National Assembly : 15 May 2007  

Chairperson,

The Inkatha Freedom Party invariably supports the budget of the Government Communication and Information System because, for the most part, it is staffed with highly professional persons who know exactly what they are doing. We give credit where it is due.

Whether we like it or not, their job is to, in effect, make the Government look good -- to draft and implement communication strategies and programmes for the whole of government at national level and to integrate communications operations of all government departments.

Their job is to ensure that the public of South Africa is informed of government's implementation of its mandate and to provide leadership in government communication.

GCIS must be very careful not to mix the government's function and party or organisational function. There is a tendency to think that every word spoken by the President of the country is the same that should be spoken, in the same function, by the ANC President.

That will be using state money to promote the organisation's functions and propaganda.

For the Opposition, who sit here on the benches to the left, it is not always comfortable to be faced with a formidable team who do their job well.

A team who propel the President and his colleagues into the spotlight and into direct contact with citizens who on prime time television tell of their concerns and their desires --- to a caring team of politicians.

Oh! Should we in the Opposition have such communication capacity! Such a budget!

Should it not be better if the views of opposition are captured in line with what the government is doing or saying? Because there are areas where the government is saying things that the opposition are totally opposed to and visa versa.

The opposition may improve communication in the line of implementing things or rejecting things.

Its job, too, is to attract investment to South Africa and to tell of what South Africa has to offer in terms of the export of our own goods and services.

Web searches show our representatives abroad - in India, the UK and the US - are getting good coverage for us and doing the best they can given the uphill battle they face when confronted with our crime statistics. We can only wish them well.

The International Marketing Council does an excellent job. Year after year they industriously produce highly innovative campaigns intended to attract jumbo jets full of tourists landing at our airports to boost tourism and tourism-related jobs and services -- an industry worth many billions of rands. The budget of the International Marketing Council is modest given the importance of its task. We salute the IMC team yet again.

The tourist industry seems to be a life saver, because it is creating employment. That is why we support the IMC team, and its budget should be looked at carefully. Anything that will create employment should be supported and encouraged, because our unemployment figure remains very high.

What we are debating here today is, essentially, the role of a communication service demanded in any democracy and one in which (with varying emphases) any political party would have when in power. We may crunch the numbers and say too high or not enough, but the reality is that citizens are entitled to be informed as to what their elected Government is doing. A country deserves to be promoted.

It is the Opposition's bad luck that the GCIS promotes and protects the ANC Government and its leaders (with the CEO of the GCIS acting as the Cabinet's official spokesperson).

It is up to us to prove if and when the GCIS crosses that fine line it straddles into party political propaganda - and they have proved, to date, to be a hard quarry to nail down in this respect - although we are still smarting at the too-clever-by-half live television coverage of an ANC event immediately prior to the last general election.

The GCIS is mandated to ensure that the voice of government is heard and to have a clear understanding of public information needs as well as government's communication needs. This it does. It is not perfect but its multi-media outreach is impressive. It has an interactive web site, a huge list of publications, impressive research and information capacity and so on and so forth.

Although it tries to help some Government departments literally jack up their communication skills, the GCIS can be blamed for the lack of capacity, inefficiency and sheer ineptitude of some departmental spokespersons employed by those departments.

The GCIS makes no secret that its emphasis is "direct dialogue" between government and the citizens of South Africa and its focus in this regard is, in particular, people in disadvantaged areas. A smart move given the huge inequalities in our society -- a society which has been characterised as having, literally, two economies -- one for the rich and one for the poor.  Given that the poor make up the vast majority of our people, politically this is, I repeat, a very smart move! But, nevertheless, a correct one.

It is NOT the job of the GCIS to promote Parliament or its politicians. A pity. A view was largely publicised of late that a certain Judge believes MPs should "get off their backsides". We are told he later, privately, denied saying this but we have seen no public correction to this effect. If only Members of Parliament could have a service which effectively portrayed our role and what we do in the service of the nation. Something needs to happen to promote the work of MPs.

The Inkatha Freedom Party welcomes the allocated amount of R81 million to the GCIS for 2007/2008. We are sure that this will fulfil the GCIS' needs for boosting their communication programmes, expanding their capacity in regional offices and enhancing support services. Furthermore, we also welcome the R93 045 million allocated to the International Marketing and Media Development programme, which plays an extremely vital communication and marketing role leading up to the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

The IFP is also delighted by R46 330 million that has been allocated to the provincial and local liaison departments, who are primarily responsible for the expansion of the Thusong service centre programme. These centres are tremendously important because they assistant in bringing government closer to the people. Thusong service centres offer a one-stop, integrated community development centre which empowers communities with access to government information, services and resources for their own development.

The IFP supports this Budget.