[DEBATE] : Media briefing by Collins Chabane, 21 May 2009

[Dominic Tweedie]

Transcript of media briefing by minister in the presidency, May 21 2009


Government Communications, 22 May 2009


Media briefing by Minister OHM Collins Chabane, Minister in the
Presidency responsible for Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation, on
the macro structure of government, May 21 2009


Statement read by Minister Chabane:

Thank you very much and good morning everybody. I have been requested
to do a briefing on the changes which are taking place in government.
And I will gladly take questions at a later stage.

Firstly, the changes which are taking place within government have
been started; you would recall that the ANC before going to Polokwane
went to a policy conference in Gallagher Estate. There were lots of
debates which took place around a number of issues involving the state
and what should be the priorities of the ANC government going forward.
Those discussions were taken to be concluded in Polokwane at the end
of 1997 at the national conference, which as you would know is the
highest decision making body of the ruling party. And further
deliberations took place in what I think you know at an alliance
summit which worked on some other details related to the changes which
are necessary.

Later on just before the beginning of the election campaign the ruling
party went through a manifesto which identified priorities, which need
to be implemented by the ruling party, should it win the elections.

Clearly, looking at the priorities, it became clear too that the state
is not positioned in a manner which we'll be able to deliver
efficiently on the priorities which have been identified.

Secondly, that in the earlier discussions there was an agreement that
there is lack of co-ordinating planning capacity within the state and
across the spheres of government, and therefore a proposal to
establish a planning commission was adopted. You would also know that
within the Presidency there is a unit which we call PCAS, the policy
unit, which has been assisting government in co-ordinating planning
and also to monitor the first services which are being delivered. But
it was felt that PCAS is not at a level where you can be able to do
long term planning as envisaged by the conferences which took place,
and the resolutions. And therefore there was a need for us to
establish a planning commission.

The second element attached to that was whilst the ruling party has
good policies as people say, but there is a problem with
implementation of those policies. And the critical factor there was
our inability to monitor, to be able to get the early warning system
on issues which relate to delivery, and only discover them at a later
stage, and in most cases we are not able to respond adequately to
remedy the situation should we identify those problems. The monitoring
mechanisms as you would know, and the performance management, you
would know that there are quite a number of institutions which
performed that function. The Public Service Commission will deal with
the public service, the Auditor General deals with the financial
issues, the are performance management instruments in Treasury. You
have StatsSA which measures the outcomes of what is the impact of the
programmes which government has, so there're quite a number of
instruments which are there, but they are not collated and formatted
in a manner which will make it easier and simpler for government to
take urgent steps to remedy the situation should there be a need and
therefore it was felt that you need a monitoring capacity.

The other issue which has been identified is the fact that we have as
South Africa a shortage of capacity to provide adequate energy in all
its aspect to the economy, and if we have grow the economy we have to
attend to that question. Your fuel supplies, your electricity. There's
a greater need now to implement renewable energy sources. And we felt
that the manner in which the Department of Minerals of Energy is
structured there's too much focus on the mining areas. Whilst mining
is one of the critical contributors to the economy, it is important
for us to begin to focus and to get involved in the energy politics of
the world to ensure that going forward we are able to supply the
economy with sufficient energy which will be affordable. And that led
to the separation of the Minerals and Energy Department into two
ministries, which are the Mineral Resources and the Ministry of
Energy.

The other area which has been identified as an area which we may need
to look at is the fact that we especially after the food crisis
clearly South Africa as one of the food producing countries we should
not suffer the consequence of any downturn or upturn in terms of our
food production and affordability of our food, particularly with
regard to food security. And that will then be linked to fighting
poverty, particularly in developing rural areas. We thought we need to
take a special focus in developing rural areas, because though in
almost all our programmes we continue to say rural areas becomes our
priority, but we have not made significant impact in developing rural
economies which will then prevent migration from rural areas to urban
areas which cause other social problems in the urban centres.

To that extent we thought it may be reasonable for us to establish a
Department of Rural Development, but then remove Land Affairs from
Agriculture and Land Affairs, to establish a new ministry and
department which will be Rural Development and Land Reform. Part of
the elements of that is for all the land restitution programmes which
were done there have never been serious effort by us to try and make
sure that those land which is returned to its original owners does not
deteriorate and because that has not happened a number of very viable
commercial farms found themselves deteriorating in the hands of
ordinary people in the villages. And we think the state needs to play
a greater role to ensure the sustainability of these agricultural
assets which we have, not only to maintain food security but also to
ensure that agriculture remains a major contributor to the Gross
Domestic Product (GDP).

Having done that we then said: what are the things which we need to do
to ensure that our agricultural production at least increases, or
there is a bit of a focus on them? As you would know that agriculture
is responsible for aquaculture and that we have one of the longest
coastlines in the African continent as a nation, and we are at the
southern tip of the African continent, towards Antarctica. It may be
important for us as a nation to begin to appreciate the natural
resources which we have in our fishing industry, and therefore begin
to try and profile our fishing capacity in a manner which would create
more jobs and make a significant contribution to the economy,
especially for the economy of the communities in the coasts. And
therefore have decided to move Fisheries from Environmental Affairs to
Agriculture.

We also looked at the forestry industry, and we decided to move
Forestry from Water Affairs to Agriculture. As you would generally
know that the forestry section of our economy of Water Affairs is the
largest consumer of underground water. We think it will be better
managed in Agriculture especially if Water Affairs itself which is
supposed to be responsible for sustainable supply of clean water to
communities, will be separate from it. We then moved Environmental
Affairs to Water Affairs and split Tourism from it. That has been
because we are one of the nations which have got very, very little
water reserves and therefore the shortage of water both for commercial
and domestic use will become one of the critical factors going
forward, especially in the current climate where we have got global
warming which affects the supply of water and our climatic patterns.
We therefore thought it's important for Water Affairs and
Environmental Affairs to be together. Initially we thought it should
be called natural resources, but water and environment are not only
the natural resources which we have. But nevertheless we moved that
and created a Department of Water Affairs and Environment.

Tourism is one of the critical contributor to the economy and is
sustainable and it's growing. And we thought it's important for us to
try and emphasise and build capacity in our tourism sector, because
it's one of the largest employers in our economy. And therefore we
left tourism on its own with the hope that going forward we will be
able to provide resources which would make tourism one of the most
viable economic sectors of the economy.

Now those changes have got a significant bearing on how we think we
are going to deliver on the mandates which have been assigned to us by
the electorate after elections. Other changes which took place apart
from splitting departments and moving one area to the other would
include the change of names of departments. There are a number of them
whose names have been changed into something else new.

Amongst others is what used to be called the Department of Foreign
Affairs. At the request of foreign affairs and people working in that
area, they requested that they think it will be much better for them
if the name foreign affairs should be changed to International
Relations. But part of the reason is that we'll have to put more
emphasis on building co-operative relationships with our partners and
the states across the world. And particularly focusing on the African
continent, which is our immediate client or partner in diplomatic
relations.

The other one which saw a significant change of a name is the
Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. You
would know that before elections there was a process which was
undertaken by the Department of Provincial and Local Government (DPLG)
at that time, to establish a Department of Traditional Affairs within
DPLG. But we thought given the new approach of the new government of
trying to strengthen co-operative relations between the three spheres
of government, that we should not be seen as a prefect of other
spheres of government as a national government. We need to build a
co-operative relationship as enshrined in our Constitution, and
empower the other spheres of government to be able to deliver
efficiently on the services which they are required to do so. And we
thought changing the name it actually send a signal and changes the
posture of the department not to be every time there is a problem we
think of section 100, but it is to assist and build capacity in those
spheres of government where it does not exist, and provide for
co-operative relationship to exist between the three spheres of
government across the country.

During the deliberations on the changes there were three areas which
were raised also. The other one was to say, look, the programmes which
we have on women are not sufficient to address the poverty and the
underdevelopment which affect women throughout the country. And
therefore there was a proposal to establish a ministry responsible for
women affairs, and that's what we did, we established a ministry
responsible for women affairs, but because those programmes were run
jointly with other aspects we established a ministry to look at that.

The other one, it was a complaint from the veterans, not only those
coming from the non-statutory armies in the past but also those who
were coming from the statutory arms of service. That they feel that
their issue as veterans, military veterans, are not attended to
significantly, and therefore request that there should be a ministry
responsible for veterans. You do find it in other countries, but we
thought for our purpose it's not one of the priorities which we have
to deal with, and therefore we need to establish a significant
presence and restructure the Department of Defence to ensure that it
caters for military veterans. As you know the Department of Defence is
basically an oversight, a civilian oversight mechanism over the
defence force which is under the secretary. And therefore you need to
establish and remove the military veterans from where it is located
within the defence force now and put it properly within the department
of defence to be able to attend to the issues which have been raised.

The other area which has been identified is the fact that South Africa
with the economy which we run is a huge economy, entirely linked to
the whole world, we play a significant role in all international
organisations and regional bodies on the economic front. And given the
initiatives which are being undertaken by South African Development
Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) and also our participation
in the other markets like Europe, the Americas and Asia, the
Department of Trade and Industry spent a significant part of its time
attending to these issues. And therefore the domestic small business
operations and assistance tend to lag behind, and we believe that if
we can be able to initiate and invigorate the domestic economy,
especially the SMMEs, we have got a better chance of creating more
jobs than we do if we focus on the investments in the stock exchange.
And therefore it was necessary for us to split the two aspects of the
Department of Trade and Industry and create Trade and Industry and
also the Economic Development portfolio.

In the course of the debate it was felt that why don't you leave trade
on its own and get industry together with your SMME developments, your
[unclear] affairs, and so on. But clearly any model could be possibly
be implemented, but we felt that our trade policy impact directly on
an industrial posture, and therefore it is important for those to be
coordinated very closely to each other. We then after having done
those assessment and made those proposals, but those proposals are
nothing else until the President decide as to how the President would
like to form his government.

And obviously on Sunday 10 May 2009, the President did announce what
would be the new government and structure, and fortunately it
coincides with what I just related now. The next step probably would
be what then do we do to address the challenges which are facing us.

One of the issues which we had to look at is that the changes which
are going to take place should not be too disruptive for government to
deliver the services to the people. To that we need to find ways of
mitigating against the costs for this transition. Thirdly that we need
to try and make the transition or the changes, the implementation of
the changes as short as possible, the period. Though we know that the
organisation continue to change and re-engineer themselves as the
situation changes, you can't afford a situation where there's a
perpetual merger, changes taking place in government departments or
state departments. The government then put mechanisms in place to
ensure that the changes take place at least as smoothest as we can. We
know there's nothing which can be called smooth in the circumstances,
but we thought we need to do it that way.

If you look at the changes which have been proposed, basically we are
taking sections of departments which were standing on their own with
their own programmes, moving it to another department or moving it to
a new department completely.

So there is budget, there is a structure which exists, except for
those which are new. And that will then minimise the disruptions which
are going to take place. So there is no programme which has been
budgeted for, which will be significantly affected by these changes,
because the units are not cut in such a way that it will render them
ineffective or non-functional. The second point is that when you
separate two departments we have got what we call shared services.

To mitigate against that is to ensure in the transfers of the
functions and the transfers of personnel from one section to the
other, you'll retain the capacity to manage the two portfolios of
those aspects in the smoothest way, using the same capacity which we
have. Obviously in separations like those we'll have to go into an
exercise of verifying the assets, making sure that we close the books
for those sections which need to be transferred. That is technical
work which needs to be done between government departments, the
Auditor General's office, the department of finance and treasury.

While the Department of Public Works will be providing office space
and accommodation and facilities required for departments to function
optimally. One may ask why did you go into this process without
ascertaining that there're buildings available. But I'm sure we'll
appreciate that you can't look for a building until you know what you
are going to use it for and the only time we knew is when the
President pronounced on the 10th of May when he was appointing
Cabinet, that it is true that you will have a Department of Economic
Development, and therefore from that point you then begin to say what
are the resources which we need to be able to accommodate these new
responsibilities. In some of the areas it may take a bit of time to
even to get office space, because in order to get office space you
need to know what is the personnel which we'll need so that they are
able to calculate and know what they are going to do.

And thirdly that in order to get to that point you'll need to have
policies in place and programmes which will tell you what type of
structure you need, so for those departments which are completely new
you'll have to get into the first phase where you have to develop
policy, develop these, and arrive at the point when you say this is
what we are going to do and therefore we need these type of personnel,
which will then tell you what type of facilities and type of resources
you need, including the budget to be able to do that.

The other area is that we have currently set up task teams in state
departments involving departments which are affected, backed up by the
executive to ensure that we provide the support which is necessary for
the administration to carry out its task in accomplishing that. We
estimate that if we work flat out, at least by the beginning of
November we should be very close to completion. Most of them will be
done earlier. But we think the major issues should be concluded by the
end of October.

We hope we'll meet that target but obviously this is a subjective.
It's the desire; it's our aim to do that. But obviously we might have
miscalculated as to whether it may take longer or shorter. But we
think by that time we should significantly have moved to make sure
that there's stability because at that point in time we need to be
certain about the budget processes for the next financial year,
especially for areas which might not have been catered for in this
current financial year. I think let me stop there. I would respond to
questions.

Questions and answers:

Journalist: Morning Mr Chabane. You just left out the Department of
Police. Can you just explain why the need to change the name?

Themba Maseko: Okay, we'll take four questions in this round.

Journalist: Two questions actually. Firstly, does that mean or do I
understand you correctly, indicating that the Department of Economic
Development is in fact a department for SME's, is it a small industry
department? And second question, you haven't described your own
department, your own commission or whatever we were to call it. How do
you define its functions?

Journalist: Hi Minister. Could you just also please talk a bit about
the Ministry for Human Settlement? Does the change of name from
Housing indicate a more people-friendly approach towards building
communities?

Journalist: You said you had policies to develop first. Can you give
us some kind of idea what size entities we're looking at in terms of
the Planning Commission and the Department of Economic Development - a
few hundred people, a few thousand people?

Journalist: Was there a preliminary costing of the changes, how much
they're going to cost, because there were reports that it's going to
cost R1 billion. Is that close to any figure that you have come up
with?

Themba Maseko: Please can you make sure which organisation you are with?

Journalist: Hi Minister. My question is to your ministry and you come
into this ministry having run a provincial department. How are you, I
mean when you do your monitoring evaluation you may invariably come
across a minister that will say to you ‘you have never run a national
ministry'. ‘You can't possibly know what it takes to deal with a
problem nationally, so you cannot come and say to me, your monitoring
evaluation...I want to bring in someone like Minister Mpahlwa who has
been in national ministry for longer. How are you going to [Unclear]
against that possibility?

Journalist: Minister, Two issues - firstly one of the biggest
obstacles to rural development is the issue of freehold title. People
don't invest unless they can control where they build their
properties. Do you envisage any changes to title, particularly in
tribal areas and secondly, you speak very nicely about co-operative
governance but there's a 17th Constitutional Amendment Bill before
Parliament at the moment which gives national government power to
intervene willy-nilly with local government. Could you explain the
contradiction please?

Journalist: If I could just be so bold as to veer off the tracks a bit
here. You were talking about the importance of the South African
economy on the international stage. What is the presidency's response
and comment and view on this sparring match between COSATU and
Vodacom? Surely with a lot of trade unionists in government now, there
must have been tensions somewhere down the line because it sends out
the wrong message to the international community when we see this
developing, sort of mixed signals?

Minister Collins Chabane: I wish that my answers don't generate more
questions. The Department of Police, the change of the name - you'd
know that one of our priorities is to fight crime and in the
discussions it was felt that the police must be respected by all of us
as society for them to be able to carry out their job. They must
police and therefore their posture must be in such a way that they're
not going to tolerate any criminal activity. On the roll of the
Department of Economic Development I think you'll recall if you were
at the press briefing when the President announced the Cabinet that
the Department of Economic Development, apart from these issues which
I've raised, will play a significant role in co-ordinating policies
related to economic development in the country.

With regards to the functions of my portfolio, obviously as I said,
there's never been an institution like this in the history of the
evolution of this South African state. It's a new element altogether,
together with the Planning Commission and therefore, what we are going
to do and how we are going to do it is an issue which needs to be
developed in terms of policies which must be approved by Cabinet as
the Executive Authority responsible for running the State. But
however, as we understand in the mandate, one is assured that you
monitor performance of government and evaluate, but evaluate with
regard to the outputs and also to ensure that in instances where you
detect, because I listed a number of institutions which do monitoring
or evaluation of one kind or another.

In most cases most of those would then produce a report at the end of
the financial year. Let's take the Public Service Commission. We'll do
an audit after the end of the financial year, present the report to
Parliament - that will be six months or so after the fact - and by the
time Parliament discusses it, even people who were responsible for
these positions already left the department, so you have to start from
scratch. So you have this recurring problem. Whereas I said, we are
going to pool together all these reports and make sure that we put
systems in place which create an early warning system to government
and to departments to say there are problems in these areas, these
problems need to be fixed and hopefully that will help our capacity to
deliver and ensure that we are able to meet the expectations of the
electorate.

With regard to the size of the department and that of the Planning
Commission I think it would be improper for us to say this will be the
size, this is the number of people we need, because firstly you need
to understand what will be the scope of the work, define it properly
is actually a way to say these are the expertise I need from people
who are supposed to serve us. And from that basis then we'll define
what the size of the structures will be. Would you be utilising more
of outsourced services or do you want to build capacities? Those
things are what we think we'll have to iron out before the end of
October when it's the time that the budget is supposed to be finalised
by the National Treasury.

On the costing, we have involved from the beginning, Treasury. You
will recall that the government itself had identified the need of
changes to take place and Treasury has been part of the process of
these changes. We can't at this point in time say exactly this is the
figure which we think it will cost. I think to do so we would be doing
injustice both to you and ourselves because that figure might
completely be not correct. But Treasury has always been assuring us
that they think there is money available for us to be able to continue
with the changes which we are making. And I think as we begin to
understand the intensity and the depth of the programmes which we are
being set in place and the task teams I talked about earlier, we'll be
able to get a very close estimate as to how much it will cost us. I
think it will be unfair for me on my part, to speculate on that
aspect.

On the question of experience, I suppose there was nobody who was born
a minister so there's no issue that somebody will say I've got no
experience to do the work. There's nobody who is born a minister,
otherwise we'll never get new ministers altogether because some of
them have never been in government in the first place so that for us
is not much of a problem. But I think the experience which we have
gained in the past 15 years across the spheres of government, in local
government, provincial government and national government make a
collective capacity or experience of the executive as a whole to be
ready to tackle any challenge which it may face, so the issue of
whether I ran a provincial department is not much different.

I'm sure you know how the laws work. We use the same Act; we use the
same procedures to do budgets. We use the same procedures to employ
staff so there's no difference. It may be difference of scale and
level and probably the exposure which people may have but there's not
much difference between a national and provincial department.

On the issue of rural development we are quite conscious in a way of
the fact of the constraints and the limitations we are going to have.
We think, there's much of a good mood now between government and
traditional leaders and hopefully we'll be able to maintain a good
relationship between traditional leaders and our municipal councils,
but however, in our endeavour to develop rural areas, we should not
work in the manner which will finally destroy the fabric of our rural
societies and therefore we need to find a balance between the two. For
example you have got quite a significant amount of shopping malls
which have sprung up in rural areas in the past few years in spite of
those problems we have identified as the issues related to land
issues.

As a matter of fact I think if you go to other countries, you don't
even have a title deed to tell whether you are in the area or
somewhere else so [Unclear] so we think its do-able, we think
irrespective of these constraints we think its do-able for us to
improve the livelihoods of our rural people. With regards to
constitutional amendment and the opposition and local governments and
other spheres of government which we want to emphasise collective
governments, obviously you would know that in the past 15 years that
experiences which have been gained as to how we provide services and
we co-ordinate between the three spheres of government, and in the
course of that the Cabinet or the executive at that time identified
there were problems which we face from time to time and try to address
and that relationship and hopefully in that context then decided to do
an amendment to make that co-operation of the work between the three
spheres of government more efficient.

But however, let me point out that if you say the Bill is in
Parliament, it's correct. Parliament will have to decide - Parliament
is where the voice of the people is. Parliament may as well come back
and say to us ‘look, the executive, we think you are taking us back
too far, it's against the spirit' its for Parliament to determine once
the executive has put the Bill and if the Bill affects other spheres
of government, obviously it will have to go through the NCOP and it
must be voted in the NCOP by about six provinces if I recall. So there
are mechanisms, checks and balances to make sure that any laws we pass
does not necessarily intrude significantly into the powers and
functions of the rest of the spheres of government.

On the Vodacom issue, obviously the question was, I think the
[Unclear] should help you, South Africa has consistent and a reliable
regime of laws and regulations to protect and ensure that the
investments which come into the country are not negatively affected
and I think that point has been proven because the Cabinet agreed for
the sale of the shares and we must also recognise the rights of any
citizen, both individuals and also organisations to exercise their
right in the normal course as permitted by law. And I think COSATU did
exactly what it did - they went to court to oppose the sale but the
court decided in the manner in which it decided and the matter is
still continuing but there's no reason for anybody to panic, because
if we say we have got the responsibility to protect the interests of
all who participate in our economy, we should also acknowledge that we
have to protect the rights of other people who have got different
views in the process, as long as those views are not illegal, they're
not disruptive to the economy but nevertheless - I think the CEO of
Vodacom has proposed a meeting between themselves and COSATU.
Hopefully they will be able to sit down and resolve those issues
themselves.

Journalist: Sorry, just my question on housing, please.

Minister Collins Chabane: On human settlement. You will recall that
when we started the Housing Department way back in 1994, we were
saying we are going to build homes, habitable dwellings so our housing
approach should not be just the provision of the structure, should
also include other elements, the habitat where people reside, where
these things are found and secondly we felt there was little
co-ordination between state departments with regard to the provision
of the housing portfolio and therefore housing, as we see it, as it
was implemented, should not only relate to doing these structures but
is to look at the planning of the whole settlement to ensure that if
you find many of the areas where we have built houses - these are
specially-run areas - establish this new settlement, the next thing
there's no school, the next thing there's no water, Water Affairs has
not provided water, you don't have proper sanitation and so on. We
want to overcome those problems to build settlements in a more
co-ordinated way and that is why I think we do that and part of the
changes which are going to take place is the migration of the
sanitation problems from Water Affairs to the Human Settlement
portfolio.

Themba Maseko: Okay ladies and gentlemen. We'll take a final round.

Journalist: Minister, just a question, you mentioned that there are a
number of oversight groups that already do that work like the Auditor
General and all of those. Does this mean that they will also be
reporting to the Presidency or how will you be gathering your
information to find out how these government departments are being
run. And also there's a lot of or seems to be a lot of focus on
setting up the machine and I just want to know what level of focus is
there on the worker bees, the people inside, their competence levels?
Making sure that you don't just have this big structure and the people
inside it are either not equipped or not able to do the work they're
meant to do?

Journalist: Minister, just on the question of the 2009/10 strategic
plans and the split departments, I'm just interested to know how it's
going to be done in this financial year and how they are going to
account to Parliament. Are there mechanisms in place to deal with
those technicalities?

Journalist: Minister, just some further information on the department
of economic development. If it's going to be responsible for SMMEs is
it or does that mean that SEDA and the small, you know, business
development agency stuff is going to go from DTI to that department?
And secondly, there's still a bit of confusion as to amongst all these
economic ministries as to who exactly is going to have the final say
on economic policy, on macroeconomic policy, on fiscal policy, those
sorts of things. Whether it would be the treasury, whether it's going
to be made in this new department of economic development which is
what the President said when he told us about it. So just who will
have the final say on economic policy, please? Thanks.

Journalist: First question, Minister, with regards to the planning
commission, the earlier proposal was that it would have been or it
would be composed of certain types of ministers who hold certain
portfolios that are strategic in government. Is that still the idea
now or is it going to be staffed by technocrats? And the second
question, perhaps related to Carol's question, President Zuma has said
that the economic development department will be...an arena for debate
for economic policy. At the present moment, let's take monetary
policy, it's said by treasury, [unclear] inflation targeting, and then
the Reserve Bank takes its mandate of inflation targeting from that
department. Would the Reserve Bank now take its mandate from economic
development or would it still reside with national treasury?

Journalist: Minister, just a follow on question. When restructuring
and reconfiguring departments you would have the problem of capacity,
you know, how do you deal with that, and secondly with the department
of human settlements especially, the previous minister of housing had
complained that one of the reasons why houses could not be built
faster was because of, you know, the budget was just too little. Now
that you're giving human settlements more functions, have you put
emphasis on, you know, supporting these new departments, these new
entities? You know, giving them financial support?

Journalist: Minister, just to add to my colleagues. What would the
planning commission's exact mandate be? Has that been determined yet?
And if you can explain it to us, please?

Journalist: Minister, can you just explain, when setting up your
department, or when you monitor and evaluate, will you set certain
targets or minimum standards to the departments, one, and secondly if
you find that a department is not performing with regards to service
delivery or according to these targets you set, what kind of action
will be taken if any against ministers or DGs? How will that work?

Journalist: Hi Minister, I'm just wondering in the process of
establishing this machinery for all the functions that you've talked
about, is there not a risk of eyes being taken off the ball,
especially with the recessionary sort of climate we're in, a lot of
job losses, we're reading about it all the time. Seemingly no rescue
plan for certain industries. What are your thoughts regarding this? Is
there any early warning mechanism in this time that you're setting up
these structures to look at these very important issues?

Journalist: Right in the beginning, minister, you said that much of
the restructuring was done to ensure implementation of policies. While
the policies are fine, you also said that your department will do
monitoring of the implementation. Will you just be there to do
technical fixes or will you also have the power to say this or that
policy isn't working, we need to go back to the drawing board? Where
will that happen?

Themba Maseko: Final question.

Journalist: Following on that question, my question is to your
ministry, how does it relate to provinces? Do you have any powers over
provinces whether to dictate or to assist with their programs when
they are not on track or not? Secondly, on the cooperative governance
department when it was local government, like you said earlier, the
first idea when a municipality was dysfunctional was to invoke the
section 100 rule. That minister shortly before elections took over
Numa [ph] municipality area and appointed an administrator. The first
thing that [unclear] passed he said was taken to court to say that
that decision was unilateral. How does then the thinking come in...
the change of thinking when you're talking about cooperative
governance, and the previous relationship that existed?

Themba Maseko: Okay, thank you, Minister.

Minister Collins Chabane: Let me start by saying we should look at
government as a unit. The executive authority of the state is vested
in the President who will then delegate to ministers or whoever he
deems necessary. So we should look at the executive authority of the
state as one. But in order for it to be performed and executed
properly you need a division of labour and give other people
responsibilities to do that. Now if that is the intention of the
Constitution then you need to look at the state as one, we have to
look at Cabinet as one institution which need to work as a collective.
And obviously you would know that the ruling party has been very
consistent in ensuring that you have collective leadership and
collective responsibility of people who are in executive positions.
And you would know that Cabinet accounts to Parliament, or Cabinet
ministers, both in their individual capacities and also as part of the
executive.

So you have a collective responsibility or co-responsibility over the
actions and activities of cabinet as a whole. From that concept
clearly it will be very clear for us that any Cabinet member or member
of the executive executing the functions of the executive will have to
work in the context of this collective responsibility. It is important
for us to understand that point because sometimes... maybe we say,
let's say it's my portfolio, this is what I'm going to do, and I have
to it within the context of Cabinet. Now the policies as implemented
in government and the ruling party has been saying the ANC sets policy
and we implement. Now any policy of any kind which must be implemented
in government would have to be agreed or within the framework of the
policy dictates of the ruling party, and therefore anything which
happens in government it happens within that context.

Now that led me to the next question, that given the economic cluster
or what we call the economic portfolios, who generally will be
responsible for what? I thought there was not much confusion. I think
a number of ministers have spoken on this question. Minister Gordon
has spoken, Minister Patel has spoken, and Minister Manuel has spoken.
I'm not sure; I haven't heard Minister Davis, what he said. But I
think it will be important for us to leave it at a point where they
said it, because those are the people who are responsible for all
these issues we are talking about with regard to the capacity of the
state departments now, to execute this program. Obviously from time to
time we say the state departments do not have capacity, the public
servants are not well trained, but interestingly the private sector
find them very valuable because they come and poach, and then I think
if the situation was so desperate many public servants will find it
difficult to find a job in private sector. But I think we believe that
we have capacity.

We need to give them support; we need to ensure that we give them the
necessary support for them to execute their tasks. They have been
employed to do it, so we have to find a way to... where there are
weaknesses. I'm not saying everybody is okay, there are areas where
there are weaknesses, we'll have to clean those up, get them trained,
relevant training when necessary. With regard to the budgets, the
budget was tabled early in the year, in a manner which is not
configured in the same way as these current institutions are
configured. And in spite of those we were quite clear that changes
will have to be made and in the manner in which they are going to be
made.

In considering the budgets, also the implementation of the programs of
the 2009, 2010 financial year, they will continue like that. We are
making interim arrangements both for the debates and the consideration
of the budgets, and also for the accountability in terms of the
accounting for officers, how they are going to account for these
pockets of budgets which are lying in the various areas. We have put
up an administrative mechanism to ensure that happens. So we think we
will be able to manage that process including the standing committees
in Parliament. Parliament will be looking at the restructured
departments, restructure themselves, Parliament portfolio committees
to be able to respond to the changes which have taken place there. But
that won't be sufficient because you'll still have this interim
period, so Parliament will then have to work on an interim mechanism
for the consideration of the budget and the debates, of the current
financial year's budget.

On the agencies, one of the processes which is currently underway as
the departments are splitting, every department will have to look what
are the institutions which fall under that department, the SOEs, the
regulatory bodies, so that they are able to delineate to say we think
SEDA will go this way, IDC will go this way. We think this element
will go this way. And we think that process should be the easiest to
do so that quite shortly it will be very clear which institutions
falls in which area. So that is part of the work which is being done,
I think it will be unfair for me to say SEDA will go to IDC to DTI or
go to economic development, but departments are supposed to advise
Cabinet that this is how we think and once Cabinet approves then we
get moving. With regard to the composition of the commission,
obviously we did say in the earlier stages of the discussions on this
issue, not today but earlier, I think the one who raised the question
it's because he was aware that there were debates which were taking
place.

There were various permutations which were raised with regard to the
planning commission, whether it should be composed of ministers,
whether it should be just a small unit, whether it should be a Special
Operations Executive (SOE). There were a lot of permutations, looking
at models from across the world. But we opted for the one which says
you appoint a minister in the Presidency because basically it's the
President's responsibility to set up the planning commission, and the
President has appointed the minister. And the next step is to appoint
the commissioners, and the President has taken a view that it's better
to get people from outside with expertise in the planning area. Not as
bureaucrats. You must separate between the commissioners, the actual
people who must take the decisions of evaluating the reports or the
plans which comes from the technocrats which may be presented to
Cabinet. So that is the model which has been adopted.

On the question of putting more money for housing, obviously if you
can... for human settlement, if you go to any department, any
department will always want more money. I haven't seen a department
which has said no we've had enough, please take it away. Everybody
would like to... for that portfolio they would like to have more
money, but the resources are limited. We have got limited resources,
so we can't satisfy all the needs at the same time. But however we
need to put resources where our priorities stand, and if it Cabinet
says in terms of our manifesto, in terms of our approach, housing,
it's one of our priorities, and then we need to add more resources
there, we have to take resources from this and put it there, that will
be done.

But obviously as I said there's a scramble for resources as you know
that we don't have enough to satisfy all their needs all the time, and
therefore if new responsibilities are added to any portfolio they say
functions must be followed by funding. That is the saying in the
public service that if you give me a function at least you need to...
that function will need to be followed by [unclear], so if we add more
responsibilities to any section of the department we'll have to try
and find resources for it to be able to perform its function. With
regard to the planning commission, I think quite soon Minister Manuel
will be able to elaborate on what are the plans and what they think
they need to do, but in general the planning commission is supposed to
coordinate the planning framework for the entire country, wall to
wall, including municipalities or provinces which might seem now they
think it can happen. That brings me to the next issue about our
relations with provinces and local municipalities.

South Africa is not the combination of municipalities or a combination
of provinces. So we're not a federal state, we are a unitary state.
It's one country which for governance purposes has been divided into
three spheres, that province, national province and local. And further
for governance purposes those spheres themselves have been divided in
specific geographic areas for purposes of management. And therefore if
a decision has been made by the national government to act in a
particular way as long as we don't encroach on the Constitutional
responsibility of the other sphere of government, we think there
should be no problem. But we need to take into account that the
planning commission and the monitoring department are not established
in terms of legislation, meaning their operations obviously in terms
of their establishment, in terms of the law, the proclamation by the
President, but in terms of their activities, unlike you find the
Auditor General, the Public Service Commission and those areas,
they've got specific laws which looks at that, which give them certain
responsibilities, powers, access to information, access to this.

Now as we put together these institutions and as I said it's the first
of this kind in the history of our country, as we put these
institutions together we'll have to look as to what instruments do you
need to make these institutions function properly, so that it doesn't
get inhibited in its work, you don't end up in court all the time, you
say no but we think there's a problem here. Somebody jumped to court
and you find that you have got no instruments to deal with that. So
those are some of the issues which we are going to address in these
next few months going forward, we are going to make it a priority,
that we look at all those areas. If there's a need for legislation,
that legislation must be put in place so that we are able to function
properly. Because our view, we are not taking a short term view, we
are looking beyond the horizon, we have to look far ahead in terms of
what type of state and what type of society we want to build and that
is what will be guiding what we are trying to do.

Now with regard to the recession, you would recall that when the
(Unclear) which took decisions with regard to the changes took place
it was long before the economic crunch. And as we begin to do this
work we had to look as to what will be the impact, and obviously we
are quite aware of the constraints which we'll have with regard to the
implementation of these programs. But we believe that the benefits of
more focused sectors, particularly with regard to try and make every
aspect of our work in order to make a significant contribution to the
economy of the country, we think the benefits in the long term are
enough. As long as we can make sure that in the short term it's
sustainable, we are able to keep it going, but we believe that once
the economic turndown has been resolved or is beginning to ease out we
are likely to see more of the benefits for what we have decided to do.

Thank you.

Themba Maseko: Okay, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.

Minister, thank you.

Issued by Government Communications (GCIS) May 21 2009