s senior daughter, Princess Magogo. No. But I say to you of Osuthu, in my case, it is my record of service, which speaks for itself.