Hansard: NCOP: Unrevised hansard
House: National Council of Provinces
Date of Meeting: 07 Jun 2023
Summary
No summary available.
Minutes
UNREVISED HANSARD
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF PROVINCES
WEDNESDAY, 7 JUNE 2023
PROCEEDINGS OF THE HYBRID NATIONAL COUNCIL OF PROVINCES
Watch: Plenary
The Council met at 14:04.
The Chairperson took the Chair and requested members to observe a moment of silence for prayers or meditation.
The CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Hon delegates, let us please be reminded that the Rules and processes apply for this hybrid sitting. I would like to remind delegates of the Rules relating to virtual and hybrid meetings and sittings, in particular, subrule 21,22 and 23 of Rule 103, which provides as follows. The hybrid sitting constitute a sitting of the National Council of Provinces. Delegates in the hybrid sitting enjoy the same powers and privileges that apply in a sitting of the National Council of Provinces. For purposes of a quorum, all the delegates who are logged onto the virtual platform shall be considered present.
Delegates must switch on their videos if they speak. Delegates should ensure that the microphones on their electronic devices are muted and must always remain muted, unless they are permitted to speak. All delegates in the Chamber must connect to the virtual platform as well as insert their cards to register on the Chamber system. Delegates who are physically in the Chamber must use the floor microphones. As members know that all delegates may participate in the discussion through the chat room.
In addition, I would like to take this opportunity to remind delegates that the interpretation facility is active.
Permanent delegates, special delegates, the SA Local Government Association, Salga, representatives and members of the executive on the virtual platform are requested to ensure that the interpretation facility on their electronic devices is properly activated to facilitate access to the interpretation services. Permanent delegates, special delegates, Salga representatives and members of the executive in the Chamber should use the interpretation instrument on their desk to access their interpretation facilities.
Hon delegates, before we proceed to motions, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the Minister and the Deputy Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, the Minister and the Deputy Minister of Basic Education, permanent delegates, MECs, all special delegates and Salga representatives to the House. Hon delegates, please note that the Whippery have agreed that the Policy Debate on Budget Vote dealing with Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs will be dealt with first. I was checking the programme somewhat, hon Nchabeleng. And he will be followed by Basic Education. Therefore, the Order Paper has been amended accordingly. I have also been informed that there will be no notices of motion or motions without notice today. Hon delegates, we will now proceed to the First Order and Second Order on this debate on Budget Vote 3: Co-operative Governance Appropriation Bill B3–2023, National Assembly – section 77 and Policy debate on Budget Vote 15: Traditional Affairs, Appropriation Bill B3–2023, National Assembly – section 77. I now call on the hon Thembi Nkadimeng, the Minister of Co- operative Governance and Traditional Affairs to step forward and move to the podium and open the debate.
APPROPRIATION BILL
(Policy debate)
Policy debate on Budget Vote No 3 - Co-operative Governance: Policy debate on Budget Vote No 15 - Traditional Affairs:
The MINISTER OF CO-OPERATIVE GOVERNANCE AND TRADITIONAL AFFAIRS: Hon Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, the chairpersons and members of the committee, members of the provincial executive committees, hon members, fellow Cabinet members, Deputy Ministers of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, the Chairperson of the National House of Traditional and Khoi-San Leaders, the Chairperson of the Municipal Demarcation Board and its members, President of the SA Local Government Association, Salga, Director-Generals of Department of Co-operative Governance and the Department of Traditional Affairs, our acting CEO of the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent, Misa, organised labour, Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union, Imatu, and the SA Municipal Workers Union, Samwu, fellow South Africans and ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Let me first appreciate the opportunity to table Budget Votes 3 and 15 for the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. I am joined by the two Deputy Ministers who will also be assisting me in tabling this Budget Vote, that is Prince Zolile Burns-Ncamashe and Parks Tau.
It is truly an honour to come to this august House to outline to you an all South Africans our plans and provide progress on the implementation of our programmes since our last year budget. The tabling of this budget is an important and an integral part of our democratic government as explained by former President Nelson Mandela. When he presented to the then senate which is today the National Council of Provinces, he delivered that budget on 1 June 1995. I quote the hon Madiba, the father of our democracy when he said:
Opportunities for us to account in this manner before the senate are few and far between. We therefore value this occasion for critical engagement with the House that is central in the body politic of the nation.
It is within that spirit that we come before you even that importance to explain on how we plan to move the nation forward. On a more negative and sobering not, the developments in Hammanskraal are a dark mark for our democratic dispensation. And as Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, we respectfully express firstly our condolences to those families who have lost, needlessly so, their loved ones to the cholera outbreak. And we will, systematically with the President be visiting the area tomorrow with the Minister of the Department of Water and Sanitation to ensure that episodes of such nature do not continue.
We will be, amongst other things, putting in place the water resilience action plan which has been allowed by the Minister and the Deputy Minister yesterday when they were outlining the blue drop, green drop and no drop resolutions on how the report and the certification of municipalities need to change effect to ensure that we move to a better course.
On another sad note, as hon members in this House, we note the untimely demise of Mme Tina Joemat-Pettersson and we say that may her soul rest in peace and may her family find strength to continue. As both Houses we know that we have lost valuable inputs from one of our own.
We are at the initiation of accelerating youth economic emancipation for a sustainable future, which is the ... [Inaudible.] ... the young people of today in their month are yearning to achieve. This is the 47th anniversary of the June
16 Soweto Uprising and other related uprisings which are encouraging us to deliver a Budget Vote that inspired and looking fundamentally to the development of young people.
As we draw closer to the 2024 elections, the noises will be the loudest in the environment of those who will be making many promises about how they can make changes in the people’s lives. As Amilcar Cabral puts it and I quote:
Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.
We present this budget fully taking into consideration the plight of the communities struggling with the triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality. This means that ours should be the people’s budget, taking into consideration the need for communities across 257 municipalities.
In respect of Vote 3, the department approved budget allocation for 2023-24 financial year which amounts to R121 billion. This allocation is expected obviously to
increase on an annual average of 5,9% - being R121 billion as I have said in this financial year cascading in line with our
Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, to R135 billion in the 2025-26 MTEF period.
The largest portion of the budget is allocated to transfers, at about R364 billion, which is 95% of the total allocated budget for municipalities. And these grants include local government equitable share and the Municipal Infrastructure Grant, commonly known as Mig, and realising our own growth at R7,8% and 4% respectively over the MTEF period.
So, local government equitable share comprises of about 81,8%, which is R309 billion of the department’s spending over the medium term. In this amount is an additional R8,1 billion to compensate municipalities for the increased cost of bulk electricity and water, as well as the Mig allocation being
R55 billion over the MTEF period. I thought you will clap hands, that’s a significant ... [Inaudible.].
In respect of Vote No 15, the appropriation’s budget – and it’s the first time - for the 2023-24 budget to amount to R193 million. This allocation is expected to increase to
R200 million in 2024-25 and R209 million in the outer year of 2025-26. Out of this allocation, we will take 25%, which is a transfer payment to the religious linguistics, which is what
we call the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, CRL Rights Commission, which translates to R49 million in 2023-24, and outer years of R51 million in 2025-26.
The theme we present this budget under is, “Local Government is Everybody’s Business.” This theme is a clarion call for action for all South Africans to come together and play their part, including the private sector in ensuring an effective and efficient functioning of a community centred local government.
In line with our spirit institutionalisation of District Development Model, DDM, which is part of our constitutional democracy enshrined and supported by our intergovernmental relation framework, ensuring that the objectives of local government are pursued as mandated in section 152. So, we bring a collective oversight accountability across all spheres of government that can bear the desired impact, one of oversight in cross sectional planning, joint implementation and ensuring that we ensure joint accountability respectively in all spheres of government.
In rounding up all nine provinces to ensure that we all deliver holistically to the people, and what the people of South Africa desire. As part of our efforts to institutionalise the DDM, we recognise the importance of working collaboratively with our traditional leader ...
Sepedi:
... magoii a rena ...
English:
If you consider the Eastern Seaboard Development initiative for example, all indications are that a lot of the development will be taking place in areas under the custodianship of ...
IsiZulu:
...amakhosi.
English:
So, accordingly, there will be a critical partner as we mobilise society and our communities to ensure that our plans are put in place, informed by and grounded by their local contextual realities. No one knows the realities of our people far much better than ...
IsiZulu:
... amakhosi ethu.
English:
This far we have already initiated initial engagements with the affected local houses of traditional and Khoi-San leaders in Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, and we will be taking those engagements in ensuring that we further deliberate on how do we make sure that the principles and lives of InvestRural Master Plan are realised in our communities.
As I said, the Eastern Seaboard is one of our key demonstrations that our regional spatial development framework’s renewable energy feasibility study and infrastructure master plan regional integrated transport masterplan, social facilitation and all these keys should be run hand-in-hand with traditional leaders.
On section 154 on interventions in municipalities, we need to commit ourselves to a greater policy coherence across the three spheres of government, supported by the sound policy decision. So, for us we need to adequately ensure that local government is everybody’s business and is able to respond to the capable and developmental state we need so connectively.
Chapter 13 of course of the National Development Plan also outlines the vision of a capable and development state. Within that we have noted the recently concerns of the Auditor- General of South Africa when she released the 2021-22 audit for individual municipalities on 31 May 2023 under the theme: “A culture of accountability will improve service delivery.”
Our main concern are those municipalities’ that have regressed as well as those that have not improved as per the audit outcomes report. And in this regard, the Department of Co- operative Governance will implement the following initiatives in ensuring that we change the situation for the better. We have created a multistakeholder approach with clear roles and responsibilities in supporting local government, including the Auditor-General. So, our collaboration will be with National Treasury, Salga, provinces and the Auditor-General in provinces to ensure that we have already commenced with the work that is needed in monitoring functionality, particularly employees who are sitting in the financial positions as employees in municipalities to take responsibility for the audit processes of the councils.
Linked to the theme of this accountability, the Ministry has also launched a Local Government Anti-Corruption Forum and the
Local Government Ethical Leadership Institute during September last year. And this will assist us in ensuring that, amongst others, we also regulate the code of conduct for councillors which will soon be promulgated to address the stability within councils but to ensure that Council is reminded of their accountability and consequence framework that they need to adopt in outlining all the duties that they perform in the Council on a day-to-day basis.
The professionalisation of the public service as approved by Cabinet in November 2022 requires, amongst other things, that senior managers across these spheres must be appointed on merit. An accountability framework and competency framework is being rolled out by the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs in all municipalities to ensure that we hire appropriately but also people who are skilled enough to take our municipalities forward.
But we have also noted green shoots and signs of positivity in the report of the audit as confirmed by the Auditor-General of South Africa in their audit outcomes. For example, when you look at the number of municipalities in 2007 that fall within the category of having disclaimer or adverse outcomes, they were at around 111. Last year the number fell to 34, and this
year the Auditor-General confirmed that the number subsequently fell to 21. So, moving from 111 cascading down to about 21 municipalities, it is still important for us to even put more pressure to ensure that that category remains at zero. This is significant improvement. Of course we will not celebrate, but we will still work hard to ensure that the 21 municipalities are out. But as we ... khawuthule man [keep quiet, man] But as we continue and as I quote the Auditor- General when she said that a clean audit outcome is not always an indicator of good service delivery and does not always directly correlate to the lived experience of all communities in a municipal area. She continued and said that a clean audit is one where the unqualified audit is free of material misstatement and that there are no material findings on an annual performance report. And lastly, she said that there are no material findings of noncompliance with key legislation.
I hope you have been listening very well to what the Auditor- General said. With regard to local government funding, we will collaborate with Salga to explore proposed alternative vertical funding. And we will also come to this House to ensure that we share the views and thoughts of what could turn around the situation of municipalities financially, particularly small and rural municipalities, in ensuring that
we give them more incentives and more development to ensure that they are able to get duties and local economical government and much better equitable share.
While tangible progress has been made in ensuring that their obligations are met, out of the stable municipalities, which have increased from 16 to 27, which is an increase of about 11 from the previous financial year. This cannot be celebrated because the number of dysfunctional municipalities is glaringly looking at us at 66, but we are moving to ensure that we do change the situation.
Our democracy is maturing and competitive politics in the local government sphere ensures that we need to change the way we run our municipalities and our electoral system. The year 2021 gave us an outcome of 70 hung council, what we commonly call coalitions. The instability caused by this change in the executive due to coalition dynamics over the past year has underscored the fact that political parties in South Africa are clearly struggling to cope. One unscrupulous manipulation by smaller parties in fighting the Council’s inability to adopt budgets, inability to stick to integrated development plans, IDPs, creating more service delivery backlogs even when funds have been allocated. So, to effectively address this, we
will require an inclusive approach that will be bringing to such a coalition framework that will need to be passed into a draft Bill to ensure that the Local Government Municipal Structures Act is amended and includes more stringent measures and regulations to be developed to govern arrangements in municipalities where coalitions are in place and enforce some of coalitions that need to be run.
Others do believe that it is only unstable when others put a motion of no confidence, but it is only correct when they are the ones who put the motion of no confidence. So, legislation is desirable and important. With regard to infrastructure development, we are coming up, working with the Department of Water and Sanitation and the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent, Misa, in rolling out our training programme for water and wastewater process controllers, which is aimed at capacitating municipal officials in low and middle capacity municipalities. To date, Misa has deployed around 103 built environment professionals, 86 of which are professionally registered with statutory bodies as engineers and town planners to provide technical support to municipalities. We are also ensuring that with the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, we take the opportunities of energy
reticulation to ensure that we improve the assets of the municipality.
These young graduates and experiential training are also to date at a 70 in trades like electrical, civil and town planning across the country. Out of this 31 are females and the remaining are 39 and are as follows. We have deployed or dispatched to Gauteng 16, to Eastern Cape 12, to Free State 7, North West 9, Western Cape 2, Northern Cape 1 and KwaZulu- Natal 8, Mpumalanga 11 and Limpopo 4. To further this, a total of 100 apprentices in the field of plumbing, electrical, diesel mechanic, bricklaying and motor mechanic are deployed across the country. We intend to ensure that we support our municipalities and do much work inward as municipalities are supposed to do. Hon Chair, my time is running out, but I would like to touch on national disaster wherein the national management committee is running quite a number of disaster risk management framework which has been adopted and ensuring that it will be settling to Cabinet on 30 June 2023. We have also had a support of 28 qualifying students with bursaries that are provided for undergraduates to make sure that they assist our municipalities with resilient planning for their towns and cities.
We have also noted the constitutional ruling with regard to the Traditional and Khoi-San Leadership Act which was handed down and we will be bringing it back to Parliament to ensure that public participation is encouraged and I do think that the Deputy Minister, Burns-Ncamashe, will lead us into that. And we will also be looking into resourcing the institutions of traditional leadership and Khoi-San with regard to quite a number of issues that the Deputy Minister will deal with in ensuring that the funds ... and address the backlog with regard to trades which are able to make them.
We will also be giving the above with regard to result-based management which is being operating as a war room that the department has taken forth. And Deputy Minister tau will take us through this. In conclusion, I strongly believe that the budget debate will go a long way to add and provide the much- needed advice and guidance to the possible solutions in addressing the challenges faced by municipalities. Local government is everybody’s business, play your part. I thank you.
The CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Hon Minister, thank you very much. Hon members, I will do something that is fairly unusual. I have to do because there must be a flow and the speakers
must do what they came here to do without any disruption. It is an announcement.
The PRESENCE OF THE SECRETARY OF THE GAUTENG LEGISLATURE AND THE KENYAN DELEGATION IN COUNCIL
(Announcements)
The CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: The first announcement is that the Secretary of the Gauteng legislature Mr Peter Skosana is present. He is seated somewhere in the gallery. He may have went out for a short while, but he is with us. So, we welcome him and whoever is present and is accompanying him to this sitting.
The second announcement, is really about the Kenyan delegation. I am told are expected to be here – they are here. It is a multipart delegation of members of the National Assembly of Kenya. The delegation is led by the hon Fabian Muli and the hon Fatuma Mohammed. I have a list of names with me; Jerusha Mumanyi, Member of Parliament, MP, the hon Gedeon Kimaiyo, MP, the hon Jayne Kihara, MP, the hon Ali Wario, MP, the hon Antoney Kibagendi, MP, the hon George Koimburi, MP, the hon Paul Kibet, MP, and the hon Hiribae Said Buya, MP.
They are also accompanied by two staff members, Martha Ndukuyu and Elelei Siman. Thank you very much. You are welcomed.
The delegation is really here to obtain some perspective of the South African parliamentary system. That is why they are here, hon Nchabeleng, to have a sense of what we are doing. As I have over and over again in the past, they are here not to copy what we do, but it is part of a study visit. We do the same as well go to other countries, meet parliamentarians and so on, the focus being to identify best practice and find the best possible way of adopting the best practice for our own specific set of circumstances. Thank you very much.
We will then proceed to the next speaker. The hon T S C Dodovu.
As the hon approach the podium, the delegation should feel free and be under no pressure. If you want to leave, please do that at the time convenient to yourselves. The hon Dodovu.
Mr T S C DODOVU: Hon Chairperson of the NCOP, the hon Amos Masondo, the Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, the hon Thembi Nkadimeng, the Deputy Ministers of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs,
the Tau and the hon Burns-Ncamashe, the hon chairperson of the House of Traditional Leaders, chairperson of the municipal demarcation board and all other entities accountable to the department, the newly appointed Director-General of the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Mr Mbulelo Ntshangana, permanent and special delegates, representatives of SA Local Government Association, Salga, and Chairperson let me join you to acknowledge the descendants of Jomo Kenyata, the first President of Kenya, in the 1960s, for their presence in this august House, ladies and gentlemen, this week represents one of those saddest moments within the liberation movement led by the ANC.
Not only did we receive the news about the passing of Comrade Joemat-Petterson, a member of our national executive committee, a former MEC and a Minister in government, equally on the same day we received the sad news about the departure from our midst of Comrade Howard Yawa, the former provincial secretary of the SA Communist Party in the North West and my predecessor as an MEC of Co-perative Governance and Traditional Affairs, in the same province. As we think about the departure of these leaders of our movement, we also remember that nine years ago, on this day 7 June 1914, a hero of our struggle Epianette neé Moerane Mbeki, the wife to Govan
Mbeki who together with President Mandela, Ahmed Kathrada, Elias Motsoaledi, Andrew Mlangeni, Denies Goldberg, Wilton Mkwayi and Raymond Mhlaba spend more than 26 years in prison. Also the mother to our former President of the Republic, hon Thabo Mbeki.
Hon Chairperson, in fact, it is unfair and a travesty of justice that we refer her as the wife of oom Gov and the mother to Thabo Mbeki, she was a revolutionary on her on right. She is in fact the one who recruited her husband to join the Communist Party and the ANC in the 1940s. She stepped her family within the congress tradition. Over and above that when the husband was in prison and the sons were in exile, she kept the ford burning to prosecute the struggle for national liberation.
I am going to use this moment to dedicate the speech in her honour and in her memory. For at the time when her movement the ANC was facing challenges she reminded us of words by Walter Benson Rubusana who said and I quote:
IsiXhosa:
“Zimkile iinkomo magwala ndini!”
English:
Rubusana was the editor of a newspaper called Izwi Labantu. These words penetrated and permeated us in terms of what is it that we want to do and as I said we dedicate this day to her memory, as practitioners within the sphere of local government, we cannot afford that [izinkomo zihambe magwala ndini!], the cows go, you coward! In our presence. We must do everything in our power to ensure that local government is not only stable, but all municipalities achieve the developmental objectives of ensuring community participation, effective governance and accountability to our people, ensuring that there is safe and healthy environment where our people live.
We must strive and do everything in our power to ensure that we address and resolve all the political governance, administrative, financial management and service delivery challenges that are facing our municipalities.
Hon Chairperson, as stated in our very own ANC local government manifesto pledge in 2021, in which we pledged to remain accountable to our people, to be available for our people, to stimulate the local economic development, to consistently provide services to our people, to build a
healthy environment to all of our people and this is what we need to do.
The Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs must focus on the major challenges affecting some of our municipalities, to capacitate them with the relevant and well-tailored interventions in order for them to solve different aspects where these municipalities face challenges.
We put emphasis on well-tailored interventions based on the fact that the challenges facing municipalities differ. For example, others need financial resources, while others may need the technical capability to spend the allocated budgets.
All our municipalities should have financial sustainability in order to function properly and to meet the constitutional obligations of providing services to our people. Therefore, hon Chairperson, in order for our local areas to be financially sustainable, it is necessary for them to have proper financial systems in place and run the governments in a way that will ensure that they deliver the services to the people.
Municipalities should have a realistic revenue collection plan that is capable of meeting the local government’s financial responsibilities. For our municipalities cannot function without collecting revenue. Our communities should be encouraged to pay for the services that they receive from those municipalities. In return our municipalities should offer the communities high quality services
Out of a total of 257 municipalities in our country, there are currently 64 that are in a state of difficulties.
Interventions by the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs the municipalities, must be strengthened in order to help them to function and deliver services. The interventions put must yield the necessary results. We call upon the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs to invest in efforts of changing struggling municipalities by applying corrective mechanisms to respond to report findings such as the Auditor-General of South Africa reports. For these report should act as a warning and therefore the department and other relevant departments, should act with the necessary urgency.
Interventions such as placing struggling municipalities under administration through section 139 of the Constitution should
be accompanied by other elements to strengthen the interventions such as the municipalities get out of the challenges they are confronted with. In other words the effectiveness of the interventions must be realised with evidence in the results.
Hon Chairperson, key to these interventions should be the deployment of skilled specialised personnel and the exchange of best practices between municipalities. Our interventions should address the cause to ensure challenges do not recur. Key to the interventions should be a strong assessment of whether or not municipalities improve postintervention.
Develop lessons learnt to avoid not making an impact and yielding the results. The department must look at different elements of making the interventions more impactful and result driven.
Hon Chairperson, the ANC believes in the seriousness of improving how municipalities are run. Especially in terms of good governance and service delivery.
At a local government, the ANC has committed councillors to sign an oath that commits them to principles of anticorruption, good governance and commitment to service
delivery. In the recent Auditor-General’s Report, municipal findings and the audit itself, has shown some improvements and regression in some municipalities.
Notably the positives are that some municipalities improved from disclaimer audit opinions which enables municipalities to institutionalise intervention measures or sustainability.
Significant improvements have been recorded in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal respectively. The ANC supports the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs initiatives that together with the National Treasury, and ongoing engagement in a process of the development of the municipal support and intervention plans must be taken forward. These must be done in collaboration with SA Local Government Association, Salga, in all our provinces and in our municipalities.
We welcome the support and intervention plans for the 66 municipalities with severe challenges that have been developed by the department and the National Treasury. Financial recovery plans have also been developed for municipalities placed under mandatory intervention in terms of section 139 of the Constitution.
Hon Chairperson, the report by the Auditor-General, confirms that the audit outcomes in the areas of governance, financial health, institutional matters and service delivery on municipalities need effective co-ordination across the spheres of government to ensure that municipalities receive support so that they achieve their constitutional mandate.
We call for the prioritisation of postaudit support interventions. We believe the department must lead a process of working with provincial and local government in supporting local municipalities in dealing with issues raised by the Auditor-General so that there must be better financial state of local municipalities in line with the provisions of section
134 of the Municipal Finance Management Act.
Audit action plans and the functionality of audit committees should be prioritised.
Hon Chairperson, there is a great need to improve the division of revenue in terms of the allocation and the development of the sustainable funding model for local government. This must be done because it has been an issue that is pending for a very long time. The intention now to establish a new strategy in the department in the form of the result management office
with the aim of bringing project and programme implementation capabilities to accelerate service delivery using the Destruct Development Model approach, is highly welcomed by the ANC. We believe that this will help the department in proactively running the project in a result driven manner.
The ANC in its recent conference the 55th National Conference recognised that addressing municipal financial challenges requires a review of the equitable share formula and this must be done in order to achieve the objectives that I have alluded to.
Hon Chairperson, we cannot afford to have municipalities underspending on grants allocated s communities become deprived of march needed services. This is an area that needs to be take forward. The role of local economic development.
LED, also hon Chairperson is very important in the local government. The LED must be positioned to be able to look at projects in our local communities that can be able to create opportunities for work and for local businesses to thrive. We think that this is another matter that must be taken forward.
In the memory of Mama Mbeki, we must say hon Chairperson the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs
must place the strong focus and importance on local economic development in order to address the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality in our society.
In conclusion, also if people have jobs we are saying they will be able to pay for the services they receive from the municipalities. In that sense, we believe that through the District Development Model, economic development should be co- ordinated across the spheres of government. Hon Chairpersons, in that sense as the committee and as the ANC especially, we welcome the commitment by the department to enhance local governance within our areas. Thank you very much.
Mr C F B SMIT: Hon Chairperson hon members, hon Minister, Deputy Minister, and fellow South Africans, I want to dedicate time to those South African heroes who stand up every morning to realise their dream of making their communities safer, cleaner, more beautiful and a pleasant place to stay, work and play. Those are the community members that sacrifice their time, energy, resources and efforts to cut the grass of their parks, paint the local playground’s equipment, make available their equipment and machinery at their own cost to get things done. Those councillors that get into the ditches to help fix a burst pipe and go buy spares out of their pockets to get a
problem fixed for their communities. We must say thank you to all of these heroes. People who truly care about the people and keep our towns and municipalities afloat. Because without them we would have been in a big, big mess already, as the majority of our municipalities are falling apart as the system is broken.
Chair, the red alarm lights are flickering frantically throughout the country as these heroes can no longer keep up with the decay and system failures. They can barely keep their heads above the water and are drowning one by one under the pressure of a failed state. So, the big question is, what should we do to fix this mess? Where should we start? We have heard of all these plans by this ANC government, Back to Basics. Does that sound familiar? Did that work? No, things are only getting worse by the day.
Section 139 interventions are being thrown left right and centre, but for all the wrong reasons. Factional battles, short circuiting democracy to overthrow any opposition government like in Tshwane. When I asked the Auditor-General yesterday if section 139s are effective, she decisively responded by saying, no it is too late as the system is too broken and it is very costly with little to no substantial
improvements. We should ask ourselves, how can we change our approach as Parliament to correct the shortcomings of interventions so that action is taken early when signs of failures start to show? The problem is that there are currently too many municipalities in crisis. The Auditor- General indicated that 70 municipalities are currently financially unsustainable as they can’t fund their basic operations.
Yesterday, it was made public that 90 municipalities received notices on the critical state of their water reticulation systems as they are unable to ensure clean drinkable water for their residents. And this while cholera is starting to show its ugly head all over now. Members our country is in crisis. A time bomb is ticking at our doorstep.
Another problem we face is budgets as the volume of failing local governments is unbearable and will cost a fortune to fix, which we don’t have as the government budget is shrinking due to the economic crisis we find ourselves in. Another ANC created crisis. But this ANC government still plays games at the edge of the financial cliff by provoking the international community and our biggest trade partners by selling arms to Russia in dark of night like a gangster. While in a budget
crisis this government thinks it’s wise to throw some more billions of rands at failing Eskom.
If we are really honest with ourselves today, we will all without fail acknowledge that the core of the problems at local government is nothing else than cadre deployment. That’s the problem. It is because of cadre deployment that the capacity of municipalities to do the basics have been eroded to a stage that local municipalities spend around R1,7 billion consultants to do the basic work of their chief financial officers, CFOs, who get paid but don’t know how to do the job. This is another fact shared with us by Tsakani Maluleke, our Auditor-General. Cadre deployment is the mother of all the failures and corruption as they are at the service of their masters in the ANC instead of the public. Senior officials are summoned to report to ANC structures to take marching orders and that at the cost of public funds from their municipalities. Where is the separation of powers and the separation of party and state?
This mafia state under the bishop ship of the ANC cannot and will not fix this mess! The faster everybody realises this, the better for South Africa. We need change and we need it now.
It has clearly been proven that where the DA govern things are much, much better. There are only 38 municipalities with clean audit outcomes of which 21 is under DA-led governments of which 19 are in the Western Cape. So, the question is, why mainly in the Western Cape? The answer is simple because the DA is also in government in the province of the Western Cape and this capable provincial government supports their local governments in the interest of the public. So, why is it more difficult outside the Western Cape?
Mr K MOTSAMAI: You always talk about cadre deployment.
Mr C F B SMIT: Because the ANC-led provincial governments instead do everything in their power to undermine opposition- led local governments by trying their best to destabilise these governments as to overthrow them so that they can recover their cash cows.
Ms Z L I CELE (KwaZulu-Natal): What are your people doing in Tshwane? What have you done in Johannesburg?
Mr C F B SMIT: If you really want to understand what is going on, then just follow the money. The exception is the DA government of Midvaal in Gauteng where they had their ninth
successful clean audit outcome. That must be applauded! This is because it is a stable outright majority DA government that the ANC cannot grab. Believe me they did try many times to do.
Ms Z L I CELE (KwaZulu-Natal): What have you done in Tshwane?
Mr C F B SMIT: Again, the Auditor-General used Midvaal as an example of excellence when she told us about their effective public participation process where their integrated development plan, IDP, and budget are directly informed by the needs of the different communities, and not the other way around where contracts are forced on communities because it is lucrative tenders with great kickbacks. So, South Africans have a clear choice to make next year. Do you want to stay under the ANC-led mafia state of greedy crooks that will sell your future for a lavish life for themselves, or do you want to stay under a DA-led moon shot pack that will fix the mess and build a better future for us all? We can make this a reality but then everyone that didn’t vote must stand up, go register and vote for the DA-led moon shot pack in 2024. Let’s get this done. I thank you.
Ms Z L I CELE (KwaZulu-Natal): How much is Hellen Zille paying for her accommodation?
The CHIEF WHIP OF THE NCOP (Mr S J Mohai): Chairperson, I would like you to look into Hansard as the hon member makes serious charge that members of the ANC in the House are mafias and crooks. And that members of the ANC here ...
Mr C F B SMIT: If the shoe fits you, put in on.
The CHIEF WHIP OF THE NCOP (Mr S J Mohai): ... have not been found guilty at any platform. So, he must make a substantive statement. He is grossly misrepresenting facts in the House. Members are not allowed to do so.
The CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Thank you very much, Chief Whip. It may not necessary be a point of order, but the thing that we should really be aware of is all this whole thing of making an accusation. If you want to do that about things of corruption or whatever, please put forward a substantive motion that will allow all members to debate so that all of us are clear that there is a very solid idea in front of us and we debate around that. Members could be free to say what they are saying, to go to all sort of extremes and so on. It is really an appeal. Let’s be careful about what we say without infringing on the freedom of speech. Let’s really ensure that we act in a way that assist the overall to ensure that the
House is not compromised and the atmosphere is balanced and allow all sorts of views to be articulated and be heard.
Mr W A S AUCAMP: Hon Chairperson, I rise on a point of order and of privilege with regard to what you have just said. We most certainly welcome a debate on corruption within the ANC. So, I ask you to keep that forward. We will welcome that ... [Interjections.]
Ms Z L I CELE (KwaZulu-Natal): Order! You must bring back the land that you stole with your forefathers. Don’t come here and debate nonsense with a point of order that doesn’t exist.
Let’s debate the land that your forefathers stole in this country and the privileges that you are getting from municipalities by the ANC government.
Mr W A S AUCAMP: ... he did not call any member by name. Thank you very much.
An hon MEMBER: ... white racists!
The CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Sit down, hon Aucamp. Please, take your seat. I am sure by now hon members know what is it that they need to do to ensure that their choice of debates
become parts of the programme of the House. I’m sure we know what to do. Hon Labuschagne, first I want to know, on what point are you rising on?
Ms C LABUSCHAGNE: Chairperson, I rise on Rule 45 as well as Rule 69. I rise on these two Rules. Or do you want me to read these two Rules?
The CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Rule 45 is about the freedom of speech and Rule 69 is about a point of order. Let’s hear what your point of order is about.
Ms C LABUSCHAGNE: My point of order is as follows, Chairperson, the freedom of speech is exactly what it says. It says that to have freedom of speech in the Council ... [Interjections.]
The CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Let us come to that as well, but we must come to the point of order as well.
Ms C LABUSCHAGNE: The point of order is, Chairperson, how can we as Members of Parliament that have to keep government accountable cannot have the freedom of speech as it is meant
to be as ruled in the High Court today for journalist on freedom of speech ... [Interjections.]
Ms Z L I CELE (KwaZulu-Natal): Then you must bring back the land that your forefathers stole and you will get the freedom of speech that you want us to continue with.
Ms C LABUSCHAGNE: Everything that we say in our speeches about corruption is already been in the Zondo commission whose report has been tabled in Parliament.
Ms Z L I CELE (KwaZulu-Natal): The Zondo commission speaks to specific people, and not the ANC in general.
Ms C LABUSCHAGNE: Does the Rules state that we have to put a motion to do the speeches? I really take exception and I will refer this to the Rules committee. Thank you.
The CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Hon members, can I plead with all of you ... [Interjections.]
Ms Z L I CELE (KwaZulu-Natal): These people were there when our people were being killed, but we have never come here to say that they are murderers. Then, all white people are
murderers. That’s the case. This is the language that these members want us to use. They must not behave this way.
The CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Let us not abuse freedom of speech or points of order to put across our own points of view. If you have a particular view, that must be debated under an appropriate topic. Hon members, it is very late and we are wasting a lot of valuable time by raising issues that have nothing to do with the Rules of the House. I am really pleading with you to allow me to proceed, and allow hon Smit to continue.
Mr C F B SMIT: Chair, I have 20 seconds left and I want to use it.
Mr M DANGOR: Chairperson, this is a separate point. There is a person sitting in the gallery using gadgets that we don’t know.
The CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Let me make a comment that, persons in the gallery are not allowed to take videos and take pictures of the House. Please, desist from doing so.
Mr C F B SMIT: Hon Chair to hon Dodovu, if I were you, I would not have revealed the fact that I was the MEC for the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Cogta, for North West looking at the state of Cogta. But I also want to challenge the ANC if they have the guts to put the corruption debate on the Table because the ANC ...
Interjections.]
Ms Z L I CELE (KwaZulu-Natal): Sit down you askari!
The CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Please take your chair. Hon members, I know that temperatures can go up, but please avoid the extremes. [Laughter.] Do so by not doing anything. Do not do anything at all that will harm the image of the House.
Otherwise, we will be viewed very negatively by millions of people out there who are expecting positive and constructive engagements to emerge from this House. It is an appeal! Thank you very much.
Mr Z WILLIAMS (Eastern Cape): Thank you very much, hon Chairperson. Greetings to you, the Deputy Chairperson, hon Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Cogta, Deputy Ministers Parks Tau and Zolile Burns-Ncamashe, members of the House, Chairperson of the National House of
Traditional Leaders, Chairperson of the South African Local Government Association, SALGA, present, the Chairperson of the Demarcation Board, distinguished guests in the gallery, all South Africans that are watching us as we proceed with these proceedings this afternoon, I am pleased to participate in this debate of the 2023-24 Budget Vote No 3 and Budget Vote No
15 of the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs.
On the 26th of May, our Minister hon Thembi Nkadimeng, together with her Deputies presented what one would term a budget that presents hope to all and sundry in local government. They were ostensibly buoyed by the spirit and mood which undergirded the hope contained in that budget. And I hereby join them in the spirit of making local government everybody’s business. The Minister and Deputy Ministers delivered the Budget Votes a few days ago and today we are celebrating Youth Month. And allow me, Chair, to say to everyone that the determination and stoicism of the youth of 1976 have presented everyone in this Parliament to be able to speak without fear and raise his or her opinions without being afraid of repercussions.
We must remember that it was in June 1976, when the youth of this country showed resilience and fought against the system of apartheid with forcefulness and determination. It is sometimes easy to forget where we are coming from and it is even possible amid the flurry of the rush of events to forget the history of this country.
But it is critical that as the ANC-led government, we take stock and recalibrate what we set to achieve in the 2019 ANC Elections Manifesto.
April 1994, marked a decisive bridgehead into democracy. In the last 29 years, the ANC-led government has steadily consolidated the democratic breakthrough in depth and breadth. Electoral democracy is reigning supreme in all three spheres of government. No one can dispute this.
In this year of decisive action to advance the people’s interests, I can’t agree more with the contents of the 2023 Budget Vote No 3 and Budget Vote No 15. More so when it articulated that it acknowledges the existential difficulties, which include the sluggish economic growth, the energy crisis, inflationary pressures, water insecurity, net effects of the
Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the depressed fiscal state of municipalities.
We have recently witnessed the breakout of large-scale war in Europe with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine impacting negatively on the global economy and international relations, and with major implications for geopolitics and geo-economics. This has caused a spike in the prices of goods and services in our country.
To this end, I would want to support Minister Thembi Nkadimeng and quote her verbatim when she said in her Budget Vote speech I would want to support the Minister Thembi Nkadimeng and quote her verbatim when she said in her budget statement that she supports the decision taken by the National Treasury to conditionally write off municipal debts as they announced during the 2023 Budget Vote that a conditional write-off of debt owed to Eskom by municipalities as an urgent step to stabilize the energy sector. Whilst there is that conceptualization, I must hasten to say this is a decisive decision, hon Chair, which will put most municipalities in the financial sustainability par.
Chairperson, the reforms of the past 29 years in local government have been life-changing to huge segments of our society and must be analyzed and interpreted in a way that assists our strategic and tactical posture going forward. Whether further progress is made in this journey, and indeed, whether they are reversals, is a function of the balance of forces and the capacity of the transformers both to shift and to respond to this balance.
But from where I’m standing, Chair, we have managed to transform state institutions is formal instruments of accountability. We also created spaces for organs of civil society to participate in the process of governance. The involvement of communities in governance is the cornerstone of our democracy. The department does not view community participation as an end in itself, but rather as the crux of a people-centred approach to development. In this context, communities should not be viewed as passive participants, but as active agents for change.
We celebrate the increase in the Budget Vote for traditional leaders, especially focusing on the tools of the trade, because this has been a sore point. We thank the leadership of the Minister and her Deputies for this decisive decision. It’s
time we accord traditional leaders the respect they deserve. We are aware that some already try to drive a wedge between this institution and the government using these matters as points of interest. This budget gives hope and provides clear determination by the Minister to make local government work and become indeed everybody’s business.
The municipal service delivery should be accelerated, with a budget allocated for both the Municipal Infrastructure Grant and equitable share.
We would like the Minister and the Deputies to fast-track interventions Our people remain trapped in impossible roads and bridges due to disasters. We, therefore, support both Budget Vote No 3 and Budget Vote 15. Without further ado, as the Minister has tabled the budget, we claim that this is a budget of hope. Thank you very much.
Mr M E KHUMALO (Gauteng): Hon Chairperson of the House, hon members of the NCOP, the Minister and Deputy Ministers and the people of Gauteng, the Gauteng provincial government appreciates and supports the Budget Vote as presented by the Minister. We want to echo the same words that have been echoed by our colleague from the Eastern Cape, that this budget is a
budget of hope. The milestones we have achieved can easily be overshadowed by the plagues faced by many municipalities. As Kwame Nkrumah said, “Those who would judge us merely by the heights we have achieved would do well to remember the depths from which we started”.
We therefore appreciate the budget because it will enable us to do the following things. Firstly, it will enable us to support municipalities in terms of service delivery through the grants that have been approved in the budget itself. It will also enable us to work with municipalities to ensure positive audit outcomes and strengthen the ... [Inaudible.]
... capacity of the different municipalities.
As we begin the last full financial year of the Sixth administration of our province, we are focussed on improving services and the living conditions of people in townships, informal settlements and hostels, that we call Tish in short. Our immediate task is to stabilise local government and manage provisions. We are working with the people of Gauteng to implement these particular programmes.
We are also pleased that this budget itself, as presented to Parliament, will assist us to deal with the outstanding work
that we have as a province. We are not oblivious to the challenges and tasks ahead of us. We are driven by the desire to make service delivery not only an ideal but a lived experience of the people. As custodians of local government and service delivery in the province, our responsibility is to ensure that municipalities discharge their constitutional mandate and responsibilities. Therefore, the budget is a continuation of our commitment to building a people-centred, capable, ethical and developmental state.
A greater sense of urgency fuels our determination to build the economy and improve infrastructure. Building a viable municipal infrastructure for effective and efficient delivery of services to communities is a key driver of much-needed inclusive growth and sustainable development. Therefore, the budget constitutes part of a responsive and people-centred government and it has in so many ways responded to challenges, such as sewer spillages and aging infrastructure, as is being experienced in many communities.
The economic impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic has negatively impacted on municipal revenue, further hindering their capacity to deliver services to the people. The department therefore continues to capacitate municipalities on
a differentiated approach to collect revenue and manage their debts. Therefore, we are happy that the budget talked to this particular matter, in so far as the debt management of municipalities is concerned. However, hon Minister, we want to register our concern that the conditions that are part of circular 129 are so stringent that it will make it a bit difficult and challenging for municipalities to survive. We will continue to provide support to the district municipalities that we have in Gauteng, and the budget as presented before us enables us to help those particular municipalities.
The Government Debt Reduction Strategy was implemented in the nine municipalities in the province. The success of this strategy has resulted in improved communication and relationship between government departments and the municipalities, as well as the reduction in the disconnection of critical services.
The Auditor-General’s, AG’s, reports paint a bleak picture on the state of municipalities which are plagued by financial mismanagement, administrative instability and collapsing municipal infrastructure. We are strengthening our collaborative effort with the SA Local Government Association,
Salga, and the AG to improve the audit outcomes of municipalities. The AG’s previous financial years’ ... highlighted, amongst others that municipalities are plagued by poor financial management, collapsing municipal infrastructure and a lack of accountability.
In response to the AG’s findings, we initiated the accountability and ethical conduct training ... to capacitate municipal officials and councillors with the goal of providing knowledge and understanding on anticorruption issues in the public sector.
We are also witnessing instability in local government in our province. We are continuously working with municipalities to strengthen conflict resolution capacity in coalition governments across the province. The stability of the administration should withstand changes in the council’s political leadership. The impact of coalition governments has been the frequent change of official decision-making and reporting accountability. Due to unstable administration, there has been uncertainty of management positions, ... [Inaudible.] ... administration, appointment of staff and supply chain management. Service delivery has been compromised because of this ... [Inaudible.] ... to adopt budgets, change
... [Inaudible.] ... and decisions generally in a number of municipalities.
There is an initiative at the provincial level to review current policy frameworks which are applicable to coalitions, with a view to understanding gaps and proposing policy options and positions moving forward, including the issue of whether the manner of constituting these coalitions is consistent with the democratic principles and values of our Constitution. We hope the national government will support us in this regard.
We are finalising the report on the study on the impact of coalition governments in the municipalities of Gauteng. This report will guide our work as we undertake a review of the governance model in a municipality. In this regard, we hope to work with the national Minister.
We believe that the provision of individual and organisational capacity supports the development of the 11 municipalities, which will improve municipal performance and enhance service delivery.
With regard to a number of ward committees, we are pleased to indicate that many municipalities have established these ward committees. These are intended to ensure that public
participation, also referred to by the speech itself, is engaged with by different municipalities within our province. We take note that Tshwane has not been able to fulfil this task. Through collaboration between the Department of Co- operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, national Salga and the Independent Electoral Commission, IEC, municipalities are supported to establish these ward committees. Furthermore, municipalities are supported to promote participation in community-based local governance processes through the asset- based community development approach.
We are also finalising the review of the Gauteng Spatial Development Framework to fast-track spatial transformation and to maximise our impact. We are also strengthening our support to ... and the role of municipalities on the implementation of integrated development plans, IDPs, and the District Development Model, DDM, in collaboration with Treasury and the national department.
The voter apathy that we witnessed in the last successive election is an indictment on a democratic system. As part of strengthening democracy, we will be implementing a comprehensive civic education programme to create awareness, promote voter registration and voting itself. We will be in
conversation with communities on the importance of strengthening democracy. Indeed, as government, we are resetting our research agenda at the centre of local government.
Cultural heritage forms an integral part of our social fibre and must be preserved. The Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs continues to support institutions of traditional leadership and we are happy with the promise that the Minister has made thus far. Great strides have already been made in the implementation of policies, norms and standards, systems and the regulatory framework in the scope of traditional affairs. The Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims in Gauteng was launched by the Premier of Gauteng on 22 November to resolve claims and disputes, guided by the claims register.
The Provincial Disaster Management Centre, PDMC, working together with the national management, has finalised the provincial risk profile and is currently in the process of aligning such strategies. The PDMC is also working with municipalities and sector departments in the province to review their risk ... [Inaudible.]
The CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: As you conclude, hon Khumalo.
Mr M E KHUMALO (Gauteng): As I conclude, we remain committed to rebuild and renew a capable and developmental state, to ... [Inaudible.] ... the way government interacts with people, to rebuild and improve local government and to improve public accountability and responsiveness to the needs and concerns of our people.
We convey our heartfelt condolences to the families who lost their loved ones in Hammanskraal. This is a serious indictment on all of us. We should avoid the blame game and rather focus on finding lasting solutions in that particular community. In this regard, we call for cool heads and for working together to resolve the problems.
We therefore support the budget as presented by the hon Minister. Thank you very much.
Ms M DLAMINI: Chairperson, the, EFF rejects the proposed budget for the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. We reject the budget of this department as it fails to perform its oversight role on the functionality and good governance that is expected from all spheres of
government. Proving once again that the District Development Model is not playing it’s intended role, as there exists no co-ordination between municipalities, district municipalities and provincial government.
We are also concerned at how the select committee was turned away by the Gauteng MEC upon arrival, to perform an oversight on Gauteng municipalities. Not only was this wasteful expenditure, but it showed a lack of seriousness for accountability. The EFF rejects the budget of a department that has no support base or monitoring tool for municipalities, and repeatedly receives disclaimed audit opinions in municipalities such as Joe Morolong Local Municipality, in the Northern Cape for the past seven years.
Chairperson, last week the 2021-22 Auditor-General’s report was released, and it outlined how out of 257 municipalities, only 38 or 14,7% achieved clean audit outcomes for the period under review. This a consequence of skills shortages, poor accountability and poor leadership. Local government continues to be characterised dysfunctionality, financial mismanagement, council and administrator instability and crumbling municipal infrastructure. We see the dysfunctionality of these municipalities through the service delivery protests held
every day in this country, some which unfortunately have fatalities. Minors such as Philasande Yende, a 13-year-old in KwaGuqa township in Mpumalanga, Talente Msibi from Mkhondo Local Municipality and many others whose bodies depict the misgovernance of this country.
We note with concern that 52% of municipalities owe their creditors more money than they had available in the bank as they continued to spend money they do not have, with a deficit of R11,9 billion. It is not clear what the revenue enhancement strategies of municipalities are? Revenue generation still continues to be a fundamental problem that needs to be addressed decisively.
The main source of revenue for municipalities remains rates and taxes paid by property owners and consumers of municipal services, this includes government institutions that are not up to date with payments. However, this method is out of touch with South African realities such as unemployment, poverty and inequality that limits meaningful economic participation. Home ownership has become a burden, adding repo rates regular increase that the economic climate dictates that it is no longer realistic for municipalities to largely rely on rates
and taxes alone. To date, there exists no credible billing systems put in place.
Municipal infrastructure in the main, remains a cause for concern as the alarming rate which it is debilitating and not being maintained, as the country has load shedding implemented by Eskom. Many municipalities implement municipal load reduction as seen in Mkhondo Municipality, where residents face 6 to 12 hour daily blackouts.
Furthermore, we register a concern of unfair competitive procurement practices, a lack of transparency and an inability to build proper internal capacity within this department. It is with great concern that municipalities rely on consulting companies to perform even the most basic functions. It is worth noting that only 4% of municipalities that used consultants received clean audits at a cost of R58,2 million. Another 74 municipalities that used consultants ended up with qualified findings, having spent R665 million on consultants.
Ninety-four municipalities spent R580 million on consultants, only to emerge with unqualified findings. Six municipalities spent R176 million on consultants and emerged with adverse findings. Fifteen municipalities spent R128 million on
consultants, but still received disclaimers with findings.
What is more tragic is that under the watchful eye of this department, documents are rigged to give an impression of good, clean and credible governance. But this amounts to nothing but deceitful practice on the ongoing crisis of corruption and maladministration. They claim easy victories all because they have mastered the art of system manipulation
We applaud councillors who are whistle-blowers in this regard, like the former DA councillor in Mosselbay municipality who exposed the DA caucus for withholding critical agenda items to mislead the council. A trend also exposed in Tshwane but they come here and speak of how well they take care of the white and elite to the detriment of the black and poor. You are no better.
The EFF notes that the findings of the Auditor-General, AG, corroborate those of the MMCs of the EFF in the City of Ekhuruleni specifically who did a physical audit to verify that what was in the assets register is a true reflection of what they have in the municipality. Their findings were that - there is a total of 109 trucks, but only 74 reflect on the asset register of the municipality, leaving out 34 trucks
while the City claims to have 127 trucks. Consequently, only
32 out of the 74 were working leaving 54 trucks unaccounted for a case was then opened.
This is just a demonstration of what the EFF is capable of doing. This department needs to be decisive on consequence management and play a more proactive role to the state of governance. The EFF rejects this Vote.
Ms B N SITHOLE-MOLOI (KwaZulu-Natal): Hon Chair of the House, hon Masondo, the Deputy Chair of the NCOP, Ministers present, Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs and Minister of Basic Education, the Deputy Ministers, hon members of the House present, delegates, special delegates to this House, I greet you all. Hon members and hon Chair, I stand here before you to highlight the significant efforts taken by KwaZulu-Natal Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs in the effort to improve service delivery for our people, particularly, after the devastating floods that struck our province during April and May 2022.
Before I get into details of that, hon Chair, allow me to extend our heartfelt condolences to their family and friends and to the ANC on the loss of our beloved Comrade Tina, who
has just passed on untimely on our side, we wish to say to them condolences and also to say to the ANC, let’s pick up her spear and continue with our fight. Hon Chair, the floods left us with a lasting impact, particularly to our communities and the suffering to the extent to a certain extent of our infrastructure and this significant setback of our efforts to better the lives of our people in our province, particularly, the previously disadvantaged.
Hon Chair, we want to say that the infrastructure damages that we have seen has made us not to be able to deal with the backlog and also deal with the people that need new services in our province. Water infrastructure and sanitation in eThekwini is slowly but surely returning to normality and we have to make effort to build back better, so that we mitigate against other events in this nature in the future. We want also to indicate, hon Chair, that in the wake of the floods, we were in co-operation with the Provincial Disaster Management Centre and the National Disaster Management Centre, and all the municipalities were able to promptly respond to the incident and, recognising the severity of the situation.
The floods were declared a state of disaster by the national department and the national government, enabling us to access
the necessary resources and support. To finance the recovery efforts, we worked closely with the National Treasury, we direct state organs affected by the disaster to prioritise budget and reallocate funds in co-operation with the conditional grants. The KwaZulu-Natal submitted a comprehensive report and beneficiary list to the National Disaster Management Centre, resulting to the allocation of the substantial funds to deal with the disaster. The extent of the damage that was caused by the floods cannot be underestimated. Over 27 000 household where affected, with 8 584 houses completely destroyed and 13 536 houses partially damaged.
The cost of infrastructure damages exceeds R25,3 billion, necessitating a comprehensive approach to rebuild our communities through diligent co-ordination and an effective utilisation of allocated funds, we made significant progress in the reconstruction and rehabilitation process. Hon Chair we also want to indicate that the Municipal Disaster Relief Grant that was allocated at a total of R221,8 million to address the immediate response requirements is welcomed, and it has also assisted us to be able to mitigate the situation that we find ourselves in our province.
We also appreciate the fact that our national department has also assisted us to ensure that we also receive further R2,9 billion to assist in ensuring that we rehabilitate the infrastructure project that has been damaged by the floods. Since the proclamation around izinduna [the chiefs/headmen.] stipend in 2013, the KwaZulu-Natal has been grappling with the ongoing issue of fully compensating izinduna, starting from the date of proclamation, which is 2013. We were unable to deal with the matter, and fortunately, this year we are able to be assisted by the National Treasury to get the money and we were able to settle this.
We are now in the process of dealing with it until the end of June, taking into cognisant that a number of those izinduna, about 3007, who were not able to get their stipend or their finance during that time. So, we are ensuring that this House
... [Inaudible.] [Interjections.]
The CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: We’re losing you, member of the executive committee, MEC.
We are happy that we are in the matter of correcting the past, in that, we are also able taking the from the ANC- led government, which is the government voting for traditional
leadership, by bringing up the stipend of the Traditional Council, TC, secretaries from R1 600 to R8 000 in support of the of the of the institute. Chairperson and hon members, we also want to indicate on the District Development Model, DDM, that we have encountered along the way have not deter us from implementing the key decision of our government.
We have implemented the DDMs and in co-operation with our municipalities. It should be understood that there is a critical role that DDMs to play in ensuring that there is good governance and service delivery in our communities for the betterment of their lives. We remain commitment to overcome service delivery backlog and bottlenecks that are there to ensure that there is governance effectiveness by developing a one plan and one budget district municipality. We have made a remarkable progress in respect to this. Hence, we have 10 out of 11 plans that have already been adopted by our district municipalities.
To strengthen the institutionalisation of the DDMs, we have committed that we are going to meet monthly and as all hubs within our province and also the cluster, to enable effective co-ordination and collaboration. Hon Chair, we want also to indicate as the Department of Co-operative Governance and
Traditional Affairs in KwaZulu-Natal, that a progress has been made with the assistance of the national Department of Co- operative Governance and Traditional Affairs in ensuring that some of the funds that we were looking for in ensuring that we support our municipalities has been given to us and we really appreciate. As our Minister was saying that the theme for this year for the budget, is to ensure that the local government is
... [Inaudible.]
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Please proceed, MEC.
Ms B N SITHOLE-MOLOI (KwaZulu-Natal): ... in ensuring that those disasters are dealt with. On collusion, hon Chair, the devastating floods that struck KwaZulu-Natal left a lasting impact on our province, resulting in an immense suffering and significant infrastructure damage. However, through diligent effort, resource mobilisation and effective co-ordination, we have made remarkable progress in rebuilding our communities and addressing long standing challenges.
We are deeply grateful for the financial support and co- operation received from National Treasury, our national department and also from people who were saying that they would want to come on board, and also the certain embassies
that also came on board to ensure that they work with us in our municipality to address the challenges that were brought by the disaster that we had. We also want to that we are going to forge ahead, and we remain resolute in our efforts to restore and rebuild a stronger infrastructure and provide a better future for the people of KwaZulu-Natal.
We acknowledge that the road to full recovery is long, and with the continued effort, collaboration and determination, we will overcome these challenges and create a brighter future for all. Hon Chair, I want to thank you for affording me this opportunity and also to say that we support the budget presented by our hon Minister, hon Nkadimeng, and we also say that we will co-operate with all the efforts in ensuring that all the funds that are allocated to our province are utilised in a manner that it is designed for.
In other matter of grant funding, we also want to indicate that we have met with all the municipalities in ensuring that
... [Interjections.] ... our municipalities account for all the funds that are given to them. We thank you, hon Chair, for the time. [Time expired.]
Mr G MICHALAKIS: Hon Chairperson. Last night I was up until late with queries from constituents in Matjhabeng Local Municipality in the Free State who do not have water.
Residents in Riebeeckstad in this municipality spent two months without water earlier this year. The municipality owes the water board, Bloem Water, more than R5 billion and they owe Eskom almost as much. However, they failed to spend their Municipal Infrastructure Grants and have failed month after month to honour their agreement to repay a fraction of the debt.
Residents-black, white, rich, poor-all sit without water or, when there is water, face severe water shedding so that other areas of town can at least bath, cook, or flush a toilet – if they have a flushing toilet. The municipality receives a bill of between R50 and R70 million a month from Bloem Water, yet 56% of the water it buys is lost through the infrastructure that has not been maintained under the ANC-run municipality. So between R30 and R40 million is lost every month, which goes down the drain due to the ANC. This R30 or R40 million could have fixed infrastructure fixed potholes, built a house for someone, fixed a street light for greater safety, or delivered other essential services. Lost, thanks to the ANC.
School hostels have been forced to close during exams due to no water after they have first had to adapt the school meals to require less water for cooking, and even reducing the number of students they can accommodate. In another instance, schoolchildren in Bronville near Welkom lost two days of school due to the water problem. In yet another case pupils wear civilian clothing because there is no water to wash school uniforms with.
I know of at least 3 schools in Matjhabeng where the sports fields are unusable because it is covered in sewage – in human faeces – or where students have to walk through sewage to get to the school itself, or where classroom buildings have become a safety hazard due to the water damage. I say water, but I mean poo. I don’t know what the parliamentary term is to describe the ANC’s governance in this place. There is no parliamentary word for it, but I guess it’s something similar. And yet, it has adopted this past week again, an unfunded budget.
It took a humanitarian crisis, and very serious protests from the community to force Minister Senzo Mchunu to promise an investment of more than R400 million into the sewage infrastructure in this area. The Department of Co-operative
Governance and Traditional Affairs, Cogta, however, was silent about the municipality’s own failing infrastructure. Rather late than never, we welcome the Department of Water and Sanitation’s intervention, which should have happened before the water pans along the R30 and the Sand River were contaminated with sewage. Before residents’ yards were filled with sewage from manholes bubbling up and before school children were forced to walk and play in it.
However, due to no planning on the part of the municipality over the last two decades, communities like Hennenman and Ventersburg have now grown in population to a point where the municipality can’t keep up with the water demand. According to a written reply from the Minister of Water and Sanitation to a DA question, it would take a further investment of R900 million into the bulk water infrastructure to provide these communities with sufficient water. But it will only do so once the municipality starts paying Bloem Water, and this they cannot do because everybody knows they have no cash flow. And in the meantime, these towns are burning due to protests by residents who do not have water, and I understand their frustration. These towns are burning to such an extent that the local economy is slowing down and even to such an extent that your own ANC councillors are threatening to resign.
Everybody who has worked in the Departments of Cogta, Water, and Sanitation, or National Treasury knows what is wrong with Matjhabeng. The municipality is usually clueless, but even they should be able to loosely articulate what the problems there are. It’s no secret.
Yet, this municipality has never been placed under administration over the last decade since I’ve been a Member of Parliament and officials have been allowed to just happily loot away while the residents are the ones suffering.
Old people, the disabled, the sick – with no water for weeks. Add to this load shedding, and you have a provincial crisis in which the provincial government is too weak to intervene and the national government does not have the appetite, the authority, or the guts to intervene. If you cannot help to fix humanitarian crises like this, Minister, what then is your function? Minister, the people of Matjhabeng are sick and tired. They are at a breaking point where their situation is hopeless. We have tried everything. It is a ticking time bomb and you need to intervene.
But Matjhabeng is not alone. It is but one example of a municipality that is falling apart. And yet, I am still to see
a single provincial or national intervention in terms of section 139 of the Constitution that has succeeded. They have all failed. They fail because the administrators are usually cadres that are appointed not on merit, or for what they know. Their terms of reference are not clear and politics gets in the way. And a whole parliamentary term later we are still waiting for the long-promised Bill on section 139 interventions from the department.
It is unacceptable that a democratic government that says that it governs for the people can turn a blind eye to such suffering. Yes, under apartheid services to only a small segment of the population were prioritized. Yes, since 1994 there were houses built and streets paved. But do you want to be compared to the apartheid government?
How many more houses could you have built if the money wasn’t stolen? How many more streets could you have paved if the tenders weren’t given to cadres? How many more clinics, and taps and flushing toilets could have been built or installed if you appointed people based on whether they are competent to do the job, and not based on whether they are members of the ANC?
Chairperson, we need to be honest with ourselves today and recognize the fact that these problems that residents are faced with are the consequence of a failed government on a local level. Some might say that basic issues such as water and sanitation should not be politicized, but I’m afraid it is political.
We are all trying to catch up on a backlog left by the past. No municipality is perfect. But in a province like the Free State bucket toilets are increasing under the ANC every year. Why? Because for political capital they hand out unserviced stands just before elections and then they loot and steal the money that should deliver services to the people and then they forget about those very same communities until the next elections.
The recent Auditor-General report confirmed that 19 municipalities in the Western Cape received clean audits this year. Some for the 12th year in a row. In the Free State, there is not a single one. Masilonyana in the Free State has failed to submit its audit documents to the Auditor-General for seven years now and no consequences, and no pressure from this department that renders any results.
In general, Chairperson, the quality of the municipal services you get depends on the party that governs your municipality.
And it is clear, where the DA governs with an outright majority, it does so well. And where it governs in the metro’s coalition, it is currently so busy trying to fix the mess of decades of ANC government looting and mismanagement, that it will take us years to get services on the level that the people deserve.
So yes, House Chairperson, it is political. And in 2024 we might not be voting for new municipalities, but we will get a chance to vote for provincial governments that intervene timeously when municipalities are making a mess, that support effectively where services are collapsing, and that ensure that the people are put first. We get the chance to vote for national Ministers that don’t only make promises decades after the problem has started, but who are there to serve the interests of the people and do their job to prevent crises, rather than to try and cope with it.
Whatever the ANC might say today – the facts do not lie. And the facts – all of them – show that you, the voters, are better off where the DA governs, and you are best off where the DA governs with a majority. Water, sewage, street lights,
potholes, jobs, safe communities – these things matter - and yes, they are political. So think very carefully before you vote for the ANC again. I thank you.
Ms B M BARTLETT: Hon House Chairperson, hon members, hon Minister, members of the community, I firstly want to convey our deepest sympathy to our province, our comrades, our family across the country on the loss of a sister, friend, a mother and an aunt, especially to her two sons. In the 29 years of democracy and freedom, the ANC, in the years in government has achieved considerable progress and development in a number of areas in housing and now in human settlements. The ANC has delivered 4 million free houses, remodelled and built new schools, added to two universities in Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape, remodelled and modernised the TVET colleges, built stadiums, expanded freeways, built new settlements, integrated communities in spaces and cities and towns, and introduced the bus rapid response transport in metros.
We have expanded access to water and sanitation. We have expanded access to electricity, transformed the local government landscapes through the provision of various basic services, which were not part of the partial development plan of the apartheid system. It is the journey of developing the
local government sphere, to provide services to communities and to serve as a government, which gives full expression to the needs of the communities from a ward level and a municipal level.
This sphere of government is confronted with the reality of high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment. Without sufficient economic development in various municipal boundaries has an effect of the pace of development.
Therefore, due to the varying economic levels, our country develops in an uneven pace, due to the socioeconomic realities in various municipalities.
This results in many of our municipalities relying on conditional grants and the allocation from their equitable share, which is not sufficient. Other municipalities with varying challenges also use conditional grants. They use it for salaries, which is not within the conditions of the allocations. This is not due to mismanagement, but a scarcity of resources.
We need to have a discussion that results in the process of development of norms and standards, which should set standards for labour costs or salary expenditure, the spend on goods and
services and capital expenditure. This dominance of human resource costs means that less funds actually reach communities.
This does not imply that the municipal workers are not providing a service, but it is a balance that should be made, to ensure that resources are allocated on more impacted areas, that improve the living conditions of residents and contribute to local economic developments.
Through this, we want to state the fact that we have significant inequalities across our municipalities and this has a consequence for the kind of services provided. For example, rural municipalities do not have adequate waste collection systems, such as those in urban areas. Within municipalities, in urban and townships there is also inequality of waste collection. This reflects how the spatial planning of our country inherently disadvantages communities.
The duty of government over the 29 years has been about closing the inequality gaps that continue to persist. The ANC government had developed a programme to improve the quality of the lives of our residents. That is what matters to us. To ensure no one is left behind through the implementation of the
Indigent Programme. The Indigent Programme is an example of a caring government that provides a safety net for the poor and the vulnerable. Leaving nobody behind, requires of us to continually strengthen this programme, to reach those in need.
Reports have highlighted that some of the funds allocated for indecent support purposes has been returned, due to challenges impacting the efficient and effective access to support by residents.
We need to ensure that the programme reaches those who are in need. I think, the ones on the left are not in need. Indigent residents are also beneficiaries of various social services, such as education, social grants and other services that government provides.
Our democratic government does not pay lip service in cushioning the poor from vulnerability, but we have put in place policies that are very important, and programmes to realise the transformation agenda.
Generations will benefit from the foundation we have laid through progressive pro-poor policies, which lift the poor. Our belief is that we will eradicate food insecurity and food
poverty in South Africa. Evidence does reflect that our policies have broken the cycle of poverty in many households.
We call on civil society and community organisation to join the effort of local municipalities to ensure that poor South Africans are part of the Indigent Programme, which allocates free electricity, free water and sanitation, and subsidises various services for those in need.
Local government is also the sphere of government with the potential of massifying skills development in the country, and also has programmes that are implemented that create multiple economic opportunities.
Through the District Development Model, local municipalities need to develop skills development strategies and plans to harness public expenditure for development.
Afrikaans:
Jy kan maar raas.
English:
We believe that the implementation of the community working programme, CWP, in two pathways will contribute significantly
to helping locals gain sustainable income. The CWP-sustained Income Model is crucial with the target of 20 000 people in the new Community Working Programme. It is sustainable and its strategy is to have the model by 31 March 2024, paying attention to a great participation of women, youth and persons with disabilities in the CWP programme by 2024.
The Community Working Programme will, from the 2023-24 financial year, differentiate between two pathways for implementation. Pathway 1 aims to provide sustainable and predictable income to participants with up to eight days per month and 100 days per year. You don’t need it. Pathway 2 was introduced with the specific aim of improving the economic agents of participants, through useful work and relevant training ...
Afrikaans:
Hulle het dit nie nodig nie.
English:
... to allow them to exit the programme after two years.
Afrikaans:
Dis hoekom ons mense alleen werk.
English:
The department’s intention is to implement the pathways, where Pathway 1 will be the traditional mode of implementing agents, while Pathway 2 will be focussing on specific projects to be developed, implementing them in collaboration with other government departments -higher learning institutions, sector training and education authorities, community-based organisations and the private sector.
Afrikaans:
Dis wat ons mense nie in die verlede kon hê nie.
English:
The department must create a conducive environment to enable the private sector to play a role in the CWP programmes, through creating a fertile ground for partnership and collaboration between the government and the private sector. The beneficiaries should never go back. They must never go back to the employment difficulties they encountered and were confronted with before the intervention came. Instead, they must be able to eliminate the bad opportunities. You were not there.
Our efforts of transformation should always be developmental and we are confident that, through this, we will empower our workers. The newly proposed establishment of a new strategy in the department in the form of the Result Management Office, RMO, with the aim to protect and bring project and programme implementation capabilities that will rate service delivery, using the District Development Model approach will have a positive impact on making sure these two pathways make a great impact.
The office will also assist in interventions in municipalities on project implementation. Tracking the quality of expenditure is fundamental. Through this, office tools need to be developed to ascertain the quality of expenditure, to ensure public funds realise the intended outcomes for optimal impact.
Afrikaans:
Baie goed.
English:
The District Development Model should help with this initiative to be everyone’s business and to be harnessed to reach its maximum potential. It must be enabled to be a
bridging opportunity for possible artisan entrepreneurs. Its effect needs to be sustainable development.
National projects, such as Sanral roads and other infrastructure projects, must have the drive to include local implementation of the projects. This will also manage the conflict that happens with community seeking to stop the projects, because of feeling excluded. This will help to manage the new phenomenon we find where people are mobilised to disrupt projects, which sometime raises some genuine concerns of the community grievances and sometimes it displays elements of criminality.
Afrikaans:
Julle was nie deel daar nie. Julle was nie daar nie.
English:
Through the implementation of the National Disaster Management Framework, improvement of functionality of municipalities should be a critical priority in this period of climate change disaster. We need to assess the capability of local government to effectively manage disaster intervention and to ensure we develop sustainable funding for disasters. This is critical in
safeguarding the efforts of residents and to protect the financial position.
The implementation of disaster funding arrangements, supporting municipalities in priority disaster areas to prevent, prepare for, mitigate disasters is important in this regard. The aim must be to enhance disaster management plans, to be able to find expression.
The ANC encourages the implementation of an adopted programme of action for implementation, which evolves around these strategies to improve the agility of disaster response and reconstruction. Contingency planning, which requires developing comprehensive plans, outlining the roles and procedures for efficient disaster response - you are not part of the planning - grant funding for security and securing sustainable funding for disaster, risk and response management activities and programmes.
There must be a response for ensuring well-co-ordinated, timely disaster response with resources, mobilisation and information sharing, recovery, and the restoration of
disaster-affected communities through short-term and long-term rebuilding and vulnerability-reduction habits.
Government and relevant stakeholders must be committed to continue to mitigate against the risk of disasters and build resilience, by supporting priority district municipalities that are considered most vulnerable, to implement disaster management plans. Through these efforts, we will strengthen local government to create resilient communities.
In my last two minutes: ...
Afrikaans:
Hulle kan maar geraas maak. Hulle was nie daar nie. Die wie altyd praat, ... [Onhoorbaar.] So, hulle is part [deel] van die plan, maar ...
English:
I think, the struggle is real and we know by 2024, we will be back in governance. Thank you.
IsiXhosa:
USEKELA MPHATHISWA WEZENTSEBENZISWANO KULAWULO NEMICIMBI
YEZEMVELI (Mnu Z Burns-Ncamashe): Sihlalo, mandizeke-mzekweni ndizayamanise nembeko esele igqithisiwe ngumaMpembe umPhathiswa wesebe. Ngokukhethekileyo mandikhahlele kwiikumkani zonke zezwe lakowethu. Xa ndisenza njalo, oonke
amaphakathi ndifikelele kuwo. Nathi Sihlalo sithi masigalele amazwi entuthuzelo kusapho luka Mama uJoemat-Petterson. Inene wena kufa ulutshaba oluginyelwe kulo uloyiso ngayo iNkosi uYesu Krestu. Xolani ke lusapho ingakumbi abantwana ngokunduluka kweli qhaji legorha ebelilithandazwe.
Kananjalo sivakalisa ukudandatheka ngokunduluka kwenjengele uGqr Dabula obeyiNgqonyela kwiSibhedlele i-1 Military kwisixeko saseTshwane. Ebenesandla ekongeni iikumkani ingakumbi uKumkani uXolilizwe Sigcawu kwaGcaleka, uKumkani uMaxhob’ayakhawuleza kwaRharhabe, uKumkani uMpondombini Sigcawu wamaMpondo eQaukeni kwaneMbube uqobo iSilo Samabandla onke kaZulu. Sihlalo vuma unyawo lwam lutyibilikele kolu lwimi lukaxhina kaxhonono, mayizal’inkomo sitye isigqokro. Amaqotha qikili anga ayakhotha kanti ayaxathula.
English:
It is my honour and privilege to support the Minister in presenting the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Budget Vote. We are presenting this Budget Vote during the Youth Month with high expectations from the young royals of our country, inspired by not only the ontological Marxism, but also by the aesthetics of Frantz Fanon’s epistemology as a basis to sharpen the decisive
onslaught against coloniality, and he postulates that, I quote:
Each generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it, in relative opacity.
Indeed, now is the time for the young royals to occupy their rightful places on issues of traditional affairs in all provinces. As appreciation of the young royals, the department has developed a programme for the Youth Month with specific focus on young royals. The programme will kickstart in
KwaZulu-Natal, with the colloquium in partnership with the Presidency, provincial Departments of Arts, Culture, Sports and Culture, as well as Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Cogta.
Indeed, in its pursuit of collaborative working relations with the institution of traditional and Khoisan leadership, government has found it necessary to facilitate the establishment of a kings and queens forum. As alluded to by our Minister in respect of the kings and queens forum, our kings and queens are the highest echelon in the hierarchy of traditional and Khoisan leadership in the country, and it is necessary for them to have a platform through which they
engage among themselves as well as to engage with other role- players such as government.
IsiXhosa:
Kumkani uNdamase, Faku, okwam kukuqinisekisa inkupho yempophoma yendimla yoMphathiswa wam umaMpembe iyenzeka. Kuza kuba njalo Nyawuza, Ndlovuyezwe.
English:
The forum’s first session will be convened before the end of September 2023. Therefore, at the apex, as ANC government, we are committed to achieve parity amongst traditional leaders of the same royal hierarchical status. The customary initiation practice is an important cultural practice in our communities and is a rite of passage which we are proud of. Unfortunately, we have over the years seen this practice being associated with outcomes that are actually foreign to our culture.
IsiXhosa:
Ilishwangusha nelishwa elambethe eli siko ukungenelwa ligutyungelwe yimpehle yobugewu, ubugegemba nobunndladiya, apho oozungul’ichele boovuk’engceni beengcicbi namakhankatha bengxwelerha umqikela womgqeku ikamva lesizwe. Sihlalo,
sililizwe lomthetho kangangokuba umthetho olawula ulwaluko waphunyezwa wada watywina nanguMongameli uRamaphosa.
Sithetha nje, kukho iqonga elikhokelwa nguNkosi uMahlangu uNdzundza kuzwelonke kuphinde kubekho nawamaphondo.
Siyaqaphela ukuba kukho amaphondo asilelayo ekwakheni la maqonga aquka uMntla Koloni, uMntla Ntshona neKwaZulu-Natal. Siyabongoza kula maphondo ukuba abhinqele phezulu kuba sifuna ukuvingca onke amazibuko.
Sepedi:
Lenyaga ba be le lebollo leo le se nago mathata. Re re ba ye ba phela, ba be ba boe ba phela.
IsiXhosa:
Mabaye bephila, babuye bephila. Kananjalo, isihelegu esisingqine kweli Phondo leNtshona Kapa sokugxungulwa kwesidima sabantu bakowethu benyitywa ilungelo lokwenza isiko lolwaluko ngokukhululekileyo nangesidima, masinyhashwe sihewulwe okweshologu. Sifuna ukuqinisekisa abantu balapha eNtshona Kapa ukuba siza kusoloko sinabo sibaxhasa, sibakhusela kubuntshovu-ntshovu besitshantshathela sabangcatshi benkcubeko yabo ingakumbi phaya e-Ida’s Valley
kuMasipala weNgingqi iStellenbosch. Yazini ukuba sinani ngamaxesha onke.
English:
As government that listens, we have responded to the call and continue to assist the royal families. In this regard, the department further developed a step by step guidelines for royal families on the development of the customary laws of succession and genealogies, and is currently rolling out capacity building workshops on the guidelines, starting with the national, provincial and local houses. It should also be mentioned that this initiative has become welcome and greatly appreciated by the sector across all levels of traditional leadership.
On land affairs, one of the cardinal tenets of the founding pillars of the institution of traditional leadership is land. The Traditional Leadership Indaba that took place in June 2017, resolved, among other things, that the Communal Land Administration and Tenure Summit be held to address critical policy issues impacting on communal land. At the same verve, one of the areas under review is the role of the institution of traditional leaders in land development processes as it relates to Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act.
The Koi and San communities were amongst the first nations who were at the cold face of colonial assault which led to their displacement close to total decimation and extinction. To restore and affirm their dignity, the Traditional Leadership Act, which has just been invalidated, provides for the establishment of the commission. We have met with the commission, and we are doing everything to make sure that the commission is supported so as to ensure that these communities, their dignity, is restored and affirmed.
Lastly, in conclusion, with regards to rural invest, we want to make sure that the land that traditional leadership communities occupy is used in ways that promote investment and as such it will contribute to the well-being of our people.
Indeed, the department will continue co-ordinating all relevant departments and provinces to actively participate in the agrarian revolution programme which will be driven at district level in the context of a District Development Model. We dare not fail our people. I thank you.
Mr N M HADEBE: Hon Chairperson, Hon Minister ...
IsiZulu:
... Amakhosi aseNdlunkulu ...
English:
... Hon members, Section 154 of the Constitution mandates that the government support and strengthen municipal capacity to manage their affairs, exercise their powers, and perform their allocated functions. However, the National Treasury has advised the defaulting municipalities that if they want their Eskom debt scrapped, they have to collect electricity revenue from the consumers and cut off those consumers who default.
This ultimatum indicates the lack of understanding our government has of the circumstances in the municipalities with high numbers of indigent households, especially considering that the local government only receive 9,1% of the percentage share allocation from the national fiscus which has proven to be utterly insufficient for the municipalities to deliver services. As it has been noted by the KwaZulu-Natal provincial chairperson of the SA Local Government Association, the ongoing power crisis is preventing some municipalities from delivering basic services. Not only does this inhibit households, communities, and businesses but also economic growth. Load shedding is rendering local government in an unfavourable condition and the rural communities are largely at the receiving end of this. A recent survey done by Nedbank and the SA Entrepreneur Alliance indicates that 64% of township small businesses halted operations during load
shedding, which in some areas means an entire business day as they can have up to 10 hours of load shedding in a day.
Furthermore, almost 66% of township business owners have lost jobs because of load shedding. Consequently, these further contributed to the municipalities’ inability to alleviate poverty and fuel unemployment. As Statistics SA has recently indicated that South Africa's unemployment rate has remained the highest in the world, standing at a staggering 32,9% in the first quarter of 2023. Therefore, the IFP notes the importance of the Department of Co-operative Governance’s role in financially aiding the municipalities that have been hit hard by load shedding and do not have a budget that caters for them to invest in alternative energy or buying generators.
Inaction by the department will lead to further deterioration of the state of our municipalities which directly impacts South Africans. Further, we also want to call on the Department of Traditional Affairs to be more proactive in their prioritisation and protection of our traditional leaders, as there seems to be a blatant lack of support and protection provided to them.
In KwaZulu-Natal, the issue of the killings of our traditional leaders has become systematic. The South African police reported in January 2022 that the police are investigating 51 murder cases going back to 2012. At the time, 30 people have been arrested while 18 cases are still pending in court. It is unacceptable that the department is treating this serious issue of traditional leaders losing their lives with such a lack of urgency, especially considering that these killings threaten to destabilise an institution critical to the stability and order of society.
As a party, we shall continue to fight for the lives, rights of the institution of Amakhosi [Chiefs] and izinduna [headmen], as we recognise their role and importance in securing good governance. In considering all the comments made, the IFP accepts the budget of the Department of Co- operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. Thank you, Hon Chairperson.
The DEPUTY MINISTER OF CO-OPERATIVE GOVERNANCE AND TRADITIONAL
AFFAIRS (Mr M P F Tau): Hon Chairperson, allow me to rise on the protocol that has been observed earlier by the Minister, and further recognise Minister Nkadimeng. This budget debate comes at a time when we celebrate Youth Month under the theme:
Accelerating youth economic emancipation for a sustainable future. We rightly commemorate Youth Month since youth are the heroes of tomorrow, and it is our collective responsibility to ensure that they are well equipped to take on the world of today and tomorrow.
As the department, we are grateful for this valuable opportunity because the NCOP is an institution that represents the interest of our provinces and local government, fosters co-operative governance, promotes accountability and encourages public participation. As the Minister emphasised, making local government work is everybody’s business. Hon members, both the 2022 state of local government report and the recently released Auditor-General’s Report paint a worrying picture of the health of local government in our country.
Strengthening the local government system is not only about defining the shortcomings of the co-operative governance system, but it also centres on deploying necessary systemic and institutional measures, advanced developmental and transformative local government, and thus, protect the gains of our democracy. Hon Chairperson, as you are aware, in line with our efforts to professionalise the public sector, in
November 2022, the Cabinet approved a framework towards the professionalisation of the public service.
The framework requires, amongst others, that senior managers across all three spheres must be appointed on merit. We remain on course to support them to build a capable, responsive and professional Local Government Administration that delivers on its mandate. Many fixed term contracts of municipal managers came to an end on 8 November 2021. The filling of these posts coincides with the implementation of the Municipal Systems Amendment Act of 2022, which came into effect on the 1 November 2022.
This Act obliges municipalities to appoint managers who possess the prescribed skills, expertise, competencies and qualifications. As the Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, we’re engaged in strengthening mechanism to enforce compliance with these measures to ensure accountability and meritocratic appointments. As such, the members of executive council, MECs, for local government in the province or the Minister is empowered by law, that upon receipt of an appointment report take appropriate steps to enforce compliance by the municipal council.
Hon Chairperson, allow me to bring to this House an update on the important provision in South Africa’s local government system, namely section 139(7) of the Constitution. This section allows for intervention by the national government in municipalities. In this regard, we continue to monitor the implementation of national interventions in terms of section
139(7). This, in Lekwa Local Municipality in Mpumalanga, Mangaung in the Free State and Enoch Mgijima in the Eastern Cape.
Interventions in Mangaung and Lekwa Local Municipalities, through joint efforts with Departments of Human Settlements, the Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Transport, the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent, Misa, and National Treasury, seconded officials to occupy senior management positions to stabilise these municipalities. We have also recorded progress in the Mangaung Metro, which includes the prioritisation of the budget for infrastructure maintenance and sourcing of additional funding from the Department of Water and Sanitation through the Water Services Improvement Programme, WSIP, for the refurbishment of all wastewater treatment work.
The repairs to the fleet are ongoing and an additional 15% of the fleet was operational as of the end of August 2022, the procurement processes have been streamlined and a total of 29,5 km of roads have been resurfaced. The refurbishment of water supply systems project is being implemented and the water conservation and demand management plan has been finalised. It is encouraging that the implementation of revenue enhancement projects within the Lekwa Local Municipality is now gaining momentum.
This programme includes various revenue enhancement projects, which includes, the Department of Public Service and Administration is assisting with capacity support in areas of credit control, debt collection, payment incentives and customer care. The National Treasury approved a funding of R45 million for the installation of smart meters. The municipality continues to make weekly payments to major creditors until such time that their finances are stabilised.
The Minister of Water and Sanitation committed an amount of R350 million to address water and sanitation challenges, and the municipality was able to collect over R30 million of debt. The municipality also recorded a reduction in electricity losses from 34% in June 2021 to 25% in June 2022. Furthermore,
we are currently reviewing our interventions in Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality, with the intention of strengthening efforts to improve the performance of the municipality.
Hon members, the Municipal Infrastructure Grant, MIG, is instrumental in transforming our municipalities, providing the necessary resources to enhance our infrastructure and improving the quality of life for all our residents. An amount of R17,6 billion has been allocated to municipalities in the 2023-24 financial year. We take pride in the 116 municipalities that have spent above 90% of their cumulative allocations over the past four years.
We further welcome the decrease in the number of municipalities experiencing perennial nonperformance of MIG from 39 to 36 when compared to allocations in 2020-21 and 2021-22. To prevent unspent MIG allocations from being returned to the national fiscus, we will act in municipalities with underexpenditure by utilising the provisions in the Division of Revenue Act, thus allowing us to retain a portion of the grant and establish an indirect grant in terms of Schedule 6B of the Division of Revenue Act.
Hon members, a total of nine projects are currently being implemented by the Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs as interventions to address a range of governance and institutional issues identified in identified municipalities and through the use of the Municipal Systems Improvement Grant, MSIG. This grant focuses specifically on helping municipalities invest in systems that can improve their performance and reporting.
We are concerned, however, at the number of applications for this grant, which is relatively low, and this is relative to the challenges our municipalities face. Hon members, the Community Work Programme, CWP, has confronted a number of challenges that we need to confront. In this regard, we have initiated the process of transition of the Community Work Program with the Implementing Agents, IAs, while having their contracts come to an end on the 31 March 2023.
We are currently undergoing a transition period currently managed by the department as we look at options of managing the transition while finalising the new system in this regard. Hon members, yesterday we joined the Minister of Water and Sanitation when he announced the Green Drop Watch report. This report, released by the Department of Water and Sanitation
indicates a decline in performance with regards to the management of our water, sanitation and water loss management.
The Department of Water and Sanitation, working with the Co- operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, has identified areas of support and interventions including schedule 6B, as indicated earlier, to assist these municipalities. As I conclude, Chairperson, let me reiterate that in celebrating the Youth Month, it is incumbent upon all of us who make local government everyone’s business by leveraging the slight economic expansion to youth empowerment.
These are realisable goals if we work together, and more so, leading to the next financial year when South Africa will be commemorating 30 years of democracy and reflect on the state of local government moving forward. Thank you very much.
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms W Ngwenya): Hon members, I would like to announce that it is hon Parks Tau’s birthday today. Happy birthday. Thanks, hon members.
IsiZulu: Siyaqhuba!
Mr S F DU TOIT: Hon House Chairperson, while we often focus our attention on national level politics, it is important to remember that the decisions made at the local level do have a profound impact on our daily lives. At its core, local government serves as the foundation for our communities. It is responsible for ensuring that the basic needs of our citizens are met, from maintaining our roads and public spaces to providing essential services such as protection and waste management. Local government also plays an incredibly important role in shaping the future of our communities through the development of long-term plans for growth and innovation.
Afrikaans:
Maar wat gebeur tans op grondvlak? Die Ouditeur-generaal, OG, het die afgelope paar jaar in hul verslae dit duidelik gemaak dat politieke inmenging een van die grootste probleme, oorsake en kwelpunte vir effektiewe dienslewering is. Daar moet in gedagte gehou word dat die ANC die afgelope 29 jaar in die meerderheid van munisipaliteite in Suid-Afrika regeer het. Ons sal nie sê dat hulle dit bestuur het nie, want dit is in die afgrond in bestuur. Dit is ten spyte van die feit dat daar effektiewe wetgewing in plek is wat bloot net nie toegepas word nie, en tot nou toe was daar ook nie die nodige druk deur
die LUR’e en die vorige Minister om toe te sien dat hierdie wetgewing wel nagekom word nie.
English:
However, perhaps most importantly, local government is supposed to be the most accessible and responsive form of government available to the public.
Afrikaans:
Wat gebeur, Voorsitter? Op hierdie stadium is plaaslike munisipaliteite tot ’n groot mate ontoereikend vir die algemene publiek om klagtes te rapporteer en met die bestuur te praat want hulle is bloot net nie beskikbaar nie. Dit is ten spyte van die feit dat raadslede dag na dag foute rapporteer en aanmeld, en dit val net op dowe ore want die politieke wil bestaan glad nie.
English:
Of course, there are also challenges to local government from limited resources and challenging demographics that need to balance competing priorities and interests.
Afrikaans:
Ons is nie blind vir die verantwoordelikhede van munisipaliteite nie. Daar het tot nou toe heelwat gebeur maar fondse word wanaangewend, daar is onderspandering wat plaasvind en dit word op die verkeerde prioriteite spandeer as ons kyk na die wyse hoe die fondse aangewend, spandeer en vermors word, asook die feit dat min tot geen instandhouding gedoen word nie.
Die nuutste OG verslag toon dat sowat 44% van munisipaliteite in Suid-Afrika onbefondse begrotings het en 88% van die munisipaliteite nie aan die minimum finansiële hersienings- en moniteringsvereistes voldoen nie. Dit kan seker verwag word aangesien daar in 22% van hierdie munisipaliteite vakante hoof finansiële beampte poste is en in 32% van hierdie munisipaliteite daar vakante munisipale bestuursposte is.
English:
On a lighter note, most municipalities in the North West province look like a Hollywood movie set, since most individuals in management are acting and not in permanent positions. That is to the detriment of those municipalities.
Afrikaans:
Gemeenskappe en opposisie raadslede rapporteer foute en meld die kwessies aan maar dit val op dowe ore. Die ANC het een ding goed gedoen. Julle het toegesien dat die kanker van kaderontplooiing die afgelope 29 jaar deur al drie sfere van regering gevestig is, en dit gaan moeite en harde werk verg om dit ongedaan te maak. Ongelukkig is dit weereens plaaslike gemeenskappe wat daaronder ly.
English:
When politicians start to intervene in local government matters, it compromises the system and threatens the democratic values that we hold so dear. It can often lead to situations where decisions are made based on personal ... party interests rather than the welfare of communities. This causes major problems, such as the mismanagement of funds, favouritism, the lack of accountability and even corruption, and unfortunately, it is what we are currently experiencing. When political interference comes into play, it can diminish the credibility of local governments and even erode public trust.
Through you Chair to the Minister, as I speak, contractors in the Wolmaransstad area are unable to finalise overhead electrical connections and transformers that need to be
collected due to apparent nonpayment to the contractor. Up to now, the community in the Maquassi Hills area has been suffering without water for long periods of time. I know that the provincial government visited that specific area but urgent intervention is needed on that side. Please, Chair, the people are thirsty. The people are without electricity.
Unfortunately, the children and the hungry are feeling the brunt of this.
Afrikaans:
Jong seuns soos Daniel Malan, julle is trots op jul omgewing. Julle is besig om te veg vir ’n beter toekoms vir ons as Suid- Afrikaners.
English:
The youth is taking part. The youth is taking part in communities to try and uplift and build what we have left for them to build on.
The consequences of political interference in local government are dire and far-reaching. It is up to us as citizens to stand against it and demand that our local governments be allowed to function and operate with transparency.
Afrikaans:
Die vlakke van beurtkrag verhoog en daar is beslis groter uitdagings in munisipale gebiede. Indien ons hoër vlakke van beurtkrag in Suid-Afrika sou ervaar, maak ek dit duidelik dat ons groter probleme kan verwag. Op die oomblik is die ... [Onhoorbaar.] ... van die plattelandse munisipaliteite nie in staat om hul watervlakke in reservoirs bo 50% te kry nie. Met hoër vlakke van beurtkrag kan ons definitief en sal ons ongelukkig protesaksies oor dienslewering in die gesig moet staar.
Tot nou toe het die regering slegs openbare orde polisie basisse wyer oor plattelandse gebiede versprei in plaas daarvan om daadwerklike pogings aan te wend om hierdie probleme op te los, toe te sien dat daar voldoende bystandkrag is en toe te sien dat die gemeenskappe die basiese dienste kry waarop hulle geregtig is.
Die verval van munisipaliteite kan vierkantig voor die ANC se deur gelê word. Die blaamverskuiwingsperd is holrug gery. Die verval van munisipaliteite is nie Jan van Riebeeck se skuld nie. Inteendeel, dit is as gevolg van Jan van Riebeeck en die Groot Trek dat hier wel infrastruktuur in Suid-Afrika gevestig is. Totdat hulle gekom het was hier niks.
English:
The consequences of political interference in local government are dire and far-reaching. It is up to us as citizens to stand up against it and demand that our local governments be allowed to function independently and transparently.
Afrikaans:
Bepaal julle eie toekoms. Neem beheer van jou lewe. Registreer en stem VF Plus in 2024. Daniel en nog jeug soos jy, ons veg vir ’n beter Suid-Afrika vir julle.
Mr F J BADENHORST: Hon Minister, happy birthday. I suppose two out of 11 clean audits not a bad gift at present maybe not too good. Fellow South Africans, today, let’s talk about the elephant in the room and I am not talking physical here. The District Development Model, DDM, as first mentioned by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his Budget Speech in 2019 is now being paraded as a model that should be unilaterally accepted by all municipal councils in the Republic of South Africa. As if we make legislation by Presidential decree – prove that it is.
The District Development Model is purported to negate the silo effect between national, provincial and local government,
which is purported to have led, and I am going to quote this: “to lack of coherence in planning and implementation and has made monitoring and oversight of government’s programme difficult”. Is probably more cadre deployment than anything else. The model consists of a process by which joint and collaborative planning is undertaken at local, district and metropolitan by all three spheres of governance resulting in a single strategically focussed, One Plan for each of the 44 districts and eight metropolitan geographic spaces in the country, wherein the district is now seen as the ‘landing strip’. Under the model a collective plan and budget called a “One Plan” and a “One Budget” will be prepared for all spheres of government operating in a particular geographic area. This includes districts where the ANC doesn’t control either the municipality or the provincial government. To implement these measures, the Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister, plans to issue regulations under the Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act. Yet, there is nothing. Not even a section 139 Bill yet. Let’s blame COVID perhaps.
Hon Chair, nothing has come of any of the afore mentioned since President Ramaphosa proclaimed the DDM in 2019. But it might be worthwhile for us to escape this ANC land of dreams
and fantasies and fairy tales. And let’s get back to reality for a moment, let’s have a look at this little book in my hand. Anybody recognises especially the ANC members. This is our Constitution in which our reality is grounded.
Chapter 3 section 40 (1) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 makes it clear that “In the Republic, government is constituted as national, provincial and local spheres of government which are distinctive, interdependent and interrelated”.
Subsection 2 further state that “All spheres of government must observe and adhere to the principles in this Chapter and must conduct their activities within the parameters that the Chapter provides.” The principles alluded to above is clearly described in subsection 41 (1) “All spheres of government and all organs of state within each sphere must “- (g) “exercise their powers and perform their functions in a manner that does not encroach on the geographical, functional or institutional integrity of government in another sphere”.
Chapter 7 safeguard the sovereignty of local government in section 151 (2) “The executive and legislative authority of a municipality is vested in its Municipal Council. Subsection 3
“A municipality has the right to govern, on its own initiative, the local government affairs of its community, subject to national and provincial legislation, as provided for in the Constitution.
Subsection 4, the national or provincial government may not compromise or impede a municipality’s ability or right to exercise its powers or perform its functions. Furthermore, it would be worthwhile to take note of the provisions of subsection 154 that describes municipalities in co-operative government.
It instructs national and provincial government to support and strengthen the capacity of municipalities to manage their own affairs and it further instructs that any draft legislation that affects the status, institutions powers or functions of local government must be published for public comment in order to enable local government, municipalities and other interested parties to make representations with regards to the draft legislation.
It is clear that this model of “One District, One Plan and One Budget” aims to derail the good work done by a functional municipality in a functional province like the Western Cape
for the following reasons: No clarity has ever been provided with regard to which sphere of government is ultimately responsible for the approval of the content of a One Plan and One Budget of a particular DDM district. Will it be the municipality; will it be the province or will it be national government. No clarity has been provided of what happens in the event of a conflict between the municipality, the province, and or national government about the content of a One Plan and One Budget. No clarity has been provided by national government whether they envisage the use of provincial and municipal budgets for the funding of national government programmes and projects contained in a One Plan and One Budget. No clarity has been provided with regards to the cost of building and operating the so-called DDM Hubs, as envisaged by the national government, and whether the national government has the budget for the establishment and operation of these DDM Hubs, or whether provinces and municipalities will be expected to fund these Hubs. And I am sorry if I make some of the members sleep in a House.
No clarity has been provided whether national government believe that existing legal provisions on intergovernmental relations, IGR, are insufficient to their purpose, and whether the national government envisage a new set of IGR laws.
No clarity has been provided regarding the legal and constitutional status of the so-called DDM ‘champions’, and what powers and functions they have in relation to provinces and to municipalities. It is for these reasons my fellow members of this hon House above that the DA rejects the District Development Model, which is, at the end of the day, just like the other back to basics, another solution looking for an ANC problem out there.
So, Minister, yes, we are celebrating Youth Month this month. Unfortunately, most of the youth that are now in their late middle ages from 1976 are unemployed. Unless, of course, they are in the Western Cape, we have the lowest unemployment rate in South Africa.
Hon Dodovu? Means he has gone out, shame, sorry. For local government will become stable when one of two things happen in this country. Cadre deployment must stop or the electorate who are suffering because there is no good service where they live will start voting with their feet and vote for the DA government where there is clean audit and where there is good governance.
I heard the MEC of the Eastern Cape saying people are suffering from disasters. Yes, MEC, they are indeed suffering in the Eastern Cape and everywhere in the country the disaster. They are suffering from the ANC disaster. The ANC Youth League mentioned something about, we have got a councillor who said something in Mossel Bay. Councillors are welcome to talk in the DA ... [Inaudible.] ... they get muscles ... [Inaudible] ...
Ms M DLAMINI: On a point of order, Chair.
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms W Ngwenya): What is your poit of order, hon member?
Ms M DLAMINI: Leeches might not be your thing. It’s called economic freedom fighters and not the youth league. Thank you, Chair.
Mr F J BADENHORST: well, the few spirit in there, colleague. Why are you so vocal today? I just want ladies to know that in the near future what experience do you actually have in governing any local government anywhere in the country. It’s very interesting. Hon Barlett? Yes.
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms W Ngwenya): Hon member, there is a point of order.
Mr M E NCHABELENG: I just want to ask hon Badenhorst if he has been to Gugulethu or Khayelitsha?
Mr F J BADENHORST: Can you repeat in English, please.
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms W Ngwenya): No, hon member ... [Inaudible.] ...
Mr F J BADENHORST: I didn’t get it. Sorry, I didn’t hear you. Hon Bartlett?
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms W Ngwenya): Continue, hon member and
...
Mr F J BADENHORST: Hon Bartlett, apart from telling how well is going in Kimberly, please people that gets SA Social Security Agency, Sassa, cards can’t afford a bottle of water. So, clean audit like we had in the Western Cape, 92% of the Western Cape municipalities got clean audits. There people don’t have to buy a bottle of water. The poor people will vote
with their feet in 2024 along with the wealthy people and they will vote out the ANC. Our time has come. Thank you.
Mr E M MTHETHWA: Angibingelele [Let me greet] the House Chairperson, Minister, Amakhosi aseNdlunkulu, Members of Parliament, fellow South Africans, good afternoon. House Chairperson let me as well join those that have said in the Minister that this debate is in the midst of the crisis of Cholera in Hammanskraal and part of the Free State.
We pay our condolences to the families that have lost their loved ones in Tshwane due to this Cholera outbreak. As a nation we cannot afford House Chairperson, to have people die due to preventable disease. The critical question we should ask is: Why are we in such a circumstance? We call on the national government to intervene in Tshwane Metro Municipality, which has been ... [Inaudible.] ... with this contestation of power since 2021 local government elections.
The degeneration of key services in Tshwane should concern all of us. It is particularly concerning that problem impacting the community of Hammanskraal has been an issue, and Parliament has focused onto the failure of the municipality leadership, which has avoided the various reports and
intervention from the national Department of Water and Sanitation.
As the DA-led coalition continues to jockey for power, the community of Tshwane have suffered with other losing their loved ones. We should also not use this situation for political scoring, as this is the life reality of the residents. We should rather use the experience as a lesson to ensure that coalition councillors should not have the latitude of compromising service delivery.
As the ANC, we have begun going through processes to ensure that we develop a safeguarding ... to defend and protect our democratic and revolutionary gains. We have affirmed a key principle that coalition must be based on a common minimum programme that focuses on measurable targets to service delivery and development in the municipality. Such programme must be made public and be subjected to the community meeting discussion.
The ANC urged all the partners in local government coalition to be guided by a principle of serving community where they are. The ANC believes that there is a need to fast track the possible way to regulate the coalition, to help with political
stability that hinders the service delivery. We welcome the progress of the department in developing the legislation in this regard.
The ANC has formulated a framework that is people centred, putting people first and not a narrow party-political interest. A number of propositions are made by the ANC with regard to looking for a workable regulatory framework. This include introducing threshold to help easing the functioning of the municipality and councillors.
House Chairperson, MaNgwenya addressing the spatial inequality is a central ... [Inaudible.] ... to address the structural and the systematic factor which contribute to the reproduction of poverty, unemployment, inequality.
It is therefore critical that municipality continue to have transformative special planning to direct development and land uses save the socioeconomic interest of the community and the country at large.
Municipalities have parcels of the land which can be largely for development, for social facility and for economic development. The implementation the District Development Model
should enable the strategic land planning for development by all spheres of government.
As part of the release land parcels, local government should be part of the critical contributors of addressing the landlessness through providing land for residential development and for various economic activities.
The resources of the municipality are not only its ability to collect revenue and spend but also how it leverages its assets such as land building and equipment. Planning should always factor these areas to ease the impact of local government services and developmental intervention.
We are confident that processes that are underway to ensure there is a security for tenure, for those with permission to occupy. This will contribute in stimulating the economic development.
Tenure security is critical, House Chair, the National Development Plan, NDP, and the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, view the rolling back the triple challenge by scaling up the development of land. Legally secured, tenure, food security, economic growth, land, and rural development are of
the most crucial focus areas in trying to address the triple challenges and to ensure inclusive economic acceleration land reform. Tenure reform and land development has a huge positive outcome, as a country we can gain from.
It is crucial House Chairperson, that we have a harmless relationship between the democratic institution and traditional authority. It must unlock the potential of rural land under the custodianship of the traditional leaders for optimal use and citizen participation.
A well working relationship between the Department of Agriculture, Rural Development and Land Reform, Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs, CoGTA, and Presidency to strategize the land development through the creation of agroprocessing, manufacturing industries and construction for domestic and global market.
The abundance of the maize, tomato, citrus fruits, vegetables, and livestock production in rural areas can support their sustainability. The District Development Model House Chair, implementation must ensure equitable development in this regard.
Technically and Vocational Education and Training Colleges located in rural areas, must act as a strong source with long and short skilling programme to help local communities develop and enhance the skills to help them develop industrial and sectors in their areas that are competitively capable and their other potential industry that may emerge.
The Technically and Vocational Education and Training, TVET, must act as facilitator of economic activities in rural districts which they are located.
The ANC sees the establishment of the interministerial task team as a key development to respond to issues raised over the years by the traditional leaders. There should be a speedy implementation of the outcomes of this task team to strengthen the roles of the government and support the role of traditional leaders and be more effective.
House Chair, we believe that the new Deputy President will take this new task of leading this task team with a greatest attention it deserves, working along with CoGTA.
We condemn that killing of traditional leaders and call for peaceful resolution of conflict. Our traditional authority are
our pride and institution which we should defend and protect at all material times.
There is a need for assessment of work carried out by Presidency with traditional leadership to ensure that proposed intervention and resolution are effectively attended to, in a more coordinated manner, to make positive impact in this area.
A coordinated [Interjection.] and effective interaction with traditional leadership, especially in local government, House Chairperson is crucial, as most local municipalities have many traditional authorities and their presence and voices can be strengthened and the impact of the democracy ... [Interjection.] ... improve health services delivery.
House Chairperson, when I come to conclusion, urban and rural areas are linked to the flow of people natural and economic resources. This is an economic, social, and environmental independence between rural and urban areas. Key to this House Chair, is to address the issues of uneven spatial planning where development is evenly distributed and deliberated helping rural areas ... [Interjection.]
Mr G MICHALAKIS: House Chairperson, on a point of order.
Mr E M MTHETHWA: ... where people can live and play ... [Interjection.] [Inaudible.] ...the issue of the DA is quiet embarrassing, where ... [Interjection.] ...
Mr G MICHALAKIS: House Chairperson, on a point of order: You indicated that the speaker is 40 second over his time now House Chair, you indicate House Chairperson he should stop speaking and then you went to sleep with respect. If he gets a minute... [Interjection.] [Inaudible.] ... House Chairperson
... [Interjection.]
Mr E M MTHETHWA: ... the undefendable, where many people are dying in Hammanskraal ... [Interjection.]
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms W Ngwenya): Nyambose! Sir your time now is over. Thank you.
Mr G MICHALAKIS: House Chairperson, on a point of order.
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms W Ngwenya): Hon member, I still have this document, if didn’t recognise you don’t stand up ... [Interjection.]
Mr G MICHALAKIS: House Chairperson, I am standing on a point of order.
The DEPUTY CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP (Ms S E Lucas): House
Chairperson, point of order: House Chairperson, I want to repeat in this House, I see these white men, they are trying to bully us as women. And we ask the House Chairperson, the NCOP to address this issue of the fact that as soon as it is woman, this man try to bully us.
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms W Ngwenya): Thanks hon member, hon members, hon members, order, order please! Nicale kahle, manje seniyayimosha lento, no, ngicela sichubeni [You started well and now you are spoiling this thing; can we please continue] because we are about to finish this debate now. Hon members, hon delegates we have come to end of the debate of the Budget Vote 3, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs and 15. Thanks very much to the table. I’ve been disturbed by the hon member ... hon members please! I would like to recognise hon T Nkadibeng, Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, over to you, mam.
Ms C LABUSCHAGNE: House Chairperson, on the point of order: I rise on Rule 691.
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms W Ngwenya): Yes, hon member, what’s your point of order hon member?
Ms C LABUSCHAGNE: I want to make a point of order that the decorum of this House is even brought further down by precisely the Deputy Chair, don’t point up a point of order, she stands up and make a point and sit down, it’s actually does not make your easy. So, I would really like that you rule that the other chair, cannot just stand up and make a point, because then all of us can stand up and make a point. Thank you.
The DEPUTY CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP (Ms S E Lucas): House
Chairperson, if I may, I never stood up, I waited until you pointed ...
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms W Ngwenya): Order hon members! Hon members, hon members can you please ... hon members, the Deputy Chair have raised a point of order; therefore, I allowed her to speak. So, there’s no point of order on top of the point of order. Thank you. Can the Deputy Minister conclude?
The MINISTER OF CO-OPERATIVE GOVERNANCE AND TRADITIONAL
AFFAIRS: Hon House Chair, section 40 of the Constitution of South Africa provides for the spheres of government. Section
41 tells us how those spheres must exercise their powers and not encroach on any sphere. It further defines even the schedule of duties, schedule 4 for local government and schedule 5 for national government, schedule 6 for special priority jobs which could be done in a municipal space by both provincial and national government. I do believe that there needs to be a class of what are the fundamentals of the District Development Model.
Further than that, section 151 defines what fiducial responsibilities of municipalities are. It calls for the support of the provincial and the national level. Then you do not even know why we are called a co-operative governance. We will never exist as the co-operative governance, as the department. We take our rights from that. Hon Smit, shush, I was quiet when you were speaking.
I also want to address the issue that a repeated lie often becomes the truth. You talk here about the cadre deployment. Let me tell you about the DA cadre deployment in areas where the DA operates. You can even go to the court findings.
Stellenbosch Local Municipality, the DA was fined R750 000 for overlooking an honours degree acquired lady to a matriculate for a position of R1,1 million. They were fined and paid in a court of law. That is just one.
Secondly, in Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality you were fined for a bodybuilder. You could not even look for a matriculate. Mme Angie is busy with basic education here but you could not even find one of the graduates. You went for a bodybuilder in the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality and you were fined. The Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality’ Chief of Staff Marietta Aucamp’s outcome for allegedly misrepresenting her educational qualifications. The list is endless. It will take my five minutes if I were to count for you.
Hon Bartlett, even strategically placed that at the centre of the revenue enhancement for municipalities, is the difficulty for them because of the grading. But still, they still keep to free basic services because it takes care of the poor and it is a policy for a party that takes care of its poor and indigents. We were here for the Presidential Imbizo three weeks ago and the people of the Western Cape told us, led by the President, how are they staying in Kayamandi, in Langa and in Phillipi, to mention but a few. They actually went to an
extent of defining and outlining a budget for the President, of the people of the City of Cape Town on how it ensures that inequality is still perpetuated. Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.
Municipal space is difficult, it needs collaboration and that is why we are calling it everybody’s business. You then go to downgrade issues of common sense. Come for the District Development Model, we will show you. What I know about the general elections is that they are in 2024. You are going for your train and I am coming in for my train...
Xitsonga:
...hi lamulele Hosi.
English:
It will only be between me and you and the only people who are going to choose. You think you are going to rise from 22% to 72% to run this country. We still want to go back to ensure that the sector delivers on their mandates bearing in mind the need to unite and provide the greater impact for the people of South Africa.
The budget which we tabulated here is working and looking directly at ensuring that the South Africa child also prospers, African child also delivers and the African child is also becoming economical.
IsiZulu:
Ngyakubonga Sihlalo.
Mr W A S AUCAMP: I wanted to ask you a question. Hon Chair, I wanted to ask the hon Minister what was the percentage the ANC received in the last elections? I can tell her it is... [Inaudible.]
THE HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms W Ngwenya): Hon members, order. Although I did not hear your point of order because there was noise -
Mr W A S AUCAMP: It was not a point of order, I wanted to ask the Minister a question. It was a question.
THE HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms W Ngwenya): Ooh, it is over, it over. Hon members, we have come to the end of the debate on Budget Vote 3 and 15 Co-operative Governance and Traditional
Affairs. I would like to thank the Minister, Deputy Ministers, MECs and Special Delegates for their participation.
APPROPRIATION BILL
Policy debate on Vote No 16 – Basic Education:
The MINISTER OF BASIC EDUCATION: Hon Deputy Chair, before I start, I request that if I have a minute left you take it over to my closing remarks. Chair, today we're presenting our 2023/24 Budget Vote 16 in our Youth Month.
Mindful of the reality that at this heart of any development within the basic education sector must obviously be about what learners learn. It continues to be a great significance for South Africa's development that the overall learning outcomes according to reliable, standardized testing programs such as SACMEQ, which stands Southern and Eastern African Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality, PIRLS, which stands for Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, TIMS which stands for Trends in International Meds and Science Studies, that they have improved effect progressively over the years, but equally, the devastating effects of COVID-19 pandemic on
teaching and learning since March 2020 continue to be a cause of great concern for us.
Researchers agree that at the heart of the sector, is learning and at the heart of improving learning is improving reading in early grades. They reported that before COVID-19 we had seen progress in the reading abilities of our children. They noted that according to PIRLS, reading in grade 4 had improved between 2006 and 2016 and between 2011 and 2016, South Africa had the second fastest improvement among all PIRLS participating countries.
The research also noted that by the end of 2021, the average of grade 4 learner could read as well as an average grade 3 learner before the pandemic. Therefore, there's been a loss of one year of learning as a result of COVID-19, and these losses are similar to what has been witnessed around the world.
Hon members, we recall that after PIRLS 2016 report was released, the basic education sector embarked on a variety of interventions to improve the foundations of learning through reading, and these interventions were introduced under the slogan of Read to Lead.
During the 2018 state of the nation address, our President, degreed that learners must be able to read for meaning by the age of ten. The Department of Basic Education, DBE, in collaboration with NECT, which is National Education Collaboration Trust, immediately responded to the President's call by a coordinated broad consultation with critical stakeholders in the reading space and the product which became the 2019 National Reading Strategy.
On the 16th of May this year, DBE like all other departments of education worldwide received the report on PIRLS 2021.
PIRLS is a coordinated 5 year basis by International Association of the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. And it is a global standard for monitoring reading achievements at Grade 4, an important transition point in learner's development as readers.
It is important to know that PIRLS 2021 is the first international large scale assessment to report results after successfully collecting data during COVID-19 pandemic, assessing 400 000 learners in 57 countries worldwide.
South Africa was one of the three African countries in the African continent that participated in PIRLS 2021. The other
countries were Morocco and Egypt, and the overall PIRLS results are that our grade 4 learners who participated in PIRLS 2021 dropped from 320 points to 288 points.
Our Grade 4 girls performed better than boys. Girls performed at 317 points and boys at 216 points. The overall scores that were received in grade 6 was 384 points for girls and boys and
408 points for girls.
While acknowledging the devastating effects of COVID-19, these assessment studies continue to sharpen our understanding and plans on improving our performance on the reading meaning.
The researcher and researchers and experts from government and research institutions confirmed that indeed, reading for meaning is every complex exercise. It's not your oral performance, but a very complex exercise which involves several interlays variables which range from teaching skills, teaching resources, learner and teacher, well-being parental and societal involvement, cultural context, nuances sensitivities in the children's learning path.
Chairperson and hon members, let me go to the budget. Let me just to relate the 2023 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework,
MTEF budget of basic education. Firstly, in 2023/24 our MTEF budget allocation for the Department of Basic Education is R31,8 billion which is an increase of 7%. Secondly, our allocation for conditional grants is R25,3 billion, which is an increase of R9,5 billion. The are earmarked funds in the department, which stands at R3,1 billion, which is an increase of 6,3%.
Fourthly, the 2023 MTEF budget allocation for provinces is R304 billion, which is a growth of R2,3 billion, and it stands at 5,3 in terms of consumer price index, and this allocation will increase to R306 billion to R319 billion during the MTEF.
Respectively, different provinces were allocated as follows, Eastern Cape was allocated R41,4 billion, which is an increase of R3,3 billion. The Free State was allocated R7,6 billion, which is a decline of 0,6%. Gauteng was allocated
R60,4 billion, which is an increase of 5,7%. KwaZulu-Natal was allocated R60,6 billion, which is a growth of 0.3%. Limpopo has been allocated R38,2 billion, which is a growth of 1.5%.
Mpumalanga has been given R24,9 billion, which is a growth of 0.2%. The Northern Cape has received R8,1 billion, which is a growth of 1,7%. North West has been allocated R20,6 billion
which is a negative growth of minus 1%. And the Western Cape has been allocated R29,5 billion, which is a growth of 4,9%.
Chair, I must say that the chunk of our budget is going to compensation of employees which stands at around 80%, but basically the compensation for employees stands at
R229,1 billion and it will increase to R237 billion over the MTEF and finally stand at R246 billion respectively, implying that the chief executive officer, CEO, of provincial budget allocations are equivalent to 75%, which we think is very helpful as the sector.
Chair, let me remind members about what we have said in the in the past about our work the basic education sector. The basic education priorities we have committed ourselves to in order to be able to continue laying a solid foundation for a quality and efficient education system as well as to contribute to providing permanent solutions to the architecture of the education and training system of our country. But because of time constraints, I won't be able to go into details.
I just want to refer to the first critical one, which is early childhood development, ECD. Since ECD function shift came from Social Development, we've been hard at work with the
Department of Social Development to implement innovative strategies to strengthen the foundations of learning, looking at the continuum from birth to early grades in the foundation and intermediate phases.
The department did conduct what we call the national census of early learning programs in 42 200 ECD programmes known in the country. The census highlighted the vast access challenges in South Africa and we're in the process of developing a new publicly planned, coordinated, and funded mixed ECD provisioning model, which is based on the social justice principles of access, equity, readers, inclusivity, positivity, efficiency and quality.
To regularize and align the function shift, the Department of Social Development and the Department of Basic Education are working on the amendment of the Children’s Act. In the short- term, medium-term, the department has also partnered with the Presidency on red tape reduction team to identify areas of streamlining registration processes and enabling greater collaboration with local government.
The second study we also conducted around ECD since we received the function, is a drive by five index space line
which was conducted with the cooperation of the First National Bank, Innovative Edge, USAID, and ECD Merger to assess the quality of ECD programmes in nationally representative sample. The study revealed that only 45% of children who are currently attending ECD programmes are developmentally on track.
More worrisome, the study revealed that 50% of these children who are attending ECD programs will not thrive when they reach the age of five. But also disheartening is the finding that of the children attending ECD program, 6% of them are stunted due to chronic malnutrition.
Chair, the other study that we conducted in collaboration with National Treasury and the World Bank is a public expenditure and institution review which determines the funding on ECD programs by the different spheres of government and the different departments on the priorities of ECD outcomes.
Clearly, the current model of funding and provision of ECD only through non-profit organisations, NPO, has to be reviewed. ECD programs must ensure children's readiness to enter formal schooling. Therefore, it is important that the new holistic and inclusive model includes all communities of class in the ECD space.
The state departments whose line functions have a direct impact on constitutional rights of children such as the Department of Health, Social Development, Home Affairs, Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional affairs, Traditional and National Treasury amongst the departments we're working with.
So hon members, the second priority is a cluster of critical topics from our quest to strengthen our curriculum, focusing on the implementation of a curriculum with skills and competencies of a changing world in all public schools.
It is a known fact that the department has taken bold and strategic decisions to actively move from a predominantly academic curriculum to one that is varied and inclusive.
This groundbreaking move came in the form of the introduction of a multiple pathway education delivery approach of the three stream curriculum model. This was primarily driven by the department’s quest for a response curriculum to the demands of a rapidly changing education and skills development sector of the 21st century.
Significant trends have so far been made in the introduction of critical aspects of this innovative program. The introduction of two additional teaching and learning roots, the vocational and occasional streams has created additional learning paths towards the attainment of the National Senior Certificate in the schooling system.
This also enables greater learner choices that provides diverse learning experiences to fulfil learners’ potential and meaningful contribution to society. Chair, parallel to our quest to strengthen our curriculum in the general education training band, we have been piloting what we call the General Education Certificate, GEC, which is an integral part in the implementation of the three-stream curriculum model, which was initially piloted in 227 schools in 2022. We are stepping up a thousand schools and amongst these, 126 of the schools are going to be skills of skills.
And so, for the purpose of articulating the further education training band within schooling, the department has begun the process of conceptualizing and subsequently developing and strengthening the vocational and occupational streams, while engaging the Department of Higher Education and Training to ensure that programs are aligned to allow learners who have
completed grade 9 qualification to articulate to TVET the colleges, should they choose to do so.
Chair, the third priority is the school infrastructure delivery, which is delivered through the Education Infrastructure Grant the accelerated ASID which is Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery, and the schools appropriate for education to save initiatives.
In some provinces, the infrastructure grant is augmented with respective provinces with equitable share allocations, but other provinces don't match, and they're supposed to be bargaining or to be budgeting for infrastructure, so that they don't rely only on resources coming from national and it's not happening in several departments.
So, in addition to the work that DBE and provincial department have been doing, there are replacement of schools built entirely off inappropriate materials, water supply to schools with no water, delivery of sanitation to schools with no toilets and electricity supplied to schools with no power. In 2018, the Sanitation Appropriate for education, SAFE, initiative was launched and it focused on providing
appropriate sanitation to schools which were dependent on basic latrines.
Hon members, hon Deputy Chair and Minister, the Deputy Minister will provide more information on this matter. But I must hasten to say that following a critical evaluation of the infrastructure challenges and the lessons learned from previous delivery strategies.
The Department of Basic Education has developed an infrastructure 10 point plan to accelerate the rollout of school infrastructure program and the strategy was recently adopted and work streams are in place, and we have also briefed the parliamentary committee on work in this area.
But the critical evaluation of infrastructure delivery recently conducted revealed a disturbing trend. As I said earlier, that over the years, Provincial Education Departments, PEDs, have been cutting back on augmenting the provincial allocation they received from national.
Chairperson and hon members, it would be remiss of has not to appraise this House about the challenges that were faced by KwaZulu-Natal on the delivery of the national school nutrition
upon learning about the challenges of the school nutrition programme in KwaZulu-Natal at the beginning of the term. On the 12th of April, we sent teams to the province, we were supported by other provinces to make sure that indeed nutrition could be restored to its best system. We requested them to suspend the new model that they had put in place but make sure that they have the model that was going to work.
Chair, I can assure this House here that we have been working with the province and indeed confronting the challenges that were experienced with the school nutrition.
Chair, in conclusion, as a nation, I really want us as we continue to celebrate the achievements, but we must also be proud that we have a very resilient basic education system which is continuing to recover from COVID-19 setbacks.
The sector continues to rebuild better, reboot itself to its previous trajectory as we continue to confront our ongoing challenges in the sector, which includes not limited to learner performance, infrastructure delivery, well resourced, parental and involvement. The sector is well poised to face this.
Chair, in conclusion, because you watch is harassing me, allow me to thank our local and regional and international partners, sister departments that work with us and organizations.
Sincerely thank our partners from SA Council for Educators, SACE, Umalusi, Education Labour Relations Council, ELRC, National Education Collaboration Trust NECT, teacher organizations and School Governing Bodies, SGBs, that continue to work and assist us including parents of learners with special needs but our learner representatives.
I really want to thank you, Chair as well as the Deputy Chair and the officials from the department and thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you very much Chair.
Sepedi:
Mna M E NCHABELENG – MODULASETULO WA KOMITI YEO E KGETHEGILEGO YA PUŠO YA TIRIŠANO LE MERERO YA SETŠO: Modulasetulo,
Motlatiamodulasetulo ...
English:
Hon members, the hon Minister and the Deputy Minister, we feel that you are part of us because you are always in our meetings whenever we call you. You either come both of you or if one is
not there, the other one will be there. We really thank you for that.
The recent Progress in International Reading Literacy Study report, Pirls report, has highlighted a number of areas which require strengthening in our education system. It also went further to highlight some of the key environmental factors which impact the performance of learners. What is critical for us, as a nation, is to firstly acknowledge that the Pirls assessment is undertaken by some countries which are largely developed countries, with strong economies.
Therefore, our orientation in interpreting and interrogating the report requires us to recognise particular realities: Firstly, the historical aspects which have shaped our education system as a country, from the exclusion of the black majority to the introduction of Bantu Education and the major backlogs in our education system, which have been entrenched by apartheid spatial planning and under-resourcing of education of a black child.
Another critical element which the Pirls report highlights are systemic issues which require the nation to question the trajectory of the country in relation to teaching and learning
languages. The highest performing test languages in Grade 4 were Afrikaans and English, followed by isiZulu and Sesotho. This is so because majority of South Africans do not learn using their home language, which is a critical contributor to the cognitive development of children.
The PIRLS 2021 study reveals that: Very low performance levels on the learners’ ability to read for meaning as they turn 10 years of age; Grade 4 girls achieved 57 score points higher than Grade 4 boys, which was statistically significant, like the Minister has mentioned; and Grade 6 girls achieved an average score of, which is 49 score points higher than the Grade 6 boys, which was statistically significant.
These outcomes highlight areas of challenge and areas of progress such as addressing gender inequality. The fact that girls are performing better than boys reflects the social progress of our society, as the girl child and women are largely suppressed, thus not realising their full potential. These are some of the key policy issues that we need to respond to.
It for this reason that the epistemic approach should begin from the forming and development of learning which begins at
an early age. It is for this reason from a health perspective that we have a campaign on the first 1 000 days for children to support their physical and cognitive development. It is for this reason the ANC, in its manifesto, commuted to extend the core responsibilities of the Department of Basic Education: To include the provision and monitoring of ECD; and to provide a comprehensive package of ECD services, which are birth registration, social assistance, parenting support and quality learning.
The ANC further committed to develop a plan to take care of the first 1 000 days of human life, from pregnancy until two years of age, in which the pregnant mother will: Get good nutrition; be encouraged to stop smoking and drinking alcohol; and undertake antenatal care visits from an early stage. The baby will have good nutrition, exclusive breast feeding, immunisation and growth monitoring.
The ANC has increased its strategic focus on early childhood development because research has found that it is between the age of zero to five, wherein a child’s cognitive development and ability to learn is shaped. With a high level of poverty and inequality in the country, many children are disadvantaged due to the living conditions.
We must also recognise that just above 20% of our children are child stunted due to food insecurity. It is for this reason that our democratic government has focused on the provision of child support grants and nutrition programmes, which ensure children grow up healthy, physically and with cognitive development.
Though the ECD migration was undertaken from the sixth administration, the strategic work of reviewing the institutional model of the delivery of early childhood learning, just in 2023, and the census to assess the landscape for the later, in 2021, were undertaken. This has enabled the department to plan from an evidence-based approach. This process of developing a new system should be expedited.
It is our concern that 1,3 million children aged three to five do not yet attend any form of early learning. For 3,5 million children aged zero to two, access gap is unknown. Only 45% of children accessing early learning are developmentally on track. These, hon members, reflects the correctness of the decision of the ANC-led government, to focus on this phase which breed the inequality in our society and education system.
In order to transform early learning in South Africa, we will need all social partners to join the efforts of addressing the gaps in the system. The department, working with civil society, business, labour and community organisations, parents and families have an important role to take proactive steps, to firstly ensure children begin early learning at an early age. It requires societal investment by government and society to increase access to early learning.
For new institutional framework to make an impact in improving access and outcomes of early learning, sufficient funding should be allocated for the department. Currently, the department is constrained from a fiscal position, which impact the department’s conceptualisation of universal access as a strategic object, as we have done for those in schooling.
We must state that the current process of the amendment of the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill will also contribute in increasing learner attendance, to ensure readiness for schooling from children through the compulsory introduction of Grade R. This will improve learner readiness with elementary literacy and numeracy skills. The ANC 54th National Conference recognised that:
Having achieved commendable targets pertaining to access, redress and equity, the ANC must further ensure that there is strategic alignment and repositioning of the basic education sector, by prioritising policies and strategies targeting the achievement of quality teaching and learning outcomes, enhancing accountability systems to ensure the achievement of quality outcomes and the efficiency in the basic education sector.
The Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill seeks to enhance the organisational efficiency of the basic education system: To improve school governance, leadership, and accountability; transforming education services; and protecting vulnerable groups to ensure learner well-being and access to learning.
Another critical matter is the low reading culture in our country, which has a significant impact on the reading levels of learners who are not adequately equipped with reading skills. Without reading, learners get to develop their language skills with less comprehension. The lack of comprehension results in learner reading without a sufficient understanding of what they read.
In order to improve our education system, the Pirls outcome has demonstrated that mother tongue education is a fundamental aspect of the pace of learning of children and learners. If we are to transform our education system, we need to invest in developing all official language as mediums of instruction in various subjects. This will require significant investment to have the sufficient capacity to implement an education system with multiple mediums of instruction.
With the rise of artificial intelligence and digital technology, we should in future have innovative solutions which enable a cost effective system, which offers mother tongue education - for children at ECD, foundation phase and primary school are impacted by dual languages, as speaking English is not comprehension in itself. Learning through a foreign language makes learning very difficult for our kids, particularly at primary level.
Support provided by guardians or parents are a major contributor on learners’ environment. The language they use in their homes and the medium of instruction are a factor in a child’s ability to learn. Whether there is a reading culture in their homes or not, is also a factor. A child with parents or guardians who are not literate to the level of tutoring the
learner is disadvantaged relative to a learner who grows in a family with that educational support.
These, hone members, speak to the wholistic environment which needs to be harnessed for the cognitive development of children and their educational performance. Education is a public good which requires multiple social partners to improve. If we, as a nation, focus on the key issues which affect our education, and we provide sufficient resources and support for learners, the outcomes of our education system will improve.
We live in a changing world, which requires our education system and curriculum to continuously adapt to the changing world, as new innovation develops new knowledge. The global economy has adopted new technologies, such as the fourth industrial revolution, which other developed countries, such as China, are already in the fifth industrial revolution evolution.
This has an impact on the form and content of our education system. Our pedagogy should adapt with the changes, through leveraging digital technology and developing critical skills as a key component of our educational learning outcomes, as
the change of work requires creative thinking and innovative thinking being a critical quality, as automation and machines are undertaking various simple and complex processes.
Through these interventions, we can create a better life for all through an education system which empowers the poor and rich people with equal opportunities, to participate in the economy and create a meaningful change in their lives. We owe this change to the youth, who are a beacon of our society. We owe it to the youth, who have waged struggles for the transformation of our education.
Our assessment tells us that the struggle continues to create equal opportunities, particularly for the poor people. We are confident that we are in the correct developmental trajectory and future generations will benefit from a quality education system, which we have taken measure to transform, since the democratic government. The ANC supports this Budget Vote. I thank you.
Ms D C CHRISTIANS: Hon Deputy Chairperson, hon members, hon Minister and fellow South Africans, good day. Education is the cornerstone of progress and social mobility. It has the power to break the chains of poverty and unemployment, offering
individuals the opportunity to fulfil their potential and contribute meaningfully to our society. However, under the ANC government, education has become a tool of oppression, perpetuating the very inequities we should seek to eradicate. The Department of Basic Education’s performance has been abysmal, and its handling of the budget and annual performance plans leaves much to be desired. Let us begin by examining the annual performance of the Department of Basic Education. In the past year, the department set ambitious targets to improve literacy and numeracy rates among our students. However, the results speak for themselves.
One of the most pressing challenges we face is the crisis in literacy and learning outcomes. The recent release of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, PIRLS, results painted a bleak picture. Shockingly, one in five Grade 4 children cannot read for comprehension in any language. This is a national tragedy, as literacy forms the
foundation upon which all other subjects and skills are built. Without the ability to read and comprehend, our children are destined to struggle academically and be left behind in an increasingly competitive global landscape. While the coronavirus disease, Covid-19, pandemic undoubtedly disrupted education systems worldwide, this Department of Basic
Education’s response to this crisis has been woefully inadequate. The prolonged closure of schools, coupled with the lack of effective plans and strategies to mitigate learning loss, has had devastating consequences. A staggering 75% of learners attending no-fee schools lost between 50% and 75% of their learning time in 2020, with more than 25% experiencing similar losses in 2021. This equates to a lost generation, deprived of the education they deserve and need to succeed.
The Department of Basic Education’s proposed catch-up initiatives and interventions have been nothing more than empty rhetoric. While other countries have announced comprehensive catch-up programmes, South Africa lags behind, with no budgeted national plan in place. The Department of Basic Education’s approach of providing free websites and deploying untrained unemployed youth in classrooms is a band- aid solution that fails to address the root causes of the learning crisis. Our learners deserve better, they deserve a properly funded evidence-based catch-up plan that will equip them with the skills and knowledge needed to thrive in an increasingly competitive world.
Moreover, the state of school infrastructure remains a damning indictment of the ANC’s failure to prioritise the well-being
and safety of our learners. It is unconscionable that more than 3 000 schools still have functional pit toilets, endangering the health and dignity of our children. Despite the government’s repeated promises, the eradication of pit toilets and the improvement of school infrastructure have been mired in inefficiency, bureaucracy, and a lack of accountability. The consequences of this infrastructure crisis are not mere inconveniences. Tragically, we have witnessed the loss of innocent lives due to the deplorable conditions in some schools across the country. The death of young Langalam Viki in her school’s pit toilet stands as a haunting reminder of the ANC government’s failure to ensure the basic safety and dignity of our children. It is a stain on our collective conscience that we have allowed such conditions to persist for decades.
The ANC government’s mismanagement and misallocation of funds further exacerbate the infrastructure challenges faced by our schools. The Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga departments returned millions of rands meant to address unsafe infrastructure, diverting resources to other provinces. This blatant disregard for the well-being of our learners is unacceptable and speaks to a deeper issue of corruption and the mismanagement of public funds. In addition to these failures, the National
School Nutrition Programme has become yet another example of the ANC’s ineptitude. The programme, designed to provide meals to vulnerable learners, has been marred by irregularities and misappropriation of funds. In provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape thousands of schools experience disruptions in meal provision, leaving learners hungry and compromising their ability to concentrate and learn. It is outrageous that officials entrusted with the well-being of our children would prioritise personal gain over the basic needs of our most vulnerable learners.
To address these systemic failures and to ensure a brighter future for our children, a comprehensive and transformative approach is needed. The Department of Basic Education must be held accountable for its actions and omissions. It is imperative that the Minister and director-general, DG, present their budgeted catch-up and reading plans to Parliament, outlining specific milestones and measurable targets. This will allow for effective monitoring and ensure that the department delivers tangible results rather than mere empty promises.
Furthermore, we must learn from successful models implemented in other provinces, such as the Western Cape, where quality
education and infrastructure have been prioritised. The Western Cape’s budgeted, implemented, and monitored reading plan, along with its “Back on Track” programme, serves as a prime example of proactive and effective governance. By investing in reading skills and providing targeted support, the province has achieved higher literacy rates compared to the rest of the country. We must draw inspiration from such success stories and replicate them nationwide.
Additionally, the eradication of pit toilets and the improvement of school infrastructure cannot be delayed any longer. The Department of Basic Education must adopt efficient models of construction of quality schools, ensuring that learners have access to safe and dignified learning environments. The budget allocated for infrastructure must be utilised effectively, without any further delays or mismanagement. The National School Nutrition Programme must undergo an urgent audit to identify and rectify the issues plaguing its implementation. Accountability measures must be put in place to hold responsible individuals and entities accountable for their actions. The provision of meals in schools should not be subject to corruption and negligence. It should be a fundamental right of every hungry child in South Africa.
Moreover, we must not lose sight of the quality of education being delivered. The narrow focus on high pass rates without a corresponding emphasis on depth and comprehension undermines the value of the matric certificate. We must prioritise the development of critical thinking, creativity, and entrepreneurial skills among our learners. Continuous assessments should be explored as a means to provide a more comprehensive and accurate measure of students’ abilities.
In conclusion, the failures of the Department of Basic Education cannot be ignored or tolerated any longer. It is time for a fundamental shift in our approach to education with a clear focus on quality, accountability, and transformative change. We must prioritise the needs of our learners, ensuring that they have access to quality education, safe infrastructure, and proper nutrition. The future of our nation depends on the decisions we make today. Let us vote out the ANC oppressors in 2024, and usher in a new era of governance that will prioritise education as a pathway out of poverty and unemployment. Let us commit to providing our children with the opportunities they deserve, so they can fulfil their potential and contribute to the prosperity of our great country. I thank you, Deputy Chairperson.
Mr F GADE (Eastern Cape): Hon Chair, once more, good evening to you, the Deputy Chairperson, the Minister and Deputy Minister, hon members, colleagues and invited guests. Hon Deputy Chair, I am sure we all agree that in accelerating development, the country needs active support of all citizens, the leadership in all sectors that put the country’s collective interests ahead of narrow interests, the short-term goals, and thus radically improving the government’s performance, ultimately.
The progress we are talking about in the basic education system requires consistent focus on the targets and interventions whilst dealing with the challenges as they arise. We are increasingly prioritising interventions improvement programmes and policies that target improved quality of learning and teaching to ensure that quality outcomes are achieved across the basic education system in the province, in particular, and also in the country in general.
As indicated by hon Minister Motshekga, our sector interventions continue to cater for both learners who are at risk of underperformance and also learners who are moderate to high achievers. This differentiated approach outlined by Basic Education in the country aims to address both content
deficiencies that might prevent learners from achieving good educational outcomes, as well as providing support to moderate and high achievers to improve their performance in the system, thereby improving the quality of learning outcomes generally.
Hon Deputy Chair, let me also remind hon members that yes, indeed we are proud of the national class of 2022 as a province and also as a country. We have produced the second highest rate number achieved since the introduction of the National Senior Certificate, NSC, examination 15 years ago. That’s a milestone that we would want to share with hon members and begin to work on the milestone that we are talking about.
If we look very closely on the performance system of education in the country in general, the global competitiveness of the South African education system is also evident from the World Education Forum’s report titled, “Countries with the last best education systems in Africa”, consulted to 38 African countries on the quality of schooling in each nation. Yes, of course we might have some challenges, but we are giving these statistics so that when we compare the schooling system we have in the province and the country in general, we are able to locate that argument within the competitive systems that
the African continent has and also the global village that we are benchmarking on.
Coming closer to the province, the no fee paying schools were the biggest weight pullers in the 2022 and NSC results compared to other provinces. The 75,5% pass rate was from Quintile 1-3 schools, which then ranked the province against other Quintile 1-3 schools in the country at position five, and Quintile 4-5, which got 89,2%, ranked the province at position three.
When looking at subject comparison, Accounting to be precise, is an example that gave the province 74,8% in Quintile 1-3 schools and ranked the province at position one in that regard.
We are dissecting these results so that we can be able to see where the pockets of excellence and shortcomings of the system are in the province, where learners are enrolled more in any district and what should be our strategic intervention on that, and what should be the methodology used in ensuring that we are able to pull up whatever will be needed in ensuring that we sustain the momentum the country has. We are giving this reflection in order to be able to say indeed, this is a
department whose mandate is teaching and learning, and therefore we ought to master the art and skill of that. Anything else must be able to be built-in within what then becomes the core and the strategic mandate of the sector.
In terms of the provisioning of school nutrition, we are proud to say that we have been able to deal with access and redress. School nutrition as a programme in the province of the Eastern Cape is implemented in terms of the strategy on addressing food and nutrition insecurity due to the increased levels of poverty.
There is a relationship between the socioeconomic conditions of households and the performance of the individuals of that household in the context of learners and kids from there.
Hence, we welcome the introduction of the breakfast meal that the national Department of Education has afforded the province. This is one area that I can proudly say we have been able to master the art and skill of managing it, albeit that it had challenges of transactions during the course of the first quarter this year. However, we received excellent awards for the best implementing school in the country, which comes from Eastern Cape Buffalo City District, the Thandulwazi primary school.
I am therefore saying that one of those important signal points is to ensure that there is a scientific relationship between what is happening in the theatre of production of knowledge and skill, which is the classroom, and the support system in the context of the socioeconomic conditions of those that should benefit from the state apparatus in the form of the school nutrition programme.
In terms of the sector plans and proposals, we have maintained, throughout, a number of key principles that speaks to improving learning and teaching, more specifically, for learners that attend schools every day and on time because they want to come to school. We are tracing that attitude and culture of learning from the time we experienced some hiccups that were associated with COVID-19 and closure of schools because of it. The reaction which emanates out of the relationship between the food security grant system that government has with what we ought to do in the context of learning and teaching in the province.
As I conclude, there are some specific examples that we would want to elude into as a department in order to reinforce the debate here. The first cohort of survival rate across phases is at good proximity for stability in the sector itself. The
cohort of survival rate across the district stands at 96, meaning that the department has been able to move 96 of our learners from Grade R to Grade 12, showing a significant drop in the attrition rate of yesteryear. We are building a relationship on this particular paragraph. Just to elaborate on it. On the relationship again between the missing learners
... [Time expired.] ... Thank you, Deputy Chair.
Mr M A P DE BRUYN: Deputy Chairperson, the state of basic education in South Africa is by far not satisfactory and the government's efforts over the last decade have not yielded any positive results. An international study has revealed that 81% of Grade 4 pupils in South Africa cannot read with meaning.
This means that the majority of young learners have already fallen behind before they have had a proper chance to succeed. This needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. The government needs to work hand in hand with all stakeholders, including communities, parents, teachers and learners to improve it. We all believe that education is the key to unlocking South Africa's true potential. However, because of this department’s failures, government has failed to do so.
Afrikaans:
As gevolg van hierdie departement is daar 'n tekort aan gekwalifiseerde onderwysers, swak infrastruktuur in skole, onvoldoende toegang tot onderwys vir kinders in arm gemeenskappe en 'n gebrek aan betrokke ouerskap, om maar ’n paar te noem. Na dit bekend geword het dat 81% van Graad 4s in 2021 nie met begrip kon lees nie, het die agb Minister ewe trots aangekondig dat haar departement besig is met die finalisering van die hersiene nasionale leerplan om hierdie probleem, of eerder die skande, te beredder. Dit is nie ’n prestasie nie, agb Minister. Dit is ’n situasie wat in die eerste plek nie tot hierdie punt moes gekom het nie.
Leesvaardighede kan slegs doeltreffend verbeter as daar in die grondslagfase saam met opvangprogramme dringend op die aanstelling van spesialisopvoeders en terapeutiese dienste gefokus word. Ons skole het meer maatskaplike werkers, arbeid, spraak- en fisioterapeute nodig en minder onbevoegde opvoeders wat op enige kriteria behalwe meriete in poste gedruk word.
Dr Jaco Deacon, uitvoerende hoof van die Federation of Associations of Governing Bodies of SA Schools, Fedsas, het onlangs in ’n media verklaring gesê dat geld in die onderwys departement in die verkeerde rigting vloei. Dit is tereg so as
ons gaan kyk na hoe die begroting voorsiening vir
R121,5 miljoen aan die National Education Collaboration Trust maak. Hierdie trust is as ’n platform vir samewerking met rolspelers en vir die privaatsektor om onderwys by te staan geskep, maar dit het nou egter in ’n parallelle struktuur wat ’n groot hap van die begroting ontvang verander. Verder, noem hy dat die Presidensiële Jeug Indiensnemingsprojek, wat deel vorm van die Presidensiële Indiensnemingstimulus program, is veronderstel om deur die Presidensie gefinansier te word en dit is moeilik om te begryp dat R6,9 miljard van die onderwysbegroting nou hiervoor gebruik word. Dit is fondse wat beter in infrastruktuur en die basiese nodige hulpmiddels wat ons leerders vandag broodnodig het aangewend kon geword het.
Maar soos gewoonlik, word daar geprioritiseer in enige belang
behalwe in dié van ons leerders wat die toekoms van more moet wees.
English:
For years, the FF Plus pleaded with this department to give every child in South Africa the benefit of mother tongue education. In our 2019 manifesto, it was clearly stated that:
Neglecting mother tongue education contributes to poor performance and a high dropout rate. The fact that Afrikaans and English-speaking learners receive instruction in their mother tongue explains why a larger percentage of these Grade 1 learners go on to complete Grade 12. Even on tertiary level, mother tongue education has measurable benefits. Thus, the foundation of the FF Plus's educational policy is that all learners must have access to mother tongue education.
It further states that:
Early childhood development is of the utmost importance and must be the responsibility of the Department of Education and not the Department of Social Development. At present, South Africa's expenditure on this phase of education is one of the lowest in the world. The most important formative years in a child's life are between the ages of zero to four years as that is when the brain develops the fastest. If proper development does not occur during these formative years, children may struggle in school later on. Quality early childhood development training will improve learners' performance in school and address the problem of a poor throughput rate.
Unfortunately, this depart will rather sink the ship than take good advice for the sake of our youth.
Afrikaans:
Kortom gestel, die Departement van Basiese Onderwys het nie die vermoë om aan die behoeftes van ons kinders te voldoen nie en die ANC regering in geheel sien dit ook nie as ’n prioriteit nie. Daar word beraam dat korrupsie in staatsentiteite soos Eskom en Transnet die land ongeveer
R500 miljard gekos het, terwyl die begroting vir Basiese Onderwys tans R31,8 miljard is.
So, dit kom daarop neer dat meer as 15 jaar se begroting vir onderwys eerder deur die ANC regering gesteel is as om in die toekoms van ons kinders te belê. Dit is hoe die ANC kamstig Suid-Afrikaners wil bemagtig. Die publiek daar buite se oë het begin oopgaan en kom 2024 sal die ANC die gevolge daarvan dra. Dankie.
The DEPUTY MINISTER OF BASIC EDUCATION: Deputy Chair,
greetings to you, hon chairperson of the select committee, Minister Motshekga, and members of the NCOP, I rise to express my profound sadness at the recent passing of hon Tina Joemat- Pettersson who was a member of the National Assembly and a
member who served South Africa for many years. Chair, I am joining all those that were saying that but let me start by reflecting on the key moments that have shaped today’s people’s education as a tribute to our forebearers.
We do so because we are comforted that the struggle was not in vain. We owe a dept of gratitude to the visionaries of the 1976 Soweto uprising who shook the foundation of apartheid Bantu education 47 years ago. We are indebted to the pioneers of the people’s education; the Soweto Parents Crisis Committee is celebrating 38 years since the momentous event of its formation. We are also grateful to the activists who bravely confronted the apartheid state and championed people’s education within the National Education Crisis Committee 37 years ago.
We are also indebted to President Nelson Mandela, the father of our democracy in South Africa and his generation the real freedom fighters as we celebrate 33 years since he was released from prison, and even 10 years after he passed on, gifting us the greatest treasure of them all – freedom in our country, South Africa.
To continue in the footsteps of the giant, Basic Education sector successfully implemented the three faces of the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative creating more than 850 000 job opportunities to young people in South Africa to support teaching and learning in primary and secondary schools, including special schools.
The National Treasury allocated R26,7 billion over four financial years to implement the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative. In 2020-21 financial year, the sector was allocated R6,2 billion, R6,6 billion in 2022-23, and
R6,9 billion in 2023-24. The last phase, being Phase 4 is being implemented since February 2023, and will end in September this year. Phase 4 was divided into two cohorts, the one of 155 100 starting on 01 February 2023, and the other for
100 000 which started at the beginning of May.
To date, Phase 4 of the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative in the Basic Education sector created many jobs. Since December 2020, the Basic Education sector has created 1,1 million job opportunities for youths between the ages of
18 and 35 without prejudice of colour, race, language, disability, and gender. The only critical qualification criteria for the education assistant are youth between the
ages of 18 and 34, a valid South African ID, and a Grade 12 pass. No Grade 12 certificate is required for general school assistant positions. The other purpose of the intervention is to provide youth with decent jobs, meaningful work experience, and skills through formal and informal education.
Statistics SA Census Media Population it estimates that in 2022 South Africa has 20,6 million youth between the ages of
15 and 35 of whom 10 million are not in education, employment, or training.
The programme addresses past imbalances by recruiting women and addressing poverty and unemployment amongst youth.
Funza Lushaka bursary scheme is a flagship training programme that has trained thousands of new teachers, making it one of the most successful public sector training schemes. The allocation from National Treasury for 2022-23 is just above R1,3 billion. This translates into a target of 11 800 full bursaries to be awarded to students in the 2023-24 financial year for the Bachelor of Education degree and Postgraduate Certificate in Education, PGCE, across 24 participating higher education institutions.
We are training teachers for the future beyond the 4th Industrial Revolution. In June 2022, we entered into a memorandum of agreement to train teachers for three years on skills for a changing world focusing on coding and robotics. This agreement includes five teacher unions: SA Democratic Teachers Union, SADTU; National Teachers’ Union, NATU; National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA, NAPTOSA; Professional Educators’ Union, PEU; and Suid Afrika Onderwysersunie. As part of this agreement, 23 967 teachers nationwide underwent training in coding, robotics, and digital skills in the first year. This number exceeded the targeted goal of teachers by 1 467.
The Teacher Appreciation and Support Programme, TASP, initiated in 2015 has grown in leaps and bounds. In 2022-23, we awarded 40 teachers honours for teaching excellence during the National Teachers Month in October. In addition, teacher were acknowledged and supported through various other activities and initiatives co-ordinated by the Basic Education Department and Provincial Education Departments.
The Draft Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement, CAPS, for coding and robotics is being finalised by the reference team. The curriculum will be implemented in phases with
Foundation Phase starting in 2024, and Grade 4 to 9 starting in 2030.
University of South Africa accredited training has been offered to Foundation Phase educators, and more than 15 000 teachers have been orientated using the Basic Education Sasol model platform. The teachers’ unions collaboration has trained over 23 000 educators in unplugged and using information and communications technology, ICT, devices.
Schools’ safety remains the bane of our existence. We have adopted a multisectoral approach to this campaign. We and our partners, especially Deputy Ministers from the Department of Police, Social Development, Home Affairs, Health, Communications and Digital Technologies, and Justice and Correctional Services, rolled out an interdepartmental campaign. Five provinces have hosted the campaign activation: Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West, and Eastern Cape. We want to thank the Free State for initiating this campaign on their own without waiting for the national government. The campaign focuses on the prevention of violence, bullying, corporal punishment, gender-based violence, learner pregnancy and drugs and substance abuse. We are working very well with many partners, including councillors, traditional leaders, and
faith-based organizations. We are not leaving anyone out, all of them are counted. We continue to work with all the stakeholders and making sure that schools remain safe for all our learners and teachers to be in.
As Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary and politician once said:
Ignorance is the root of many ills. Knowledge must be the fundamental ally of nations that aspire, despite all their tragedies and problems, to become truly emancipated, to build a better world.
That’s why we appreciate all people that are joining hands in making sure that education in South Africa is a success. Not those that are always criticizing and not bringing any input. Thank you, Deputy Chair.
Mr M R BARA: Hon House Chair, hon members, hon Minister and Deputy Minister, good day, allow me to pass my deepest condolences to the families of the young souls that perished in a gruesome accident on their way to school in Mitchell’s Plain last week. I wish that the authorities will do all in their power to find answers to this tragedy.
Chair, the second point is that today or this morning, a taxi that was carrying 44 children to school in KwaZulu-Natal got involved in a car accident and all those kids were injured in varying degrees. And so, I want to call on the Ministry to follow up these matters because really something urgent must be done to ensure that there is a safe way of kids getting to school without parents worrying whether they will get the bed news later on the day or not. So, that’s just a call that I wanted to make.
In the aftermath of the second year of substantial loss of learning time due to closures and rotational timetables caused by COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the exacerbation of the sanitation and infrastructure crisis at many schools, the government needs to take deliberate steps to prioritise basic education to ensure that all learners are safe and are provided with their constitutional right, the right to education.
The Western Cape is the only province to have launched a programme to make up for learning time lost during the COVID-
19 pandemic. We note with humiliation and embarrassment the poor performance of 81% of Grade 4 learners who cannot read for meaning in any language.
Provinces must be encouraged to embark on making up for the lost time around the COVID where children were kept at home and so there is a need work on that to ensure that to do really get into measures that will assist us in catching up ensuring that children are able benefit out of our basic education.
After 29 years of democracy, it is appalling to note that there are still children who are subjected to using pit toilets. I think this was mentioned earlier. Years have come and gone and the department has been slow on eradicating the pit toilet system, and yet another child’s body was found in a pit toilet at a school. Minister, between now and 2025, whose child must die before you take a leadership position ...
IsiXhosa:
... njengomzali.
English:
This cannot be postponed to 2025 as the kids are dying today.
IsiXhosa:
Inimba mayibenye boomama.
English:
The constitution of the Republic of South Africa clearly states that every child has the right to education and safety. In a country like South Africa where gender-based violence is a growing pandemic we need education as a cornerstone of empowerment against such a trend. The government continued deprioritisation of funding for basic education flies in the face of the nature of constitutionally protected right. The right to basic education, enshrined in Section 29 (1) of the Constitution, is an immediately realisable right, is not subject to internal qualifiers such as the state’s available resources or progressive realisation.
Minister, your department has a responsibility to recognise the importance of that right by availing resources to provide a fair and secured education system to all the children in this country.
Under the current government, South Africa has one of the worst-performing education systems in the world, marked by incompetence and corruption. South Africa is the single biggest learning underperformer relative to GDP per capita among low and middle- income countries. South Africa performs
worse than Kenya or Tanzania, which have a GDP per capita of less than one-fifth of South Africa.
Two primary factors contribute to poor teaching levels. First, many teachers lack capabilities or content knowledge and pedagogical skills to teach better. The second is that a non- trivial number is unwilling to do so. But there are three imperatives that we need to address: Firstly, tackle corruption and state capture in education by prohibiting cadre deployment and introducing measures to remove political gatekeeping on education departments.
Secondly, raise accountability levels by bringing back the Annual National Assessment for Grade 1 to 9.
Thirdly, improve teacher performance by introducing higher teacher training standards, more effective support by existing teachers and the urgent recruitment of skilled experts in Maths and Science field.
The DA calls on the Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, to institute an audit of all National School Nutrition Programmes in all the provinces, after learners in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape have been forced to go
hungry because those departments failed to ensure schools had food to provide meals. This is on the heels of the chaos in KwaZulu-Natal which left 30 000 learners at 540 schools without meals, 4 982 schools in Eastern Cape have not provided their learners with meals due to administrative failures to pay schools and service providers.
It is becoming increasingly clear that some of the providers are not capable of effectively managing this crucial programme, and we need to know which other programmes are in jeopardy as a matter of urgency if we are to prevent learners in other provinces from going hungry.
The last point that I want to make, Chairperson, is around the issue of the Basic Education Law Amendment, Bela, Bill. The ANC government is persistent in pushing the Bela Bill through Parliament despite the widespread of objections is deeply concerning. The proposed measures to centralise power undermines school governing bodies and restrict language policies threatened the autonomy and diversity of our schools. Our call for rejection of the Bela Bill is to safeguard the interest for our students and communities and uphold the principles of quality of education. Thank you, Chairperson.
IsiXhosa:
Nksz N NDONGENI: Ndicela ungandikhwazi, andifuni kwatata undikhwazayo kuba mna andikhwazi mntu. Sihlalo weBhunga leSizwe lamaPhondo, uSekela Sihlalo weBhunga leSizwe lamaPhondo, uMphathiswa nooSekela Baphathiswa, amalungu ahloniphekileyo, abaPhathiswa nooSekela Baphathiswa abakunye nathi ngobuxhakaxhaka, iindwendwe ezilapha ezithe zeza ukuze zimamele olu hlahlo lwabiwo-mali.
English:
Chairperson, central to the education system is our learners, and as a nation focusing developing the human capabilities of children and the youth is crucial of political, social, and economic development. We also recognise that for these learners to succeed in the education system, government, society families and education stakeholders have a role to play in creating a conducive environment for the success of the learner. As the African saying alludes that, it takes a village to raise a child.
As we celebrate youth month, we should also reflect on how our communities have raised many young people who would have not succeeded without the communal ethos of our communities. As Africans we largely grow up in extended families, and our
communities take interest in the wellbeing of their neighbours. These are the values and ethos we should protect. It is this ethos that will contribute to the strengthening of the environment of learning.
It is always important to understand the basic education system with an orientation which is learner centred. The teachers are not just as an employment but to teach the learners. All components of the education system are in essence existing to serve learners and in so doing benefit the broader developmental objectives of our society, as contained in the Constitution and the National Development Plan.
Our learners and youth are confronted with various challenges with an impact on their learning in schools, in their homes and in communities. With the country facing a second pandemic of gender-based violence and femicide, our learners are not immune from this pandemic. In our schools, reports have been made of teachers and learners sexually harassing other girl children. We do have adults in the public who target schoolgirls.
A number of sexual harassment cases of teachers are being investigated and other teachers have been found guilty and
stripped of the right to teaching. We need to increase the capacity and capabilities of the South African Council of Educators to be agile and effective in managing various investigations. On learners who commit these acts, actions should be taken and the department should continuous run advocacy campaigns in our schools to create awareness around this problem. Our communities, religious organisations, civil society, and community structures should also discourage the conduct of those who prey on learners.
Facts which should always linger in our minds is that adolescent girls and young women between the age of 10-19 make 4,4 million are infected constituting 23% of the global average. HIV prevalence among young women is nearly four times than that of young men while 46% of sexual abuse complaints are children. There is approximately 1 300 newly HIV infected adolescent girls and young women in South Africa per week.
A total of 90 037 girls aged 10-19 years gave birth from March 2021 to April 2022. This reflects the tragic reality of our social fibre and the vulnerability of adolescent girls and young women. We have a duty as this generation to lay a foundation that changes these statistics in future. This is not a problem to be solved by schools but by all social
partners. Another social issue impacting our learners is the use of drugs and alcohol which has an impact on the health and focus of learners. The location of alcohol stalls next to schools and the lack of monitoring of activities by enterprises and persons loitering next to schools create a threat for people to peddle drugs.
In some areas the communities know people who sell alcohol and drugs to learners. We call on the department to continue working with the police department and municipal law enforcement to ensure security of schooling areas is strengthened. Our communities and civil society and school governing bodies have a role to play in exposing the paddlers of these substances as they are having a severe impact on the youth. As we remember the youth generation of 1976 and other youth generations, we should declare a war against drugs in our schools and communities if we are to safeguard the future of our nation and to decrease the disease burden.
We should also remember the devastating experience the nation had to go through when a learner committed suicide in Mbilwi Secondary School due to bullying. Bullying has a severe psychological impact on learners and we should monitor these aspects. This requires focusing on school leadership, to have
the capabilities to develop a school culture. An institutional culture is important to embed principles in the value system of the school. The department should be able to enable a transmission of best practice to develop a developmental school culture which has the appropriate environment for teaching and learning. A guide and training for school management teams should be developed.
We need to strengthen monitoring of the distribution of sanitary towels in our schools. The dignity of the girl is important and learners cannot be disorientated or miss schooling due to the lack of sanitary towels. This is an aspect which requires increased resourcing as this should be a social good for women in general. We welcome the expansion of the National School Nutrition Programme to offer breakfast in provinces with the capacity to do so. We should state that the incident in KwaZulu-Natal is unfortunate ...
IsiXhosa:
... ungaphidi Bara umise ngayo.
English:
The department should adopt a coherent approach for the sector, taking into consideration local economic development.
In essence the National Strategic Plan, NSP assists in redistributing government expenditure if it is not centralised. Centralising has a systemic risk as experienced in KwaZulu-Natal. We welcome the continued provisions of scholar transport. This is critical to improve the conditions of learners. We also note that the programme does not cover all learners who are in need, but we welcome the review of regulations to ensure the most vulnerable are supported through the programme.
The transformation of our education system should be underpinned by curriculum transformation. Our curriculum should respond to the domestic, continental and global context. The domestic aspect is critical with regard to embedding the national imperatives in our curriculum to build our society. Our country remains patriarchal and with a colonial history. We should ensure the philosophical underpinning of our education system should address patriarchy, sexism, racism, tribalism, xenophobia, violence, and develop critical thinking skills and innovation. We should ensure History is a critical component of our syllabus. We cannot have a process of social reproduction through education institutions with learners who do not know their history.
Hon Minister, the areas we have highlighted impact our communities in all nine provinces. The department through its policies and budget should strengthen interventions. With the increasing levels of unemployment, youth education system should produce critical thinkers, and entrepreneurial thinking learners. It must produce innovators who will innovate companies which will transform our economy. We are confident that once fully developed after the success of the pilot programme, many of our learners will start learning coding and robotics at a young age. Resources will never be enough to advance all the key priorities, but we should mobilise all resources from social partners to augment the budget allocation for increase impact in the sector.
The Quality Learning and Teaching Campaign are a critical instrument which we should adequately fund and ensure they are functional. The social threat of these social ills impacts the environment of the key stakeholders in the education system being learners. They are a gift to the nation and Africa will be a young continent and therefore our education system should be expanded through infrastructure development programmes which will acknowledge the current work undertaken by the department in this regard.
Learners are our hope for a prosperous society. They are our hope to transform our society as envisage in the preamble of our Constitution. The ANC supports Budget Vote 16.
IsiXhosa:
Sihlalo andiyazi ke kuba ilingu elihloniphekileyo uBara uthethe ngoMthetho oYilwayo apha. Andiwazi lo Mthetho oYilwayo athetha ngawo kuba phaya kuthi ekomitini akukafiki nto injalo. Andazi ukuba lulwimi ahamba eluchola phi na. Ndiyabulela.
Ms M M LERULE-RAMAKHANYA (Limpopo): Hon Chairperson, hon members of the House, hon Minister, hon Deputy Minister, members of the committee, all in attendance, colleagues, MECs from other provinces, let me start by taking this opportunity to thank and appreciate the hon Minister of Basic Education, Ms Angie Motshekga, for her diligence and dedication to the education sector. It is because of her hard work and extra efforts that we are today witnessing significant improvement in basic education. The Deputy Minister Dr Mhaule, together with the Basic Education team have done a great job in ensuring that our education is counted amongst the best in the world. It is very difficult in this fast-changing world to adapt, if you don’t have visionaries to guide and lead.
The three pillars, as articulated in the Budget Vote delivered by the Minister in mid-May, resonates with many of us and I want to say upfront that the Minister was spot on. In Limpopo, as we support the budget, as articulated by the Minister, we have declared 2023-24 a year of infrastructure roll-out. The push to eradicate unsafe ablution facilities and delivery of proper school infrastructure is non-negotiable.
We have made strides since the dawn of democracy, to ensure that we restore the dignity of a black child in our communities and I can confirm that in Limpopo, most of our schools are registered between the categories of Quintile 1 to 3.
The province has over 3 600 schools across the 10 education districts and we acknowledge the backlog in rolling out, but we also appreciate the millstone achieved thus far. We have, over the years, built state of the art schools in rural areas, because we believe that all children are equal.
Just last week, we officially handed over a R22 million state of the art school in the community of Malamulele under the Collin Chabane Municipality. The schools that we are building, amongst other things, the one that we handed over, comprise of
the new 24 classrooms with 12 tanks for water harvesting; a large administration block, with sufficient space for educators and admin staff; 36 with water bowl toilets, two boreholes, nutrition centre, computer laboratory, library and science and lifestyle laboratory, which ...[Inaudible.] This has been the standard of the type of infrastructure that we are rolling out in the province.
This is to highlight that we have moved from just building schools, but we are aligning the structures to the curriculum, and to ensure that we produce learners who will be ready for tertiary and beyond. There improved 2022 matric results can also be attributed to the friendly learning and teaching environment that we continue to provide to our community.
We have over 35 school infrastructure projects on the ground, as we speak and they are all on course. We are hoping and planning to receive and hand them over to the communities in this very financial year. As we celebrate Youth Month, we will be opening two schools, one in Sekhukhune District and one in Capricorn District in this month of June.
We have also made strides in the provision of proper sanitation for our learners, especially our little happy feet
in the foundation phase. The safety and dignity of our learners is a priority and we have made significant progress in the reduction of pit latrines.
We believe, that even the parents will be comforted to know that their little children are attending schools with now risk of falling into the toilets. Our new infrastructure, a project aligned to the little happy feet that we have and their sanitation ablution block aligned to the ages that they have.
These are schools with the combination of old and new sanitation facilities. Our plan is to move swiftly with the addition of either water bowls or Enviro-loo to make a way for the demolishing of old and unsafe ablution structures.
Our core business and that of the department in Limpopo is to ensure that we have a tight curriculum that is fully supported, in order to achieve our goal of providing basic education. Regarding curriculum support, in response to the quest to strengthen curriculum in the General Education and Training, GET band, the department is currently busy fortifying the General Education Certificate, GEC, infrastructure – a process that is currently in its pilot phase initiative to establish a sub-directorate in the
examination and assessment chief-directorate area at an advanced stage, as per the DBE directive being given support by the hon Minister.
Very soon, the running of the GEC will be equal to that of the National Senior Certificate in the FET band. The Three Stream Model in the PED, in collaboration with DBE and other relevant stakeholders are busy at work to strengthen the Three Stream Model. Recently, the provincial curriculum team has been roped into the think tank structure that is facilitated by the DBE to assist the conceptualisation of the Three Stream model, which is meant to change the curriculum landscape of our province. The process is at an advanced stage.
As a province, we benefit from the Maths, Science and Technology, MST, Conditional grant. The department has developed a plan funded by the MST Conditional Grant to support and strengthen the Focus school’s concept, whose focus is on agriculture, mining, commerce, arts, physics and mathematics and sciences.
These are the efforts by the department to respond to the economic priorities of the Limpopo province. We want to confirm that the reading and writing report, has once more
revealed the reading and writing our GET learners are faced with the day in and day out. Using the report, the department is currently putting systems and strategies in place to strengthen the reading and writing in the foundation and intermediate phases, as already articulated by the hon Minister.
It is will be a gross injustice, if I don’t make mention of the progress we have made as a province in the function shift the ECD to education, as alluded to on 8 May. We have inherited over 3 600 crèches from the Social Development Department. I can confirm that they are all properly registered.
We are currently on a drive through the local radio station canvassing for unregistered crèches and ECD centre managers to register their centres. We have since taken over registering just over 160 new ECD centres and we hope to finalise registration of more centres in the current financial year.
Let me reassure the House that the future of our learners comes first. We are proud to announce that we are aligned to the vision, as the hon Minister has given direction that we
are taking the country to a proper direction to ensure that we are grooming leaners who can read with understanding.
Last week, we had a successful provincial launch at Masisi Village in the Eastern side of Messina. We handed over a newly built ECD centre, means to benefit the most rural and vast areas. We are proud of the change that we have made in the children.
As I conclude, we want to say to the House that we believe that every child is indeed a national asset and we are doing our utmost best to protect and provide the proper education for them in Limpopo. We support the Budget Vote. Thank you.
Mr M K CHILOANE (Gauteng): House Chair, Minister Angie Motshekga, Deputy Minister Dr Mhaule, hon members of the NCOP, we have over the last three decades travelled far in transforming the education sector in this country as we honour the rights enshrined in our Constitution. While there are still numerous challenges facing education, we have achieved a level of stability that was not seen in 20 years prior to democracy across all communities, not just those that were advantaged.
We have achieved an excess rate in education that equals many developed countries and surpasses many developing countries. More importantly, we have done so under a single national education policy framework that aims to transform education, governance and education provision, including the curriculum framework.
We have also put in place a social security package that ensures that there is access to learning in the classroom while providing social grants to nutrition programmes, scholar transport, provide preferential education funding that is both pro-poor and equitable. One must not omit the past legislation in introducing no fee schooling in the neediest communities.
In addition, we are progressively increasing access to Grade
R. We have improved school infrastructure, including renovation to school buildings, facilitating education and the provision of telephone lines to schools.
Despite all the successes, one must reflect and ask the question: Has the quality of education improved in the last 29 years? While education has been high priority for this government since 2001, it has become the single highest priority or apex priority as it is called.
It is partly in the recognition of the importance of education that we continue investing in the quality, therefore. It is also part of the recognition of the fact that we have not made as much progress in improving the quality of education, especially in poor communities, as we would have liked. Let me be more specific — we have not yet eradicated the shadow of history in reversing the legacy of apartheid education.
While we knew that this would be a multi decade challenge, we did expect to have made more progress. Therefore, in Gauteng we have adopted a set of elevated priorities for education, which respond to key challenges facing the people of the province. We need to ensure that education contributes to the reduction of inequalities in our population. Foremost among the challenges is access to quality schooling in communities we live in, and to respond to the high levels of migration into the province.
We are committed to ensuring that all phases of education are progressively targeted and that all grades will benefit from interventions that are designed to ensure that the root causes that are peculiar to ... [Inaudible.] ... and the grade are addressed.
At the centre of the framework is a commitment to deliver quality education in the classroom every day. Our approach is focused on aligning the whole system to support this intervention to ensure that we use our scarce resources in a targeted school-based approach to support classroom practices in improving learner performance and attainment in a sustainable way.
The 2024 Gauteng education budget is driven by our national and provincial goals and elevated priorities. However, stringent budget realities have created a challenge in managing the tensions between key outputs and resources more effectively. Notwithstanding any of these challenges, we will continue to strive for better education in Gauteng.
The budget stands at R63,4 billion which will be used to accelerate our plight for better and more credible education in the province. This is a 6,2% increase from the main appropriation of 59,7% in the 2023 financial year. Of this, R46 billion or 72,6% is in compensation of employees,
R7,89 billion is for transfers and subsidies, and for budget infrastructure we have allocated R2,6 billion and leaving another R7 billion for programmes, nutrition, transport and other goods and service.
We also welcome the conditional grants from the Basic Education budget to support improved education delivery in the province and schools. The 2023-24 conditional grant budget amounts to R3,2 billion, in which R1,7 billion is allocated for education infrastructure, R36,3 million for HIV and Aids, R1 billion allocated for nutrition programme, R60 million for Math, Science and Technology, MST, grant, R36 million for profound intellectual disability grant and R246 million for Early Childhood Development, ECD. We also welcome the continuation of Funza Lushaka bursary scheme which will continue to produce the number of teachers to fulfil the provisional requirement of teacher shortages and contain the impact of rapidly aging teacher workforce.
In 2023, as a department, we endeavour to improve our metric pass rate to 90% and the bachelor pass rate to 50%. For us to be able to do this we will continue to support the state, which is in its 30th year, with the aim of assisting 456 priority underperformance schools who have performed less than 80% in the 2022 National Senior Certificate, NSC. We will support in the form of walk-in centres and, during school holidays, residential camps across all districts, leading up to the end of year exams.
We will continue investing in the skills of the future. As a province we have recently launched the Multi-Certification Skills Programme in Katlehong school of specialisation which will equip learners from Grade 1-12 with skills that are not offered through the academic syllabus. These include coding, robotics, rocketry, drawing technology, sign language and more. This means that learners will get a skill every year until Grade 12. They will have 12 additional certificates as opposed to one of the NSC after 12 years of schooling.
We will continue our rollout of the schools of specialisation. We have rolled out 22 and we are also launching one next week with an all-girls school, which will focus on media and communication. We aim to conclude these 25 schools of socialisation by the end of the year 2024.
We will continue to invest in ECD Pre–Grade R and Grade R programmes. We will have to ensure that all learners entering the schooling system have participated in ECD, regardless of their socioeconomic status. We will continue to roll out ECD in residential hostels within the teaching programme of our province. So far, we have rolled out ECD centres in six hostels, namely, Denver, Mzimhlophe, Sebokeng, Boipatong and
Kwa-Thema hostels and we will continue to roll out these ECD centres in the other 15 hostels in our province.
We are building an ECD of the future centre in Soshanguve, in Tshwane to the tune of R29 million, which will, amongst others, be piloting coding and robotics which will gradually be introduced into the curriculum to meet the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The department will be rolling out this pilot by March 2024.
In integrating the rehabilitation of learners into welfare and wellness programmes, children in conflict with the law and placed on child and youth care centres by court order, who have completed their rehabilitation must be reintegrated into schools. So scholastic baseline assessment will be conducted to understand the learners’ curriculum support needs. As per policy, we will develop individual support plans to ensure that catching up with learning content for them to progress with their age cohort. Similarly, we will be dealing with children utilising substances and drugs, among them.
The department will also work with rehab centres to develop learning activity packs to support these learners during their
rehabilitation period and ensure their reintegration into the schooling system.
On school safety, in collaboration with the department, Community Safety, Community Policing Forum, CPF and the South African Police Service, Saps, will be implementing our school safety patroller programme, mainly in our township schools. We will be rolling out this to 1 700 township schools, with the focus of the 275 schools that we have identified as higher risk schools. We will be recruiting 5 000 plus patrollers who will assist us to provide learner and safety monitoring on a 24-hour basis, including access control, monitor activities around the school parameters and support teachers on playground duties.
We will continue with the poverty alleviation programmes. We are providing free education in 1 387 schools for 1,5 million learners, school nutrition to 1,6 million learners, scholar transport to 210 000 learners, and we will continue with our Wednesday schools programme for all our learners, particularly focusing on these sporting codes, athletics, football, swimming, cricket, volleyball, rugby, netball, chess and boxing.
On infrastructure, along with the 18 to be funded projects, the overall school building programme consists of 35 new schools that we will be building as a province, 18 budget funded and 17 through our Gauteng Department of Education, GDE, new and replacement schools. Over R1,6 billion will be spent in the three years ...
The DEPUTY CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: As you conclude.
Mr M K CHILOANE (Gauteng): In closing, it is against social pressure that we unreservedly support the Minister’s thrust for quality education and support the 2023 budget for Basic Education. Thank you.
Ms S B LEHIHI: Deputy Chairperson, this year, the EFF celebrates 10 years. Let me join my colleague of the EFF in wishing this mighty organisation a happy 10-year anniversary as we celebrate 10 years of fearlessness and dedication to the cause for free quality education and economic freedom in our lifetime. And as such, the EFF rejects the proposed budget for the Department of Basic Education. We reject the budget of a department that has reduced education to a mockery and failed dismally in the procurement and access to free education.
The latest Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study results shows that 81% of South African kids in grade 4 perform the worst of all participating countries and can’t read for meaning. This is an increase from the previous 78% from 2016. What is concerning to note is that English and Afrikaans schools did not experience a decline as compared to most African language schools which showed a decline.
This department has also failed to deliver basic infrastructure needs for conducive education of our children. Schools in rural KwaZulu-Natal experience shortages of desks and chairs for their children at school. The Constitution entitles every learner at public schools to be provided with prescribed textbooks. Yet, at the beginning of every year, there are reports of schools without. Every other day, we hear reports of the appalling state of sanitation facilities in rural schools in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo province, with pre-schoolers falling in pit latrines and drowning in faeces.
The recent storms in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal have further added to the infrastructure backlogs that already exist in the Department of Education. The Education Department has failed to treat this matter with any sense of urgency.
Overcrowding and lack of resources still plagues schools
across the country. This despite a commitment made from the Department of Basic Education to reduce overcrowding in schools.
Despite the Constitution’s demand to transform education, every year all three levels of this department are dragged to court over the basics: teachers, furniture, textbooks, classrooms, transport and toilets. This department parades itself as improving the quality of education for black children, yet it is worsening it. The education sector is nowhere near being transformed.
We have here in this department, a system that offers the black majority a poor low standard of education. Millions of children are illiterate, semi-literate, and millions are not in schools. The department fails to cater for the poverty- stricken children and child-headed households through the National School Nutrition Programme. Under this Minister’s watch, schools have turned into violent spaces.
Not only has the department failed to deliver basic infrastructure needs for conducive education of our children, it has also failed to ensure that it employs a sufficient number of qualified teachers to teach learners at acceptable
teacher-learner ratios. Teaching and other related posts remain vacant, even though such posts would have already been budgeted for.
Minister, the department which you are leading must aim higher. We must reimagine and transform education into a passionate aspect of learning. What is needed is for the Department of Basic Education to bring solutions. What is needed is a budget that takes account of the crisis we have in education, and programmes to address learning losses.
We reject the budget of a department which has a long record of neglect of the basic education sector, and by extension its neglect of the lives and future of millions of our children whose future depends on their ability to acquire decent education today.
As we celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the only organisation that belongs to black people in this country, the EFF invites all teachers and learners to come and celebrate with us at FNB stadium on 29 July. We also invite them to donate to the movement by simply sending EFF Donation to 38172 and you will donate R10. You can donate multiple times, there is no limit.
Lastly Chairperson, this budget is ignorant to the needs and cries of our children in schools. It is for those reasons given that we reject this budget.
Setswana:
Ke a leboga, Modulasetulo.
The DEPUTY CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP (Ms S E Lucas): I think it
is very unethical to reject the budget but use it as a place to fundraise. [Laughter.] Order! I want to repeat what I just said. I think it is very unethical to reject the budget but to use the platform to fundraise. [Laughter.] Let’s continue with the debate. I now call hon Mbali Frazer, KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Education.
Ms M C FRAZER (KwaZulu-Natal): Hon Deputy Chairperson, Minister of Basic Education, hon uMama Angie Motshekga, Deputy Minister, Dr Mhaule, MECs present, hon members, good evening.
Allow me to start off by borrowing from the former UN secretary-general, Kofi Anann, who once said, and I quote:
Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against
poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics, and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity.
Despite the considerable progress made by our ANC-led democratic government in improving the social wellbeing of the majority, South Africa as well as our predominantly rural province of KwaZulu-Natal still faces the devastating challenges of poverty, inequality, and unemployment because of the imbalances of the past. Throughout history, many of our esteemed leaders such as uBaba OR Tambo, Dr Pixley Ka Isaka Seme, Mme Charlotte Maxeke and others have consistently emphasized that education remains one of the most powerful tools to alleviate the economic hardships experienced by the majority of our people.
It is precisely for this reason that our ANC-led government is steadfastly persistent in allocating significant resources and funding to ensure that every child can exercise their constitutional right to education within a conducive and safe environment.
As the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education, we are grateful for the allocation from the national Department of Basic Education for the 2023-24 financial year. These substantial funds will be diligently utilised to uphold our commitment of providing accessible education to approximately three million learners in our province. Amongst the significant contributions from the national department to KwaZulu-Natal is the Education Infrastructure grant worth over R2 billion.
These funds will play a crucial role in implementing priority projects, including the installation of boreholes in 277 schools to ensure that they have uninterrupted water supply. The department also intends to use some of the funds for the maintenance of 500 KwaZulu-Natal schools in 2023-24 as part of this planned maintenance programme. Moreover, this grant includes funds to cover the carry-through cost of repairing and rehabilitating 187 schools that were damaged during the April 2022 floods.
Furthermore, we are continuing with the implementation of the National School Nutrition Programme benefiting over
2,4 million learners in 5 446 schools throughout the province. The programme has been allocated a grant. Amongst the priorities is ensuring that our learners receive nutritious meals as expected, as well as to strengthen the recruitment
and training of 14 000 volunteers’ food handlers. I am pleased to report that since April 2023, KwaZulu-Natal has been piloting a breakfast programme in primary schools. As we recognise the importance of this crucial meal, especially for learners from struggling households.
Education is inclusive, and we are committed to providing support to learners with special educational needs through the Learners with Profound Intellectual Disabilities grant. This grant will benefit approximately 1 050 learners from special care centres and targeted schools. It also provides for the filing of 36 critical posts, including speech language therapists, educational psychologists, and physiotherapists.
Additionally, the grant will support the monitoring of Department of Social Development special care centres special schools, capacity-building for caregivers and educators, as well as the procurement of learning and teaching support materials, toolkits, and assistive devices.
To strengthen the educational outcomes in mathematics, science, and technology, KwaZulu-Natal has received an allocation from the national Maths, Science, and Technology Conditional grant. These funds are utilised to supply science
resources to our schools, as well as supplying technical secondary schools with the necessary equipment to enhance curriculum delivery, thus increasing the number of suitably qualified and technically skilled learners in quintile 1-3 schools.
Furthermore, the grant supports the purchase of computer hardware, software for coding and robotics, and the implementation of enrichment programme to improve learner participation and performance in these subjects.
We recognise the critical importance of early childhood development, ECD, in shaping a child’s future. To support this, a substantial portion of the Early Childhood Development grant has been allocated to KwaZulu-Natal for the provision of the subsidies to nonprofit organisations delivering ECD services and maintain government owned ECD centres. In investing in early childhood education, our government is laying a solid foundation for lifelong learning and holistic development.
The reality is that we cannot discuss education without addressing the challenges faced by our youth, particularly regarding HIV and Aids infections. In this regard, the ANC-led
government has consistently prioritised rolling out life skills programme to increase knowledge and skills in HIV, STIs, TB, and now COVID-19 prevention amongst learners.
In this financial year, KwaZulu-Natal has been allocated R62,9 million from the HIV and Aids grant. This will enable the department to roll out targeted initiatives focusing on keeping girls in schools, training educators to implement comprehensive sexual education, and implementing TB prevention programmes.
Hon members, I am pleased to report that KwaZulu-Natal has effectively implemented the national Mass Public Employment Programme through the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative. In the current phase of the programme, which commenced in March, and will continue until September 2023, an additional 58 000 posts have been provided. This initiative not only addresses unemployment, but also instils valuable skills and opportunities for our youth.
As I conclude, I want to assure the hon members that the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education remains steadfast in its commitment to provide quality education, ensuring no learner
is left behind, and transforming our province’s education system.
As President Ramaphosa remarked during his 2021 Youth Day address, I quote:
It is a singular focus of this Administration to ensure that young people are given access to opportunities so they can better themselves, that they can drive change in their communities, and contribute to our economy.
Together with the support of the Department of Basic Education, under the stewardship of the capable leader, the best amongst us, uMama uAngie, we will continue to invest in our learners, shaping their future, and building a prosperous nation.
IsiZulu:
Ngiyabonga kakhulu, Sihlalo.
English: Thank you.
Mr N M HADEBE: Deputy Chairperson, hon Minister, hon MECs, hon members, the Department of Basic Education is a government department that is in charge of shaping the future of this country. Its success in achieving its output determines the overall development goal of government by educating our young people to achieve success.
The IFP is concerned that this department lacks sufficient programmes to address the issue of the perpetual overcrowding of learners in our public schools’ system. The average class sits at about 31 learners to one teacher, including educators, who have fewer students in their specialist teaching subjects. This leaves this figure to be much higher in real terms.
Independent studies have indicated that about 80% of learners leaving grade 4 are unable to read for comprehension. Yet, there have been warning signs from years.
According to the progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2016, a shocking 78% of grade 4 children cannot read for meaning in any language. With statistics like this showing a regression of literacy in South Africa, it is at a crisis stage of learning development. It is increasingly worrying that the problems facing this department has not been taken into account. We asked the Minister why there is no specific
national reading plan, no proper budget, no accurate reporting, and no progress on implementing vital interventions?
It is quite evident that part of the problem in schools is that the learning environment for many is unconducive.
Learners’ classrooms are overcrowded, insufficiently equipped with proper learning material and ... [Inaudible.] ... leaky infrastructure exists is not maintained or very old. The government’s plan to bring in the Fourth Industrial Revolution to schools will only serve to benefit the already privileged children of this country. For the underprivileged, especially the rural based children, the realities of crossing rivers, catching roadworthy public transport, and attending schools that do not possess the basic clean and safe infrastructure, is prevalent.
The existence of pit latrines in South Africa is something that this, and the past administration, have failed to address for the children of this country. It is no wonder the youth grow to become resentful and distrusting of the government as poor basic infrastructure in schools did not promote effective, clean, safe, and encouraging learning. This cannot be the case that a learner’s number one thought before they
think of studies is whether they will survive a toilet break or the journey to and from school. Unfortunately, the people of this country will never see prosperous times until we take out the need for self-enrichment, corruption and maladministration that is so evident in the governing party.
Good financial control is not always the case for the building of schools, as well as infrastructure in schools, as there have been probes and investigations made into irregularities in tenders awarded by the Department of Education throughout the country over the past decades. One such example is the R2,1 billion school feeding tender that failed to deliver meals to more than 5000 impoverished schools. While we note this is a provincial matter, this department should have exercised oversight as to what the provinces are doing with the tenders to implement the feeding programme. It is not acceptable for the Minister to act so shocked to this issue only when it reaches the public knowledge.
If the Minister is not exercising a good working relationship with provincial departments, how can she fully know the details of the progress towards reaching the national ... [Inaudible.] The IFP Deputy Chairperson, supports the budget. I thank you.
Mr W A S AUCAMP: Deputy Chairperson, hon Minister of Basic Education, fellow South Africans, the failures by your department hon Minister, through you Deputy Chair, is one of the biggest problems facing South Africans. A country that does not have a strong basic education system is a country that will be ripped by the tentacles of poverty for years to come. This failure is evident if we listen to the statistics that was given today where we heard that eight out of 10 learners in grade 4 cannot read for meaning. In any language, not only in English, in their own home languages. That shows the neglect for home language education that we also see in this country, including Afrikaans. It happens. It happens in my province, the Northern Cape where I come from, hon Minister. But hon Minister, how do you expect the people of South Africa to trust you when the basics of Basic Education are neglected by you and your department?
What you did not tell us hon Minister, is the fact that out of the 33 countries that form part of this study, South Africa exhibited the largest decline. You failed to mention that to us. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the only province that put interventions in place to bridge learning losses due to the pandemic, was the DA-run Western Cape government. ... [Inaudible.] ... #BackOnTrack Campaign allocated R1,2 billion
for activities such as tutoring, Saturday classes and holiday camps for grade 4 to grade 12 learners. A further R118 million was allocated by the Western Cape government for grade R to grade 3 learners. Hon Minister, this was done by the Western Gape government, but not by one of the eight other provinces in this country. Not even your own department gave any money. That was confirmed by the hon Christians today when she said that there is no national plan or budget to address these learning losses.
Hon Minister, is this may be due to the fact that the budget for Basic Education is three times less than that for the budget of Higher Education? We need to spend more on Basic Education. Hon Minister, your department’s failure to not only protect, but also to promote mother tongue education, as I’ve said earlier, is one of the main reasons why we are experiencing these failures in our Basic Education system.
Rather than to implement doom policies such as I envisage in the Basic Education Laws Amendment, Bela Bill.
This government’s policies must start to show that we trust the people of South Africa. That we trust them in their communities, with their democratically elected SGBs to know
what is best there in their communities, and not government, they do. They live there.
In all the debates that we have thus far on the Appropriation Bill, we heard how the ANC played the race card and also blamed apartheid for all their failures without giving attention to its own failures over the last three decades.
This was done again today in this debate by the hon Nchabeleng. Let’s make one thing crystal clear, apartheid was wrong. We will never go back there, and we should never go back there. That was a deplorable system. But I can promise you one thing hon Nchabeleng, don’t underestimate the intelligence of the people of South Africa. They know that we will never go back. They don’t fall for your fear mongering anymore. And I promise you one thing, they are sick and tired of your promises and the excuses that you use for your failures. The time for change in South Africa is coming, and I can promise you the disgruntled learners of this country will come for the ANC in 2024 when they elect a democratically new dawn in the DA. Thank you very much. The DA does not support this.
Mr I NTSUBE: Hon Deputy Chairperson of the Council; the Chief Whip; the House Chairs; the permanent and special delegates;
the Ministers present here and the Deputy Ministers, we are debating an important question in our society during an important month in our political calendar. June is a Youth Month. It was the month of June 1976 when young people took to the streets to protest against Bantu education and apartheid as an unjust and inhuman political system in our country.
Many young people lost their lives during the student uprising including Hector Pieterson who was shot dead by the apartheid regime. These young people were killed for demanding what is just for them, an educational system that is democratic, progressive and imbued with values of Ubuntu. Such educational system will address the legacy of colonialism and apartheid and bring about improved living conditions for people. Hon deputy Chairperson, in the 1976 uprising, it was not only about the abolishing of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction but the youth of 1976 took Afrikaans as a symbol of socially politically economically and culturally abusive system of society.
Deputy Chairperson, 47 years later after the uprising the children of former slave in colonial masters have the audacity to lecture us in this House about the inclusive educational system, its role for a developmental society. We must refuse
to disabuse ourselves that the opposition can offer the real alternative to the challenges we are faced with. The evidence has proven us right that their mission is only to topple the ANC off power and do nothing with the very same power that they dream to have. Where they are leading, it is a mess.
Chairperson, Others are using this important debate to profile and promote their party at the expense of our people. I think they have exposed themselves that they are not an alternative because nothing significant they have said today except to claim his victories and promote their party. Our people must see through them and come back to the mighty African National Congress so that we can move together and resolve our issue in pursuit of the national democratic revolution. We accept that there are challenges. However, our intervention speaks volume in our endeavor to resolve them.
The longest serving president of the African National Congress President, Oliver Tambo, argued that a country, a movement or a person that does not value its youth and children does not deserve its future because the children of any nation is future. As we are debating in this august House, we must always be mindful whatever decision we take has a huge bearing on the future of this country. Our ANC-led government is
taking seriously the future of the children of the country to ensure that there is no young person that is left behind through various policy interventions to improve teaching and teacher development programmes.
For a number of years since our democratic breakthrough in 1994, we have recorded a low number of people enrolling in high education institution to take up teaching qualifications. At the same time many people left teaching profession as the result of various opportunities brought to them by the democratisation of our government. Some people left the educational system as a result of a new democratised and progressive syllabus. In addition, our democratic government recognised the need to produce a new cadre a group of teachers who will take seriously the work of building our nation as informed by the Constitution and values of Ubuntu as core values.
The ANC-led government through the Funza Lushaka Bursary Scheme, has managed to enroll many young people to take up teaching as an important career choice to improve teaching and teacher development within the educational system. Through the Funza Lushaka scheme, our government is now able to place graduates to various government schools to fill in vacancies
on permanent basis. According to the recent report out of
4 348 teaching students have benefited from this multi-year teaching programmes. There was 1 394 individuals were unplaced. We call upon the department to ensure that these individuals who have not been placed are placed before the end of this year.
Chairperson, as there are many schools with shortage of teachers, particularly in the villages and in our townships, we call upon the Basic Education to prioritise placing these graduates to impoverished areas such as rural areas and township schools where there are teacher shortages. We further want to call upon the department to encourage unrolling learners who will be studying towards teaching subjects in mathematics, science and technologies as they are important for the development of our society.
On curriculum transformation and curriculum for the changing world, robotics and coding. We must commend our ANC-led government for taking a decisive decision to transform our school curriculum and introduce a curriculum that is revolutionising the world. The introduction of the robotics and coding as a subject in government schools. We are living in a very dynamic world and some experts have suggested that
we are living in what we have termed as a knowledge economy. We are said to be living in a modern post agricultural and postindustrial global market. In other word, the idea of knowledge economies predicted on the idea that information and knowledge are driving forces behind the societal advancement or development.
In the knowledge economy, a strong emphasis is placed on the capacity to capitalise on scientific breakthroughs and application of basic and applied research. This is only possible in society where there is a strong emphasis of information and communication technology. The South African economy is fast moving away from machine labour intensive economy towards knowledge intensive services such as finance, insurance, business communication, communities with social and personal services as they are becoming the main contributors to the country’s gross domestic product.
It is our considered view that through the implementation of a new curriculum, our country will be able to respond to the knowledge economy. Teaching, coding and robotics to our young people means that they will be able to participate meaningfully to the economy for our country. Hon Deputy Chairperson, as you would know that our education system is
free-stream model, the academic, the technical, vocational and technical occupational streams. Although we have these three streams, we have over the years emphasised the academic stream over the technical, vocational and technical occupational streams even though they are important for the development of our economy.
The country as the whole as they relate to the social and the economic infrastructure through academic streams, we have managed to produce university graduates who have acquired soft skills which are not really in demand of our economy at the present moment. As the African National Congress, we are convinced that we need to promote two other streams, the technical vocational and the technical occupational models.
Our country is in dire need of hard skills of construction, electronics and mechanicals. We are facing challenges relating to aging and broken infrastructure which requires skilled personnel in civilian mechanical engineering. By promoting acquisition of technical and vocational and technical occupational skills, we are guaranteed as a country to respond to the social infrastructure challenges.
However, also to address high unemployment rate of young people in the country we will be ensuring that no young person
is left behind under this programme. Hon members, our hard-won democracy will be meaningless if we still have black learners who are not taking up science, technologies, engineering and mathematics as subjects of choice during their school years.
In the past, we know some of us were not culturally and intellectually suited to learn and to be taught these critical subjects at school. There are still teachers within the system who still have these negative assumptions particularly as they relate to the black woman.
Chairpersons, it is our responsibility as the ruling party and society at large especially those that are involved in the education sector to ensure we increase the importance of black girls and boys enrolling in science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects at schools. At an early age we must ensure that no learner who has the ability to succeed in these subjects is denied an opportunity to take up this important fields of study. As the African National Congress, we are concerned about the number of learners are dropping out of school before attaining grade 12 or before attaining to technical vocational and technical vocational certificate.
There are many factors that contribute to these learners dropping out of schools ranging from domestic issues to
alcoholism, drug abuse and substance abuse in some instances. The response to these needs multiple approach to address this matter. We commend the measure that the department has put in place to address this issue such as the school nutrition, learner transport, encouraging schools to employ professional psychologists, the learner support agents and partnership that are being developed in some stakeholders in the sector.
Hon members, Minister Angie Motshekga acknowledged in her Budget Speech that the devastating impact of COVID-19 on the education sector, not only as it relates to a number of people whose lives were lost but also on teaching and learning. She further acknowledged that the damage done by the COVID-19 has no quick fix but has a long and tedious process for learners to catch up. This might take us years to achieve it but we must strive to do it. However, we are confident that the school recovery plan of the department is fully implemented by all, will yield positive results in the near future and we hope that stakeholders will support its implementation.
Hon Deputy Chairperson, the ANC-led government is committed to improving education outcomes through improving conditions of teaching and learning. Our democratic government has prioritised development and expansion of school infrastructure
that have modern facilities to respond to the demands of our economy. Since the new dispensation in many schools, our ANC- led government has built the infrastructure with size laboratories, libraries, sports facilities which will make it easy for teaching and learning to take place and also increase healthy lifestyle among learners.
We further wish to commend the efforts of the department to ensure that we improve the learner-teacher ratio in one teacher per 35 learners. Minister, we are calling upon you to abolish the quintiles by nationalising all the private schools for free, fair and equal education for all. This is the call that we have been making from the Congress of South African Students, Cosas, and fill the existing funded vacant posts in the next three months into all department across the country and employ teachers across the country. In conclusion, in 1997, Professor Bengu wrote in a White Paper that the postapartheid South Africa has identified education as a tool to reverse 300 years of slavery and 45 years of apartheid.
Chairperson, now we are calling on the Minister of Finance to dedicate more resources on the Basic Education for us to be able to have a prosperous South Africa. It is only what we are doing in the Basic Education that will give the outlook of our
society. We must invest in the capacity, hon Minister, as the state and manufacture our own internal things. We must, at least, in 2030 manufacture cars and mobile devices to be used by Africans rather than importing and us spending billions per year to purchase BMWs, Mercedes, iPhones and Huawei.
We must build a state capacity for us to be able to respond to the demands of our people. As the African National Congress, we are confident that this budget as presented by the Minister, Motshekga, will continue to improve education outcomes for improved conditions of teaching and learning.
Thank you very much, hon Deputy Chairperson.
The MINISTER OF BASIC EDUCATION: Hon Deputy Chair, let me thank the different members of the NCOP from the provinces who participated in the debate and I want to say as usual we always find it useful and helpful to commence the work that we do. I want to thank you Chair for acknowledging our work and for also acknowledging our courageous stance to participate in the Bills. The NDP calls for it and I repeat, we do not go there to compete with Singapore, Hong Kong, Russia, England, Finland, Poland, China, Taipei which are top countries in the Pills Process. We go there to learn from the best. That is why
we go there and not to compete to be number one and number three.
We go there knowing very well that we have got a very fragile system and has to continue to learn. We are also proud that we are a real courageous government. We are the only three African countries that can participate. In the past, there were only two of us and more over. In the south, there are no countries that go there. So, we are competing there with the rich north. We do not go there with any illusions that we are going to beat Russia.
We were told that 5% of Russians are non-readers which means that 95% reads. It says South Africans as adults, even those that read cannot read. It says 85% of South Africans do not read. They do not read books in their homes. There is no reading culture. So, we have to all live together and not point fingers at each other. We said yesterday when we were with the NGOs that we had to point fingers at the problem.
That is what we have to do. So, that is very important Chair.
I am very glad that we have support of the early childhood development because it is extremely important and it really set out the good foundation for the children. I would fully
agree with the mothers that are advocating for the mother tongue instructions. I am one of the proponents of the mother tongue instructions. We have a very powerful programme which was done in the Eastern Cape. They ran a 12-year study which confirms the importance of mother tongue instruction and also did a lot of work around the development of isiXhosa and Sesotho as the languages of learning.
What was very interesting about their findings was that kids that were taught in isiXhosa and Sesotho were performing even much better in physical science and mathematics compared to kids that were taught in another language. What was more even beautiful is that those kids even performed better in English than the kids who were using English as a language of instructions. So, there is a lot to learn from there.
Ms Christians asks if I am ready to answer as if I expected anything better, so I will be wasting my time really.
IsiXhosa:
Nyani, nyani.
English:
Even for me to be playing children’s games of Western Cape...
IsiXhosa:
...hayi, andizi mna.
English:
Those are just childish games because I am not going stand here and say the KwaZulu-Natal literacy programme is good and has following programmes. Go and read, you will see it yourself which programme is powerful in terms of your reading programme. I am not going to be playing children’s game. I am glad that member Gade had to look at issues and monitor issues of repetition and drop out grades. Those issues are very important to us as people who really come back from the bottom.
Mr De Bruyn, I was very happy when you went back to Afrikaans because I did not even hear anything. I knew I was not expecting anything better so you helped me by going into Afrikaans. I can say that the little I heard that I can tell you that I am not going to be bothered about people who are stuck in the past. We have children to raise and we have a country to build and that is what it is.
Mr S F DU TOIT: Hon Deputy Chairperson, on a point of order: The Minister is misleading the House. She is talking with two
tongues. On one sentence she is advocating for the mother tongue instruction in education. The Constitution states that all languages must be protected and now in this House when we got interpretation services she is attacking hon De Bruyn for using his mother tongue which is allowed.
You were just reprimanded earlier when the hon Dangor who has left the House earlier indicated that the then Acting Chair is allowed to speak in her mother tongue.
The DEPUTY CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Hon Du Toit you are taking a long time. What is the point of order?
Mr S F DU TOIT: Please Chair, be consistent with your rulings.
The DEPUTY CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Hon Chair, you may continue. Thank you.
The MINISTER OF BASIC EDUCATION: Thank you very much, Chair. As I said...
Sesotho:
... ha ke a utlwa hantle ene ke ne ke sa kgathala.
Setswana:
Rre S J DU TOIT: O batla nna ke bue Setswana, o tla utlwa sentle. Bula ditsebe, ke a o kopa.
English:
The DEPUTY CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Hon Chair, you are really out of order. You are really out of order. We all have the rule book, read it and you know which rule you have transgressed.
The MINISTER OF BASIC EDUCATION: I can promise you that these members in the NCOP that if we were going to the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, Pirls...
IsiZulu:
... abanye benu bebeyoshiyeka
English:
...because Pirls also requires you to use your listening skills, the interpreting skills properly but it also means that you have to apply what you have been told. So, it is not simply the reading words but you have to apply the knowledge. So, I still say that I have no doubt that De Bruyn was going to remain at Pirls, he was not going to come out.
The significance of Pirls, as I am saying, as one of the few countries, we are taking roadshows to make sure that most South Africans participate. And again, I want to say Mr Bara...
IsiXhosa:
...thina sinomsebenzi wokukhulisa abantwana...
English:
...that we will not allow a small group of people to use language to discriminate against people in a public school. It is not going to happen. These are public schools and they have to be opened to everybody. If those School Governing Bodies, SGBs are going to protect language rights, then there is a problem.
IsiXhosa:
Mna nawe...
English:
...we should not allow it. Do not even go there.
The DEPUTY CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Hon members, hon Aucamp, read Rule 47 and 48 and then you will understand why I am
saying you can heckle but you cannot converse aloud and you cannot interrupt a speaker on the platform.
The MINISTER OF BASIC EDUCATION: I really want to appeal to fellow South Africans to say that...
IsiXhosa:
... mabakhwele kule nqwelo yomzabalazo...
English:
...because it is liberating and developing and I think you need it. I mean listening to some comrades, you just say thanks God we have these MECs and these kind of these ANC people who debated here and it is quite clear that in the hands of ruling party, the ANC, the future is bright. We can say to Lehihi that there is great hope...
Sepedi:
... Lehihi o sepetie a boletie polelo ye Lehihi, yena.
English:
Hon Hadebe, wherever you are, reading for meaning also requires to ask the right questions, understand the matter at hand and that is what it is all about.
IsiXhosa:
Abanye abantu abazi nokuba kubethwa abaphi.
English:
They have just heard that children cannot read and do not know what is the context, what are the issues and they had to be repeating... [Inaudible.] 01:03 – 05:31 and they heard it from us. It did not come from them. They got that information from us. Since I am saying, what are the issues...
IsiXhosa:
... hayi babetha nawe ...
English:
...so, I do not have time. I will be reading. Let me thank members and say...
IsiXhosa:
... aqeqeshiwe kodwa amaqabane e-ANC bethuna uvakele umahluko, masibuleleni. Enkosi.
English:
The DEPUTY CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP: Hon delegates that concludes the debate and the business of the day. Let me thank
the Minister, the Deputy Minister, Permanent Delegates that are here as well as Special Delegates, MECs and Salga representatives for availing themselves in the sitting. Hon delegates, I know you are tired but sometimes we must be very patient. I just want to repeat to all the members that if tomorrow there are members who will break the rules, you know what will happen if I am presiding.
The Mini Plenary rose at 20:03.
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