Villa Via Hotel, Cape Town, 5 July 2004
"Challenges facing the NCOP, Provincial Legislatures and SALGA in promoting co-operative governance and inter-governmental relations"
Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, Joyce Kgoali,
The Speaker of the National Assembly, Baleka Mbete,
Deputy Chairperson of the NCOP, MJ Mahlangu and the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde,
Provincial Speakers and Deputy Speakers,
Chief Whip of the National Assembly, Mbulelo Goniwe,
National and Provincial Whips,
Chairperson and Members of SALGA,
Colleagues and comrades,
I am pleased that we are able to meet to discuss a matter of such critical importance, the effective co-ordination between the National Council of Provinces, provincial legislatures and structures of local governance.
Let me begin by congratulating the NCOP for launching NCOP Vision 2019 last week, which provides a clear guide regarding the direction the Council believes would enable it to best serve the citizens of this country.
Comrades, this workshop takes place at an opportune moment, given that we are focusing even more on accelerating and improving service delivery throughout the country in this second decade of freedom. It is therefore of utmost importance that our structures of governance align themselves and be ready to meet such objectives.
Chairperson, fortunately we have clear guidelines regarding the task at hand today, because our Constitution eloquently outlines the relationship between the spheres of government.
Chapter 3 of the Constitution binds all spheres of government to a culture of co-operation, mutual assistance, support, consultation and co-ordination for the good of the country.
The proposed Intergovernmental Relations Framework Bill further provides the possibility for the state to function more as an integrated, coherent and cohesive unit. On the legislative side, the NCOP is tasked with the responsibility of bringing together all spheres of government, as mandated by the Constitution. The NCOP is therefore unique as it is where the three spheres of government meet.
According to our Constitution the three spheres are distinctive, interdependent and interrelated.
The relationship of regulation and oversight of government defines how the three spheres are interrelated. Provinces and municipalities exercise their distinctive powers within set regulatory and oversight framework.
Provinces exercise their powers and perform their functions within the regulatory frameworks set by national government. The national sphere retains the responsibility for monitoring compliance with those frameworks, and if needs be, to intervene when constitutional or statutory obligations are not fulfilled.
On the local government front, the completion of the restructuring process has also prepared this sphere for more active participation in enhancing the co-operation of the three spheres.
After a long phased transition that began in 1993, a new system of local government came into being in December 2000, and 843 local authorities were restructured into 284 democratically elected municipalities throughout the country.
The tasks of municipalities require, amongst other things, that they directly include communities within processes of municipal governance, utilise resources for socio-economic development within their municipal area, and extend service delivery to redress the legacy of inequality by meeting basic needs.
Local Government is positioned as a key site for service delivery and is a catalyst for local economic development in the next decade. Therefore, this should put a lot of pressure to bear on the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), to improve on the manner in which municipalities have been conducting their business.
During the massive door to door campaign conducted during the elections, the majority of households complained about poor municipal service delivery which included inferior water and electricity service provision and poor customer care which included inaccurate billing systems.
We can do all we can to make municipalities successful financially, but if we do not get the basic customer care or Batho Pele issues right, ordinary citizens will continue to say the local government sphere is failing them.
We must acknowledge that some members of SALGA are already looking at resolving these challenges. The NCOP is best suited to perform an oversight role in this regard, to ensure that municipalities indeed meet the expectations of residents.
Provinces should also be on hand to assist in improving these services, thereby providing the seamless efficient service provision from spheres of government simultaneously, with Parliament, especially the NCOP, being the eyes and ears of the public.
Chairperson, let me emphasise that the NCOP can be described as the institutionalisation of the principles of co-operative governance at national legislative level, since it brings the national, provincial and local government spheres into a single structure.
It therefore provides a mechanism for improving interaction and co-operation between governmental spheres, and to ensuring the responsiveness of national government to provincial and local government matters.
In this regard, the NCOP also plays a very critical oversight role, in terms of executive action.
This includes oversight role related to intergovernmental relations and co-operative governance at national executive level in the following areas:
As the custodian of intergovernmental relations and co-operative governance, the NCOP needs to critically review the current oversight role that it is playing, against the interest of ensuring that the state is providing an effective, integrated and sustainable development to poor, underdeveloped and marginalized communities.
Although intergovernmental relations are primarily an executive function, legislatures have an important intergovernmental role to play. Legislatures are responsible for the formal adoption of laws that confer powers on the executive and administration, and thus for overseeing their implementation.
In this sense, legislatures play a critical role in promoting intergovernmental co-operation. The expanded role of legislative committees in overseeing performance of administrations provides considerable scope for voluntary co-operation between legislative committees, with many potential benefits for improving the quality of governance and oversight.
The NCOP also plays a key role in processing Section 76 legislation, but we need to ask ourselves whether the provincial legislatures are given enough room to participate in this process effectively, and how can we improve their participation.
We also need to ensure that representatives from various provinces take full advantage of the NCOP process to ensure that our legislation is informed by people's realities on the ground.
Chairperson, we are raising these issues and challenges so that the NCOP, Provinces and structures of local governance should realize the important tasks that the constitution requires them to perform.
We are also discussing these matters to make sure that the NCOP effectively fulfils its role of being the custodian of inter-governmental relations and co-operative governance.
We can then be able to cement the relations between the executive and parliament, for the objective of improving the service we all provide to the people of this country.
I thank you.