National Assembly: 23rd June 2009

I want to start by wishing the new leadership of the Ministry well. 
 

The Minister has seemingly embraced the spirit of President Zuma's open-mindedness and eagerness to engage with the opposition, and the Deputy Minister is not only a passionate activist, but has also shown himself willing to listen to others in his seeking the best way forward.

However, I must say that while their enthusiasm for the department's expanded mandate is welcome, the reality is that the task is easier said than done and that a name change is not in itself of any significance beyond expressing a new political vision.  If government is serious about what it wants the dept to do, what we need to see is a clear and detailed programme, the creation of new posts and commensurate recruiting, a restructured budget and then action.

These are - perhaps understandably - not yet visible and we are expected I think to take it on trust that these will all be attended to. But the task is not easy, and we do not have the luxury of taking our time in sorting out the current service-delivery mess. Allow me to refer to just a few critical concerns.

First, is the new role of the department. Transversal functions are always problematic from a governance perspective, but the new mandate is huge. It is all very well to describe oneself as the "cog in the wheel of government", but quite another to see this translated into concrete outcomes. Being responsible for coordinating development planning, funding, implementation and monitoring across all three spheres of government and with civil society is a huge challenge. I have my doubts that the challenge will be successfully met.

Second, is the fact that although since its inception the department has been unable to adequately address the challenges leading to the present crisis, it is expected now to do that and much more.  Why should we all believe that everything will suddenly change? And if the challenges are indeed to be so easily overcome, one wonders why we got to this stage in the first place ? another instance perhaps of denialism by the previous leadership?

Third, is the fact that wrt just the local government function which was previously almost the sole focus of the department, there still remains so much to be done. Is the expanded brief not going to have the effect of lessening rather than increasing the level of attention to be paid to local government? We trust not.

We can package these concerns into questions. What will change eg, wrt funding provincial infrastructure backlogs? What will change wrt declining provincial outcomes in say health and education and their budget shortfalls? As a concrete example - who's going to sort out KZN's R3b overdraft? What will change in respect of the negative consequences of capacity constraints across all 3 spheres of government? What will change for those weak, largely rural municipalities, which are to all intents and purposes, non-viable? And in its eagerness to deliver, will the department respect or ride roughshod over chapter 3 - the draft constitutional amendment strongly suggests the latter and is a disgrace.

Having said this, for now, we will give the department the benefit of the doubt. We hope they succeed.
 

Contact:
Peter Smith
083 299 9687