KwaZulu-Natal Legislature  

PIETERMARITZBURG: 23 July 2009

Madam Speaker

The ultimate challenge of the Office of the Premier and the Hon. Premier, who is its public face, is to provide leadership in the province where fiscal discipline and frugality were deliberately neglected in the past. We expect nothing less from the Hon. Premier than to lead by example. In one respect, the Hon. Premier has already done so. On behalf of the Official Opposition, I would like to credit the Office of the Premier with the concerted effort to effect the 7.5 percent reduction in its budget against Goods and Services as required by the Hon. MEC for Finance.

This should translate into tangible restraint when the Office of the Premier spends on communication with the public and self-promotion. We sincerely hope that the extravagant expenditure on advertising, departmental catering and travel and subsistence in this department as well as all across the provincial government is now a thing of the past. Let us hope that the Hon. Premier has enough authority to impose the kind of discipline pledged in his own department on all his colleagues in the Executive Council, especially in those departments such as Local Government and Traditional Affairs which have openly challenged the implementation of the 7.5 percent budget reduction against wasteful expenditure.

As the Hon. Premier’s counterpart on the opposition benches, on this occasion and always in the future, I am determined to debate this particular portion of the budget - that is Vote 1 - on two levels. On one level, there is the budget allocated to the Office of the Premier, on another there is the broader context of the provincial budget. We in the Official Opposition believe that the Hon. Premier bears the ultimate political responsibility for both. In order to lead an efficient, honest and accountable government, the Office of the Premier must be the epitome of efficiency, clean governance and accountability. After all, the Premier, according to the strategic objectives of his department, aspires to co-ordinate and facilitate not only the developmental aspects of government but also those aspects that extend to the moral dimension of governance.

The IFP has broadly embraced the current provincial budget with its commitment to curbing reckless expenditure. But we fear that it may, like the previous budgets that led to multi-billion rand over-expenditure, flounder on the ground if mismanagement and corruption in government is not addressed first. In his State of the Province Address, the Hon. Premier committed his government to clean governance. I am sure none of us wants to see a repeat of mismanagement seen in the Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs during the previous term. Likewise, none of us wants to see a repeat of the political leadership that led to the massive overspending in the Department of Health.

The Office of the Premier will have our support and respect if it champions the following causes as part of its own budget priorities as well as its broad influence on the direction of the entire provincial government:

•     poverty and under-development, particularly in the rural KwaZulu Natal;

•     high incidence of child mortality;

•     youth unemployment and paucity of skills demanded by the formal sector;

•     HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malnutrition;

•     food production; and

•     declaration of war on corruption, fraud and cronyism

Madam Speaker, our well-meant advice doesn't end there. We also urge true commitment to public participation, not cynical politicking at taxpayers’ expense. We hope that in doing so the Hon. Premier will use his imbizos and public meetings to enlist genuine concerns of the people, not to blatantly garner votes for whatever election will follow next. One past example that springs to mind in this regard concerns the People’s Budget road shows pursued by the Office of the Premier during the previous term. On the surface, these functions sought to yield input for the budgets from the public but in practice none of the contributions could be incorporated into the budgets since they had already been finalised by the national and provincial Treasuries.

We likewise expect the Hon. Premier to exercise responsible leadership as the Executing Authority over Vote 10 – the Department of the Royal Household. The Hon. Premier is an unfortunate heir to the shambles left over from the previous term of government. This legacy includes a string of instances of gross mismanagement as well as an alarming overdraft accumulated since 2005 and the deliberate failure of the previous Executing Authority to subject the Acting Head of this Department to disciplinary action in terms of the Public Finance Management Act.

We also appeal to the Hon. Premier to exercise equally responsible leadership over all agencies attached to his office. One of them is Amafa/Heritage KwaZulu Natal which went through a particularly rough patch during the previous term of government, operating without an accounting authority for almost a year. As a result, Amafa’s activities on the ground, amounting to some 30 projects with many flagship multimedia centres among them, had been halted due to lack of access to funding. Amafa’s unhappy co-habitation with the Hon. Premier’s predecessor led to an abrupt dissolution of its council along with the dismissal of its CEO, both of which were eventually reversed. The challenges awaiting the Hon. Premier in all public entities are all the more pertinent given their reduced budgets as a result of the 7.5 percent cut.

One last issue we on the opposition benches would like the Hon. Premier to champion is the preservation of the provinces, including this one, in the face of the attempts now underway to redraw the political and administrative map of South Africa, not least by way of the 17th Constitution Amendment Bill. Our primary motivation for the preservation of the provinces does not lie in the contribution we made as a political party to the process that led to their creation. We are not even appealing to the Hon. Premier’s sense of self-preservation – after all he is the provincial leader of his party as well as the head of the provincial government with substantial powers and jurisdiction.

Our appeal is motivated solely by the interest of the people of KwaZulu Natal. The diffusion of power through its separation between different branches and devolution to different spheres of government is essential to provide the necessary checks and balances to prevent too much power being concentrated in too few hands. We do not want a wholesale centralisation of power at the national level. We have been there before. The four provinces of the old South Africa were mere administrative units of the central state. As such, there were mere mechanisms of control rather than devolution of power.

We contend that the importance and advantages of the provinces do not only extend to the strengthening of democracy but to improving our economy. The most effective recipe for development is one that harnesses local resources, honours peoples’ democratic choices and is responsive to their needs. It is only when local and provincial government is afforded sufficient powers that the notion of development, driven at local and provincial level, can take root. Local and provincial government must be allowed to govern, make mistakes, learn from its mistakes and most importantly establish a sound and interactive relationship with its local community.

As citizens of KwaZulu Natal, we do have real powers if we choose to use them. In this Legislature we can make policy and legislate on a range of issues including education, housing and health. Nothing but centralization of our powers in the hands of distant bureaucrats is stopping us from being inventive, dynamic and more responsive to the needs of our people. Let us keep and use our powers.

Contact:
Dr Bonginkosi Buthelezi
082 516 0156