World Toilet Summit Durban 4 to 6 December 2012: Department of Human Settlements briefing

Meeting report

Opening Remarks
The Chairperson welcomed everyone to the meeting. Parliament was responsible for the oversight in Government and wanted this workshop in order for the Committee to set the record straight with the Summit. Summits were normally held by state governments but this Summit was organised by an international organisation. Whenever someone came into South Africa on an issue related to service delivery, Parliament needed to be invited. The role of parliamentary committees was to make an impact in these areas, so the Committee needed to oversee it. The Committee needed to oversee the Department but the Committee’s role needed to be clearly defined. She noted that this would be a short meeting. Members not present at the meeting were performing oversight in other places.

Department of Human Settlements (DHS) briefing in preparation for the World Toilet Summit
Mr William Jiyana, DHS Chief Director: Stakeholder and Intergovernmental relations, gave the Committee information about the organisation hosting the Summit. Some of the things the South African Toilet Organisation (SATO), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), wanted to accomplish were to introduce public discussion, mobilise corporate action and highlight plight of affected people.

SATO had worked in Khayelitsha. He noted that the Department did not have information on the organisation until they had researched it. Most of SATO's plans seemed to be in the Western Cape and he said that the NGO seemed to have strong roots. When the Department went to the Summit it would represent South Africa. He explained some statistics on sanitation provided by SATO.

Mr Phillip Chauke, DHS Chief Director: Monitoring and Evaluation, told the Committee that the Department would still receive comments to edit over the course of the next day. He also noted the correction that the Summit would begin on 04 December. The Summit aimed to bring together non-profit organisations, government bodies, academia and other industry players to address the sanitation crisis that affected 2.6 billion people globally. The 12th World Toilet Summit, hosted by SATO and the Foundation for Professional Development (FPD), had been designed to muster the individual and collective minds of: academia, legal professionals, technical specialists, industry leaders, gender advocacy, civil society, governments, educators, and all other role players in the fields of sanitation, education, health and hygiene, and human rights.

The objectives of the Summit included: increased collaboration in attempt to provide safe accessible sanitation, developing of a Document of Principles that would facilitate and promote the collaboration of all relevant participants including the development of the World Toilet Workplan 2015 to promote the achievement of agreed goals, progress monitoring and reporting with measurable outcomes, and establishment of a Working Committee.

Mr Chauke then explained the breakdown of the Conference schedule over the three day period of its duration. He also updated the Committee on the current Departmental service delivery trends per province.

Discussion
Mr J Matshoba (ANC) had an issue with the establishment of a Working Committee as an objective of the Summit. At the conference the Department was to be there, but not Parliament. The conference could not hold plenary sessions until there was a view of Government present.  

Mr S Mokgalapa (DA) asked if the Department had participated in the Conference since it was created. If it had not participated, why was this the first time, because SATO was an active organisation in South Africa? At the Summit, Government could not just 'kiss the babies' and show them money. He endorsed what Mr Matshoba was saying. He wanted to know what Parliament’s role was and what would be happening.

Ms J Sosibo (ANC) asked, since the organisation was working in Khayelitsha, was the Department involved with it? She wondered why Ms Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was going to present the report. She preferred that the Committee presented a report. She did not know why the Committee was not invited until it had asked. She wanted to have a Member to submit the Committee’s own paper with a view to discussion. Mandela was not a part of the Committee.

Ms M Njobe (COPE) wondered if Government came in as 'other role players' in the Summit. Did the Department's staff think that the Members should be involved or was there pressure on the staff to invite the Members? She noticed that there was a big difference in numbers when looking at the Guateng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal service delivery comparatively, and wanted to know if this was because of a difference in population.

Mr Matshoba asked what SATO stood for. He asked what it meant when the presentation talked about civil society, specifically who its members were. He wanted to know, if it was an NGO, who was funding it.

The Chairperson explained that the invitation to the Summit did not come from the Department. The Committee had seen advertisements for the Summit. The Committee knew that it had a responsibility to oversee sanitation. When the Committee went to Kigali, it was not invited, but it had claimed centre stage. If the Department was going to implement the resolutions coming from the Summit, the Committee needed to oversee them. She explained that the organisation was not going to do as it pleased and it could not just come into the country - there were Government and legislative sectors. The Committee had been granted permission by Parliament to go there and be at the Summit. The Chairperson explained that the Committee was not fighting but Ms Madikizela-Mandela was not representing Parliament because she was not a member of the Committee.

Mr Jiyana thanked the Chairperson for clarifying the issue of invitation because that covered some of the Members’ questions. He explained that because of this, it also showed that the Department did not have influence on the Summit. The Department had started to talk to the organisation on Friday.

Mr Chauke said that the Department never participated in the Summits. The Summit was in South Africa and the Summit now had an obligation to listen to the Department. The Department had direct contacts now so it would send the input of Parliament to the Summit because it was very critical. On the issue of Ms Madikizela-Mandela's speaking, he would talk to the conference organisers, but Mr Chauke told the Committee that she would not be discussing the Committee's content. He said that, often when one went to a conference, one would find people there attacking Government. One would find 'liberal activists' there and Government did not have someone there to defend itself.

Mr Mokgalapa asked if there were other governments or parliaments coming to South Africa.

Mr Chauke said that it should not be privileged information, so he would ask the organisers.

Ms Funani Matlatsi, DHS CFO, said that as a Department it did respect the Portfolio Committee which had made some good points. The Committee knew the challenge the Department had when it took the sanitation issue from another Department. She suggested that maybe that Department had played some role in past Summits. She said that Ms Mandela would not be representing Parliament and that the Minister would be taking a larger role.

Mr Jiyana said that next April there would be a conference but the decision on who the keynote speaker would be did not come to the Department but went straight to the Minister. He never knew about SATO, the Department did not know about SATO and the Department had never worked with it. He knew the Social Justice Group and apparently SATO was under its umbrella. The Department was going to the Summit, to represent Government, with four or five officials and they needed to spread themselves out accordingly in order to be involved in different discussions and spread their views. He explained that the resolutions would not be binding on any government but NGOs would take them and mobilise ideas in their countries. NGOs were good because there needed to be an independent voice outside of Government, but the bad thing was when they started to nail Government in the face. The Department needed to be open-minded when it went to the Summit. He needed to check who in Government the organisation approached and what was said because the Summit organisers had had some conversations with another Department. There were four areas of conversation where the Department and Committee needed to decide where they wanted to be. Mr Jiyana reminded the Members that the Department had not been officially invited, but instead the Department had invited itself. The Department needed to see what it could learn from the Summit and implement.

Mr Matshoba asked Ms Matlatsi if more people could go to the Summit to increase influence.

Mr Jiyana identified some people from the Department that would be attending the Summit.

The Chairperson said that the finance section was important.

Mr Jiyana said that the strategy that one needed to work on was how to draw from the discussion during the Summit and put it back into a report. Plenaries were not a problem because the whole Department would sit in on them and take notes. He then facilitated which Members would accompany Department officials into the different discussions within the Summit. Mr Jiyana said that the compilation of the report would be dealt with by Mr Shaun Solomon and a parliamentary team. He also requested a date for the workshop that the Chairperson was proposing so the Department could work towards it. There were to be about 80-100 people in the workshop. He thanked the Chairperson.

The Chairperson said that it was easier to resolve issues when everyone was sitting together. There had been a culture of the Committee and the Department working closely together, and this was a good relationship. She wanted the Committee and the Department to work together, going forward. 

The meeting was adjourned.