DMPE must get government working for the people

Remarks

Note to Editors: The following remarks were delivered by RISE Mzansi National Leader, Songezo Zibi MP, during the debate on Budget Vote 9 (Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation).

Presiding Officer

Committee Chairperson

Minister and Deputy Minister

When former President Zuma announced the establishment of this department, it gave the impression of a government in a hurry to build a South Africa we can all be proud of. The National Development Plan bolstered the belief that at last the government would move forward in a structured and deliberate way. Sadly, it hasn’t been so despite having minister after minister in the portfolio.

Unemployment is worse now than it was in 2008. We spend more on servicing debt than we did a decade ago. Debt service costs is the fastest growing budget item, when this should be investment in South Africa’s development.

Honourable Chair, I accept that DPME has to monitor very specific performance metrics on some of the most important projects of the government, but I want to propose to you that the most important consequence is not what the President will do to Ministers, but how the South African people will hold those in power accountable, at the ballot.

• South Africans want to know how many more people will be employed each of the next five years.
• They want to know by when all the major cases of corruption will be in court, and the offenders sentenced to prison.
• By how much will the violent crime rates be reduced in over the next five years.
• We want to know when every child who enters the school system will earn a good matric pass mark, and get post-school training so they can get a job.

Minister, measures like these may appear to be too general, but these are the ways in which South Africans determine whether their lives are improving or sinking into hopelessness.

The performance agreements the President has with Ministers matter only insofar as there is consequence, but there isn’t and there has never been.

Minister, we need less jargon, and more action. We need clearer targets that speak to the lived experiences of South Africans, not consultant speak. We need immediate political consequences for negligence, corruption and failure, not litigation by NGOs to force the government to do the obvious. We cannot continue like this, otherwise this democracy will not be worth the paper it is written on.

Minister this department must no longer be complicit in failure. If it is to have any credibility at all, it must prove itself to be on the side of the South African people, not your colleagues.

Ndiyabulela!

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