REPORT

NATIONAL COUNCIL OF PROVINCES

TAKING PARLIAMENT TO THE PEOPLE PROGRAMME

LIMPOPO PROVINCE

23-26 MARCH 2010

Dr C N Phatudi Campus

Greater Sekhukhune FET College

Praktiseer, Burgersfort

CONTENTS

  1. Introduction and Background

1.1 NCOP Strategic Objectives

1.2 NCOP Priority Areas for Oversight

1.3 Overview of the Greater Sekhukhune District Municipality

  1. Key Issues from the Opening Ceremony
  1. Public Hearings

3.1 Governance and Service Delivery at Local Government

3.2 Mining, Economic Infrastructure Development and Provision of

Water

3.3 Education and Social Development

3.4 People with Disabilities, Youth and Women

3.5 Rural Development and Land Reform

  1. Report on Site Visits

4.1 Fa Mogale Wa Bagale Technical High School

4.2 Taung High School

4.3Kwaledi High School

4.4Mamphare Pre-School

4.5Burgersfort Clinic

4.6 Penge Clinic

4.7 HC Boshoff Health Centre

4.8 RDP Projects

4.8.1 Leboeng Housing Project

4.8.2 People’s Housing Project

4.8.3Rural Housing Project

4.9Makopi Vegetable Project

4.10Mabodibeng Dairy Project

4.11Tswelopele Cooperative

4.12De Hoop Dam

5. Analysis

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The National Council of Provinces’ (NCOP) Taking Parliament to the People programme was held from 23-26 March 2010 at the Greater Sekhukhune Further Education and Training (FET) College (Dr CN Phatudi Campus) in Burgersfort, Limpopo.

The week’s activities were designed to promote active two-way communication between communities on the one hand and members of the national and provincial executives, councilors and officials from local, provincial and national government on the other hand, in the form of public hearings and site visits.

Discussions in the public hearings and at the various sites focused on the following key socio-economic issues:

Governance and Service Delivery: Concerns focused mainly on the backlogs in the delivery of basic services, corruption, maladministration, poor communication and leadership in the municipality. The Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs outlined a number of legislative and policy interventions which will assist municipalities to deal with such concerns.

Mining, Economic Infrastructure Development and Provision of Water: There were numerous complaints regarding the difficulty local communities have in accessing mining jobs. In Mabodibeng water pipes were put in place several years ago yet these pipes were not bringing water to the area.

Education and Social Development:Poor road conditions make it difficult for learners to access schools. Some schools lack basic school and learner equipment and in some extreme cases, they lack electricity and even roofs. In terms of health there are insufficient clinics, especially in remote areas; and a shortage of medical staff, medicines and specialised equipment; there are insufficient social workers and/or transport for them to carry out their duties.

Women, Youth and People with Disabilities: The needs of youth and people with disabilities are often not met, especially in relation to jobs, education, housing and access to transport; access of the disabled to buildings; women are vulnerable to violence, human trafficking and harmful cultural practices such as ‘ukuthwala’ (i.e. the kidnapping of young girls who are forced into marriage, often with much older men). The Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities would be conducting awareness campaigns to educate the public about the rights of people with disabilities.The Department is also in the process of drafting a charter on people with disabilities while the National Youth Development Agency is in the process of establishing offices in every municipality.

Rural Development and Land Reform:Water shortage affects agriculture projects, inadequate financial support for and monitoring of agriculture projectscompromises long term sustainability of projects; refusal to release land for development purposes by some individuals owning land also poses problems. The Department will ensure that it monitors the progress of emerging farmers that have been trained.

Housing: There are numerous challenges around the three RDP housing projects visited. The Peoples Housing Project is in danger of failure as community members are building their own houses with supplied materials, but without adequate training. In addition, the Project Manager is not a housing specialist.

The report also contains a number of recommendations aimed at addressing some of the key challenges raised. These include:

  • The need to encourage mines to invest in more social responsibility interventions that will contribute to skills development, e.g. offering bursaries, building or equipping school libraries;
  • Supporting the national initiatives aimed at improving and enhancing the learning experience at primary and secondary schools.
  • Supporting the Department of Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs in the implementation of the Local Government Turnaround Strategy.
  • Encouraging and supportingof initiatives aimed at sustainable project implementation.
  • Encouraging and supporting the Department of Health in dealing with the shortage of medical staff, especially the lack of doctors in rural areas at a policy and strategic level.
  • Supporting Government’s commitment to assisting vulnerable groups to enhance their quality of life through the provision of a full range of services.
  • Addresses potential community apathy and the feeling that ‘nothing will change’ in the wake of this programme by acting upon commitment through a process of monitoring and evaluation.
  • This element of monitoring and evaluation should be an integral element of all future TPTTP programmes as it is the only reliable way of ensuring the long term success and sustainability of the interventions proposed during these programmes.

1. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

The first Taking Parliament to the People (TPTP) programme of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) in the fourth Parliament took place at the Greater Sekhukhune District Municipality in Limpopo from 23-26 March 2010. The venue for the activities was the Greater Sekhukhune Further Education and Training College (Dr CN Phatudi Campus), Praktiseer, in the Greater Tubatse Local Municipality.

TheTaking Parliament to the People programme embodies the NCOP’s commitment to its constitutional mandate of providing a national forum for public consideration of issues affecting provincial and local government. It is intended to give the masses of our people an opportunity to make their voices heard and to have government committing itself to the delivery of quality services, particularly in our often neglected rural areas. As such it isa key institutional mechanism through which the NCOP will ensure that its strategic objectives and priority areas for oversight for the next five years are translated into positive outcomes.

After the last Taking Parliament to the People prgramme in the Eastern Cape in 2008, the programmehas been remodelled to make it more effective in responding to service delivery challenges.

The improvements to the programme includedintense preparatory work prior to the actual visitincluding:

  • meetings with the leadership of the province, local government and traditional leaders to brief them about the programme;
  • a public meeting to afford people an opportunity to inform the content of the planned programme;
  • fact-finding assignments by the parliamentary researcher unit
  • committee oversight programme to follow up on the observations from the research unit and
  • engagements with the executive in the different spheres briefing them about the committees’ observations and requesting responses that are solution oriented.

This is a fundamentallynew approach which seeks to enhance the relevance of the Taking Parliament to the People programme by ensuring that it responds to the expectations of the province and its people in facilitating solutions to service delivery challenges.

1.1NCOP STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES:

The NCOP Strategic Priorities derive from the Strategic Framework Plan which was developed after the Strategic Planning Workshop of all role-playersfrom12 to 13 August 2009.

The Strategic Framework Planis informed by the strategic priorities as identified in government’s Medium Term Strategic Framework and is intended to guide the work of the National Council of Provinces during the electoral mandate period of the fourth Parliament. The strategic priorities are:

  • Promoting provincial interests and adherence by the three spheres of government to the principles of co-operative government and intergovernmental relations;
  • Tracking the implementation of government priorities as identified for the three spheres of government;
  • Enhancing public participation programmes through educating the people, especially in rural villages, and
  • Initiating and implementing programmes aimed at assisting vulnerable groups in society by ensuring that the NCOP plays its role towards building a Parliament that is responsive to the needs of the electorate.

1.2NCOP PRIORITY AREAS FOR OVERSIGHT:

The Strategic Framework Plan also sets out the priority areas for oversight for Select Committees and the committees must therefore align their work accordingly. The priority areas for oversight are:

Agriculture

Focal areas:

  • support to small and emerging farmers and co-operatives;
  • food security;
  • water recycling and water desalination.

Education

Focal areas:

  • infrastructure challenges;
  • teacher qualifications especially in the fields of maths and science;
  • numeracy and literacy levels;
  • school safety and school transport.

Economic Development

Focal areas:

  • support for tourism ventures;
  • development of economic infrastructure (e.g. for roads, electricity and access to water);
  • economic facilitation such as access to finance, empowerment and promotion of BEE within the context of broad-based black economic empowerment;
  • SMME development and development and empowerment of co-operatives;
  • looking at community involvement in mining, beneficiation, water management and promotion of small-scale mining, as well as management of dangerous unused open shafts.

Health and Social Development

Focal areas:

  • implementation of the National Health Insurance;
  • infrastructure challenges especially in rural areas;
  • human resource capacity especially nurses and doctors;
  • improvement of access to health care services considering geographical challenges and challenges posed by demarcation;
  • access to grants (especially by child-headed households and people in rural areas);
  • fight against substance abuse;
  • implementation of early childhood development programmes.

Human Settlements

Focal areas:

  • housing especially in rural and peri-urban areas;
  • availability of land for human settlements.

Police

Focal areas:

  • contact crime and violence against women and children;
  • victim support programmes;
  • substance abuse and crime;
  • strengthening of community involvement in fighting crime including through Community Police Forums.

Rural Development and Land Reform

Focal areas:

  • infrastructure development and maintenance for rural areas in the form of roads, electricity, water and sanitation;
  • speeding up facilitation of land claims;
  • promotion of rural economy and skills.

1.3 OVERVIEW OF GREATER SEKHUKHUNE DISTRICT MUNICIPALITY

According to the Greater Sekhukhune District Municipality Annual Report 2008/2010, the Greater Sekhukhune District Municipality (GSDM), is a former cross-border district municipality which was previously partly located in Limpopo and Mpumalanga Provinces but is now fully located in the Limpopo province. The district has a total population of 1, 024,748 of whom 97% live in the rural areas of the District.

The GSDM district comprises of five local municipalities:

• Greater Tubatse municipality

• Makhuduthamaga municipality

• Elias Motsoaledi municipality( formerly Greater Groblersdal)

• Ephraim Mogale municipality and (formerly Greater Marble Hall)

• Fetakgomo municipality

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The main urban settlements within the District municipal area are Groblersdal, Marble Hall and Burgersfort. The local municipalities of Fetakgomo and Makhuduthamaga are almost entirely rural and are traditional areas.

The District is mineral-rich but exceptionally dry, such that it experiences significant water shortages and is dependent on irrigation schemes for farming. The south-west part of the district contains one of the largest clusters of commercial agricultural production in the country. The critical water deficit affects households and is a major constraint to the growth of the agriculture and mining sectors – approximately 65 000ha of prime land cannot be farmed due to lack of water for irrigation.

Economic activity is concentrated predominantly in the Marble Hall and Groblersdal local municipalities (agriculture and tourism) and the Tubatse Local Municipality (mining and tourism).

In terms of sectoral contribution to employment, the public sector is the single largest employer in the district, accounting for a quarter of all jobs, although the agriculture sector is also a major source of employment. The mining sector, the largest in terms of value contribution to GGP (32%), contributes only 8% to formal employment in the district.

In brief the socio-economic character of the GSDM can be summarised as follows:

  • Sekhukhune faces serious backlogs in the provision of services (water, electricity, sanitation, health care, schools);
  • Only 36% of households have electricity and 65% have access to piped water within 200m of the homestead;
  • Only 70% of households live in a formal brick house;
  • There are 473 primary, 292 secondary, nine combined primary and secondary, and three tertiary-education institutions in Sekhukhune. Two thirds of the schools do not have RDP standard access to water, and only 47% of the schools have access to sanitation above RDP levels;
  • There are eight hospitals, 43 clinics and eight mobile clinic stops in Sekhukhune;
  • Females make up 56% of the population and comprise 60% of heads of households;
  • About 70% of the population are under the age of 30;
  • Only 14% of the population aged 15 to 65 years are employed and 86% of households in the node are classified as poor;
  • Sekhukhune District has the highest unemployment rate in Limpopo at 69,4%;
  • Over 40% of the node’s adult population have no formal education;
  • About 86% of households in Sekhukhune live below the household subsistence level.

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2. KEY ISSUES FROM THE OPENING CEREMONY

The Executive Mayor of the Greater Sekhukhune District Municipality, Councillor MD Magabe outlinedsome of the socio-economic challenges facing the District. Some of the key challenges include the severe backlog in the delivery of services such as:

  • Land claims – backlog stands at more than 1127;
  • Water – backlog stands at 42%;
  • Sanitation – backlog stands at 80%;
  • Electricity – Over 24 000 households are without electricity.

The Executive Mayor expressed the view that The Taking Parliament to the People programme should assist in intervening in matters of service delivery.

The Executive Mayor of the Greater Tubatse Local Municipality, Councillor RS Mamekoa, highlighted the following service delivery improvements:

  • The municipality together with other spheres of government was able to tar and surface more than 25km of roads;
  • A new welfare centre was built;
  • Electricity was provided to more than 2500 households;
  • The bulk water infrastructure was upgraded;
  • Since 2004, the municipality had experienced development growth of over 200% that had impacted positively on its revenue base;
  • The developments in the area had created more than 5000 job opportunities over a period of 5 years;
  • Over the past 5 years the municipality had been proactive in introducing fraud prevention measures including the establishment of oversight and audit committees.

The Executive Mayor also underlined the following socio-economic challenges confronting the local municipality:

  • Lack of employment opportunities in the mines;
  • Local residents are not benefiting from procurement opportunities in the mines;
  • Huge backlogs in the areas of sanitation (85%), electricity (36%), water (28%) and roads (81%);
  • The municipality does not have authority to perform critical basic service delivery functions such as water, electricity, waste management, fire fighting and district roads;

The Chairperson of the Provincial House of Traditional Leaders, Kgoshi FS Makgeru emphasized the need for the NCOP to address those parts of the Communal Land Rights Act that were declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court as this delays transfer of land to the relevant communities.

The Speaker of the Limpopo Provincial Legislature, Hon. Mr. P R Phala called for greater public education to ensure public participation in line with the vision of the Freedom Charter.

The Premier of the Limpopo Province, Hon. C Mathale emphasized that the NCOP has a vital role in measuring the impact of the actions of the Executive on the lives of the poor people through its oversight function. Some of the key provincial programmes aimed at supporting development in the province include:

  • The Employment, Growth and Development Plan, the primary objective of which is to ensure an aggressive economic path that has the capacity to create decent and sustainable job opportunities in the province;
  • Construction of a rail transport system to link key mining areas with Mozambique;
  • Construction of the mining inputs supplier park to ensure that the mining revenue is circulated within the province and that more job opportunities are created in the process;
  • Improvement of hospitality and road infrastructure to the standard required by FIFA.

Key challenges highlighted by the Premier include:

  • Water shortages in most parts of the province, especially in Giyani and Sekhukhune;
  • Shortage of medical professionals and medicines, with the rural health care facilities being the most affected.

The Chairperson of the NCOP, Hon. M J Mahlangu, MP, expressed appreciation for the work that had been done to improve the facilities at the CN Phatudi Campus and indicated that the beneficiaries of such improvements was the community and the people who used the campus.

In outlining the constitutional mandate of the NCOP and the commitment of Parliament to effective and responsive to the needs of the people, the Chairperson indicated that the Taking Parliament to the People programme had been remodeled to include detailed preparatory research and oversight visits, aimed at ensuring that the NCOP could respond to the expectations of the province and its people in facilitating the resolution of service delivery challenges. The Chairperson emphasized the need for all spheres of government to work harmoniously as a cohesive force, and encouraged the Ministers and the MECs to use the opportunity provided by the public hearings throughout the week to inform the community of how their challenges would be addressed.

The Chairperson concluded his input by acknowledging and thanking the leadership of the province and its people for their keen interest in being part of the Taking Parliament to the People programme.