Chairperson,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Honoured Guests,

At the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) we are deeply involved in socio-economic development. According to the Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, Socio-economic development refers to a monitored, manipulated or encouraged process that brings about changes in locations where people live, work, and relates to both social and economic factors.

Sen declares, and I quote, "In judging economic development, it is not adequate to look only at the growth of GNP or some other indicators of over-all economic expansion. We have to look also at the impact of democracy and political freedoms on the lives and capabilities of the citizens."

So now we have to ask ourselves, ‘is this what we’re doing?’, and, in the context of the Provincial Week decisions taken during this year’s annual meeting of the National Council of Provinces in April, are we ‘moving with the utmost speed to ensure social-economic advancement in our communities?” – to advance the cause which Sen has articulated so succinctly?

Sen's view is now widely accepted: development must be judged by its impact on people - judged not only by changes in their income but more generally in terms of their choices, capabilities and freedoms; and we should be concerned about the distribution of these improvements, and not be fooled or sidetracked by a game of averages. Economist Sen stresses the importance of education and investment in a sound social infrastructure to attain and sustain growth. As he points out, no nation has grown from poverty to prosperity without taking care of the basic needs of its people.

More than that, successful development also carries a connotation of lasting change. More than improvements in the well-being of citizens, it also revolves around the capacity of the economic, political and social system to provide for that well-being on a sustainable, long-term basis.

Let us examine what we are doing in this context. CoGTA should be a command point for the troops involved in the front line of service delivery – the officials from the district and local municipalities.

These are the people responsible for creating a better live for all, a goal we set ourselves with the intention to pull our people out of poverty and its effects such as indignity and humiliation. We continue to transform the institutions of the state and local government in particular to ensure the state is capable of delivering on its constitutional mandate and work together with the people in delivering services and other public goods.

The 1996 Constitution gave local government a new development mandate.

This mandate was more clearly defined in the White Paper on Local Government, published in March 1998. Developmental local government, as outlined in the White Paper, must be local government that works with citizens and groups in the community to find sustainable ways to meet their needs and improve the quality of their lives.

In terms of the White Paper, the notion of developmental local government is comprised of four basic characteristics:

• Maximising economic growth and social development: local government is instructed to exercise its powers and functions in a way that has a maximum impact on economic growth and social development of communities.
• Integrating and coordinating: local government integrates and coordinates developmental activities of other state and non-state agents in the municipal area.
• Democratic development: public participation: local government becomes the vehicle through which citizens work to achieve their vision of the kind of place in which they wish to live.
• Leading and learning: municipalities must build social capital, stimulate the finding of local solutions for increased sustainability and stimulate local political leadership.

Over the last eighteen (18) years, since the inception of democracy, our government has reached out to the people through its municipalities and others agents of state, making spectacular progress in extending service delivery to those most in need. The Census of 2011 bears eloquent witness to this – today more than 91% of our people have access to piped water; 57% have access to a flush toilet; 85% have access to electricity for lighting; and 62% have access to household refuse removal.

This is not a perfect score, but it’s a long, long way from where we came from.

CoGTA and its provincial and municipal partners have a whole lot of work to do. And ongoing assessments have shown that the system of cooperative governance needs strengthening if we hope to succeed in the challenging task that lies ahead.

For an effective system of cooperative governance, each sphere must effectively perform its roles and responsibilities. That is the national sphere – CoGTA; the provincial sphere, in the form of each of the nine provincial governments; the municipal sphere, involving the work in cities and towns, down to the ward sphere, where we find those most in need. Each sphere has a major role to play, and no one role is more important than any other.

The Department of Cooperative Governance has a number of roles and responsibilities in this scenario, including the development and implementation of policy and legislation for provincial and local government; monitoring compliance with legislation and policies; providing support to provinces and municipalities; monitoring the performance of local government, and coordinating and facilitating service delivery. 

Nonetheless, it is a role subject to continuous review, the most recent recommendations being to:

• Place greater emphasis on the importance of the supervisory roles and responsibilities of both national and provincial government: for example in the monitoring, evaluation and support of local government, including adequate research and analysis capacity, and policy leadership that responds to evidence from the field.

• Strengthening the capacity of CoGTA in functions such as oversight: that is monitoring and evaluation of the performance of local and provincial government; the governance of the powers and functions of each sphere; implementation of the planning cycle; and effective administration of important legislation which aims to provide for more effective service delivery.

• Finding ways to strengthen provincial government, so that it might more effectively perform its oversight roles, given that provincial local government departments have the smallest staff, weak capacity, and the lowest budgets of all provincial departments.

• Finding ways in which the Offices of the Premiers can take a more active role in intergovernmental coordination of the government’s Programme of Action and enable their more effective participation in development planning. 

• Clarifying the roles and responsibilities of district and local municipalities, so that waste and duplication is reduced or eliminated, thereby reducing intergovernmental tensions.

Despite the remarkable progress, there is clear evidence that local government remains a troubled sphere of government. Many municipalities are incapable of meeting the most basic service delivery needs of their poorest and most disadvantaged communities. One of the effects of this is a growing incidence of service delivery protest.

These challenges have been highlighted by the 2009 study on the State of Local Government, and the 2010 study commissioned on the State of Local Government Human Resources development. 

These studies revealed capacity constraints and weaknesses in governance and institutional performance, inhibiting improvement in  performance and service delivery

They point to:

1. low human resource and financial capacity;
2. high incidence of irregular and inappropriate appointments;
3. poor skills development programmes;
4. ineffective leadership and institutional management;
5. under-expenditure on capital budgets;
6. ineffective revenue collection strategies resulting in burgeoning municipal debt;
7. weak financial controls and negative audit outcomes;
8. nepotism, fraud and corruption due to the collapse of the rule of law;
9. lack of effective performance management systems;
10. weak internal oversight and regulation due to weak political leadership and management capacity, and blurring of lines between councillors and officials who also hold political office; and
11. huge service delivery backlogs.

Against this background, service delivery protest is hardly surprising.

The National Planning Commission’s 2011 Diagnostic Report showed significant disparities in capacity, skills and performance in the state. Yet building a capable and effective state is a key priority if we really want to combat the high levels of joblessness, poverty and inequality in the country.  Effective state spending on health, education, transport, housing, water, energy and sanitation can lift literally millions of people out of poverty, and reduce the socio-economic inequities at the same time. So reason tells us that capability and effectiveness remains the critical challenge to the efforts of the state.

A crucial element of this is inadequate ability to project manage the grants allocated by the fiscal system, and which are based upon principles of redistribution.  The poor management of these funds by some municipalities leads to service delivery breakdowns and community alienation. To address poor spending on, for example, the Municipal Infrastructure Grant by some municipalities, the department together with its provincial counterparts and sector departments, engage with municipalities to understand the root causes and provide timely advice to resolve problems.

All government programmes require high levels of intergovernmental coordination to succeed. Another word for this is ‘cooperation’, which is, of course, what cooperative governance is all about. Yet poor coordination has been repeatedly cited as one of the main reasons for the state’s failure to more adequately meet the needs of communities.

There is, without doubt, a pressing need for improved relations between the sphere’s of government and critical to this is inter-sphere accountability.  This is a solid foundation for effective cooperative governance. 

I would say that all efforts to improve delivery will prove inadequate unless we recognise the need for systemic reforms, including efforts to improve capacity.

Having identified intergovernmental relations as a weak area, the department is now monitoring the general conduct of intergovernmental relations in the country, thereby seeking to ensure that all the efforts of the three spheres is strategic, and highly focused on the effective coordination of government’s programme of action.  A series of assessments of the effectiveness of the IGR structures related to each sphere of government is in process. The first study focused on the functionality of district Intergovernmental Relations (IGR) forums in compliance with the Act. Draft District IGR Functionality Guidelines are now being developed.

The Department has also developed the Intergovernmental Monitoring, Support and Interventions Bill, to better govern and regulate the application of sections 139 and 100 of the Constitution. Greater alignment between the sections is envisaged.

If the IMSI Bill is passed into law, it will give the Minister powers to set down regulations regarding certain aspects of interventions, such as prescribing the role of the administrator; defining parameters for ‘early-warning’ systems, and broadening the interventions environment to include conditions for support measures.

These elements will collectively boost the ability of the department to progressively strengthen the governance and institutional arrangements of the state, and these in turn will form the ‘bed-rock’ from which accelerated service delivery can be planned and executed.

The amendment to the Municipal Systems Act in 2011 is one of the strategies aimed at redressing issues stemming from the 2009 State of Local Government Report, particularly in relation to institutional and administrative challenges that impact on the ability of municipalities to perform their functions and deliver on their service delivery obligations.  It is part of government’s resolve to professionalise local public administration; and thus ensure fair, efficient, effective and transparent municipal administration.

Also in the pipeline are revisions to the municipal regulations. The development of a single set of Regulations for all categories of municipal employees would have been our ideal, but it has been decided to prioritise the development of Regulations for municipal managers and managers directly accountable to municipal managers. At the same time, the department is also engaged with the development of Regulations for all other municipal employees.  The two sets of Regulations will address the weaknesses in recruitment, placement and the general management of the human resource capital of the organisation.

The Department also continuously monitors the filling of all section 57 positions in terms of the Municipal Systems Act. This is done to ensure that appointments are compliant with the relevant prescripts, and that competent persons are appointed to deal with the socio-economic challenges that confront our municipalities.

Chapter 5 of the National Development Plan explains that sustainable communities are built through well-structured development planning processes that help municipalities to optimally manage natural resources and environmental risks in the pursuit of socio-economic goals. Integrated Development Planning is a collaborative planning process which produces a strategic plan designed to guide municipalities and their entities to systematically address service delivery backlogs; encourage socio-economic development; preserve and conserve the natural environment; address spatial disparities of development and deliver on the agreed priorities. And in the spirit of cooperative governance, IDP’s are also meant to play a key role in ensuring greater intergovernmental cooperation, integration and alignment.

Another area of municipal planning support is the development and implementation of the Revised IDP Framework which seeks to:

• guide sector integration, and
• provide guidelines, mechanisms and tools to link planning, budgeting, implementation, monitoring and reporting. 

One of the important elements of the Framework is the provision of the establishment of National and Provincial IDP national support teams consisting of national and provincial sector departments at each level, focusing on support to municipalities. This is done by:

• conducting an assessment of the status of all the performance areas;

• developing objectives, strategies, programmes and

• developing projects that respond to identified challenges in the status report.

To date, municipalities in the Provinces of Limpopo, Northern Cape, Free State and Gauteng have undergone workshops on the content of the Framework. The other provinces are targeted for the remainder of the financial year and beyond.

Following the local government elections in 2011, municipalities were supported to establish and induct ward committees. After the ward committee elections, the department rolled-out an induction programme for newly elected ward committee members. This induction formed part of a broader capacity building programme consisting of both accredited and non-accredited skills development learning areas.

Another priority is to strengthen the functionality of ward committees, and the development and implementation of service improvement plans in municipal wards is one of the key performance areas aimed at achieving this, thereby deepening participatory democracy at local level. Importantly, these plans provide an environment for ward committees to participate in core municipal processes – that is planning, implementation, and monitoring of service delivery at ward level, as well as assisting municipalities with practical implementation of well planned, resourced and more structured participatory programmes.

To put it another way, the people for whom the products are designed are now being asked to help design the products. This is a refinement to the existing ward level service improvement plans – over 1,300 ward level service improvement plans have been developed to date and are currently being implemented in municipal wards across all provinces.

Early in May 2013, government established the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent  - MISA - as a dedicated component of CoGTA to provide technical support to municipalities. The aim is to enable the acceleration of municipal infrastructure development and improve the operations and maintenance of this infrastructure.

Through MISA , 66 Technical Professionals and 25 Professional Service Providers have been assigned to support at least 107 municipalities in the country on infrastructure delivery and maintenance. This support is targeted mainly at the development and maintenance of infrastructure for water and sanitation, energy supply, water management, as well as roads and storm water drainage. This Support is mainly intended to ensure:

• Accelerated spending of funds allocated to municipalities through conditional grants. It is hoped that this will lead to the more rapid development of infrastructure, and expanded access to services.

• A reduction in water and electricity losses, allowing municipalities to save funds they can direct to other developmental priorities.

• Reduction of bucket toilets and replacement with facilities that meet the minimum standards.

• Construction and refurbishment of water purification plants.

• Refurbishment of landfill sites to bring them up to standards set by the Department of Environmental Affairs.

Environmental issues represent another area that we cannot afford to overlook. Sustainable development for local government which incorporates environmental performance is a key requirement for developing the planning capacity required to ensure environmentally sustainable development.  It is for these reasons that as part of Revised IDP Framework workshops, the same targeted municipalities are presented with the content of Climate Change Response Toolkit.

It is important to mention that due to the cross-cutting nature of climate change, the conceptualisation and development of the Toolkit is the collaborative work of the Departments of Cooperative Governance, Environmental Affairs, and SALGA. The Toolkit is aimed at guiding municipalities in integrating climate change risks and opportunities into the IDPs. The Department is not unaware of the difficulties experienced when explaining the significance of climate change to poverty-stricken communities.

One of CoGTA’s key priorities is to intensify the fight against corruption.  The interventions that have been put in place include training section 79 committees on ethics management. This will ensure that councillors play their oversight role more effectively and will create a culture within the municipalities that is intolerant to fraud and corruption.

The department has also entered into partnership with the Directorate of Priority Crime Investigation -The Hawks - and the Special Investigation Unit (SIU). The partnership will ensure that allegations of fraud and corruption are investigated and concluded speedily, and that officials found guilty of corrupt practices are charged and convicted. This will include investigations on irregular and unauthorized expenditures as pointed out in the Auditor General's report.

There are also processes underway to review the current Development Planning Framework in line with the National Development Planning vision 2030. One area of focus is to review the current Intergovernmental Planning Framework in an attempt to address some of the intergovernmental planning shortcomings. The current Municipal Planning and Performance Regulations are also being reconsidered.

Another important subject is that of ICTs. The department has established a need to focus on ICT’s in municipalities, and this has resulted in the development of a concept document that outlines the role of the department in relation to ICT’s in municipalities. The concept document will form the basis for discussion in drafting an ICT in Local Government Policy Framework.

Equally important is the question of capacity-building, and a number of initiatives are being implemented. During this financial year, the department will develop a strategy to make local government a career of choice. The aim is bring together further education and training institutions, the LGSETA, as well as the private sector to craft a clear career path on local government.

Targeted capacity development and training programmes around IDP’s and human resources are also being extended to municipalities. This is to ensure that while we are capacitating and strengthening the skills of the current workforce in the sector, we are, through collaborative engagements with various other stakeholders, creating a pipeline of supply for the sector.

Yet even skilled municipalities will struggle to advance with dysfunctional ward committees. That is why one of the key priorities is the creation of functional and effective ward committees. The department’s short term aim is to ensure that a further 2000 ward level service improvement plans are developed and implemented in municipalities. This is being done through the implementation of relevant support measures including a targeted District support programme for specific municipalities with the highest capacity needs; plus monitoring and reporting on the implementation of ward operational plans as well as capacity building.

Ward committee functionality has been further strengthened by the implementation of a Framework on the payment of Out of Pocket Expenses for ward committee members in Grade 1-3 municipalities, up to a maximum of R500 a month. The introduction of this funding has assisted greatly in improving the operations of ward committees, making it possible for ward committee members to travel to meetings and attend to community issues in their wards.

Where required the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent (MISA) is requested to support municipalities. In August and September 2013, engagements with high under-spending municipalities in Limpopo and Mpumalanga were prioritised as municipalities in the two provinces collectively contributed 56% of the 2012/13 MIG under-spending.

Cooperative governance is not the sole concern and responsibility of the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. It is the enterprise of all in government and society. Cooperation and coordination in government should be the top priority of all government departments to ensure integrated and effective service delivery to the people. Our department just happens to be the lead champion of this cause. Please join us.  I thank you.