This conference, together with the above engagements, gives emphasis and takes cognizance of the 2003 BRIC report by Goldman Sachs, which has predicted that by 2050 the world would be a completely different place. The report states that over the next 50 years, Brazil, Russia, India and China will become much larger forces in the global economy. It also asserts that by then India could overtake Italy, France, Germany and Japan in terms of GDP, to be the third largest economy in the world.
What makes today special and why we should be listening to our guests from Brazil, is that that same report says that Brazil could overtake Italy, France and Germany in terms of GDP to become the world's fourth largest economy by 2040. That is where the world is going to. That is why president Mbeki is at the forefront to be one of the architects of IBSA. That is why we are taking the Western Cape and tying it to Sao Paolo and Maharashtra. That is why our discussions around matters that may be routine to us such as IDP's must take on a special dimension this year to learn particularly from experiences in Brazil.
If you are thinking that you are at an ordinary IDP conference, then think about what Goldman Sachs is predicting for the world and how things are beginning to change. It therefore means that our regional development trajectory must be placed within the context of emerging economic markets across the globe. That is why we must develop in you, an urgency and a restlessness around issues of accelerated growth and development and not allow any one of us, particularly those at local government level to be confined within the parameters of underdevelopment. What I mean is that it would be the easiest thing for us to go back to where we were and deal with the impact of underdevelopment, poverty in our areas and get a safety net out to our people in the same way we have done in the past. But the challenge is that unless we do something unique, we are going to be left behind within the national context, within the African context and certainly within the global context.
When we call for synergies between the NSDP, the PGDS and force IDPs to be in the image of the NSDP and the PGDS, we are not doing so out of an exercise of power. We are not simply trying to get to conformity. We are not trying to laud it over local government. We are not trying to distort IDPs. What we are saying is that unless we get an alignment between the three, we are going to be left out of the international trajectory that the world is on. We have to help each other to ensure that this province, each municipality in it and our country becomes globally competitive. We therefore have to ensure that IDPs become points of reflection and coherence.
We must also do this in light if the progress we are making as South Africa edges towards the 6% growth rate that the present has challenged us to achieve, as Brazil and India are getting there already. We must also be aware that these are the countries that we must learn from, because particularly Brazil and South Africa constitute some of the most unequal societies in terms of income inequality in the world. Brazil is projected to be doing as well as what it will be doing by 2040, but it shares with South Africa an inequality index, a gini coefficient of point 6 which means that we are of the more unequal societies in the world.
We do not only face the challenges of growth. We also face the challenges of how to share the benefits of growth. Brazil is therefore a country we must learn from. It is tempting to look to Europe and North America and others, but we will not be learning too much there. We will be learning how to grow, but we will also learn how to exacerbate inequalities. We are both newly democratized, we are upper middle income countries and have significant challenges on various fronts. But surely addressing inequality is one of the significant challenges facing both South Africa and Brazil. We therefore have to collaborate on various fronts and we have to exchange knowledge and expertise as is made possible by this conference.
Having said the above, it means that this IDP conference is a conference with a difference. If previously Minster Dyantyi has convened us to discuss IDP's, it was to tell us what an IDP is, what is a good IDP and what is a credible IDP. We have had previous iterations of a conference such as this, where we tried to teach each other how to do IDPs and underpin it with Local Economic Development plans as well. So we have had to shift from its normal mandate driven base to include local economic development plans as well.
I think what we have come to do at this year's review is something different. It is how to take practical lessons and turn them into meaningful guidance of municipal governance. How to ensure that our planning has a greater developmental impact and how to shift the development trajectory of our region. So our strategic objectives remain unchanged and still comprise of the following:
Sustainable livelihoods: How to get robust economic growth that creates jobs, greater equity and decent livelihoods for all our citizens.
Affordable and reliable service provision: shifting our economic trajectory does not mean that we must give up on the provision of water, electricity, roads and sewerage services to all. The provision of these services remains relevant.
Adequate care for those in need: The creation of safety nets through provincial government and SASSA through the provision of social grants to all of those in need.
What has also increasingly come into our work is sustainable living spaces through integrated human settlements: We are only in the beginning of understanding what sustainable human settlements entails. It is not yet reflected in how we release land. It is not yet reflected in how we use that land, not only for up market land-use but for a range of other things that must crate life enhancing qualities. Issues such as how we deliver services to those areas, how we facilitate movement patterns, how we integrate with public transport still need to be strategically processed.
How we create economic opportunities within these areas is also important, how we create dignity and safety also becomes critical for integrated human settlements. I think we are only at the beginning of this debate. Lastly accountable, effective and transparent government: People need to know that their government is working for them whether it is national, provincial, local or district. They must know that government is honest, that there is integrity and that there is increasing capacity in government. These remain to be the main strategic objectives that we relentlessly pursue.
Those are not local, provincial or national government objectives. These are the objectives of a government collective and this becomes absolutely critical. Because it is not that national government does National Spatial Development Perspective, that provincial government does Provincial Development Strategy, leaving local government to do their Integrated Development Plans. Each one is in the image of the other.
We have to create a cycle in which the experiences with IDPs have a sobering effect on the national spatial development perspective that the objectives of the NSDP must allow space for PGDSs to be come integrated and the IDP then becomes the collective expression of the developmental intentions and proposals of all three spheres of government. The IDP is therefore not the objectives of local government. IDPs are the objectives of all three spheres of government realized on the ground. It means that we have an important component of our national intentions, but it also means that it is not your own. You do not have a monopoly over them.
More than that, it is not only for implementation on the ground. It is to influence and to even change certain things that might only be theoretically understood at the top. Some times at the national level they have all these wonderful ideas, but untested on the ground. Therefore we have an active need to be able to get the lessons from the bottom up so that we do not make untested policies at the top that fall apart when they need to be implemented on the ground. We have to be able to anticipate the implications for resources, human capital and the skills required. Therefore the issue of alignment becomes absolutely critical.
I can tell you that just looking so far at what is coming out of trying to interpret the NSDP into a PGDS, getting into district growth and development summits and trying to think what must happen with IDPs as a result of the NSDP and the PGDS, and beginning to understand some of these things I can tell you that the debate on the future and the role of provinces is becoming a misplaced debate.
On the one hand it cannot be a debate about the number 9 or 4 provinces. It will not allow us to learn the critical lessons that we need to learn. On the other hand the opposition will also misplace the debate if they think that it is political set up or a political trap that is being set up in order to nullify a possible victory in one province. Between these two issues, we may be losing out on the real debate about what happens at the sub-national or the provincial level. Because IDPs and PGDSs are teaching us important lessons about life at the sub-national level.
Sub-national is anything including provinces, districts, metros and functional regions. Because that is where the real debate has be located if we are to learn the valuable lessons we need to learn. The first issue we must deal with is whether we will give the sub-national all the iterations at that level and a full developmental role with the resources to go with it. For example is it possible for a sphere of government to say that it will only focus on its constitutional mandate, meaning that it will only do what the constitution requires which entails: providing water, remove waste and do sewage, while ignoring the economic growth elements which go hand in hand with job creation in a developmental state.
If we do not engage in a healthy debate about the role of the sub-national level we will continue to make mistakes such as this. The second question is: Should the province be the postbox for health services, education and others or does the province have a planning role over what happens in the totality of that jurisdictional boundary.
How do we align planning and times frames. We know that the NSDP thinks to 2014. We all tend to think to 2010 to 2014 and beyond. IDPs by their definition are year long planning exercises. In that conspicuous difference of times frames, who has to begin to get IDPs projecting 5, 10, 15 years from now. We say that we are working towards the millennium development goals but we are doing another thing year by year, unless we synergize our planning for the developmental impact at sub-national level, we are going to have unintended consequences, to miss each other, and have debates that are either going to be numbers driven (9 or 4) or politically driven, where the power motive becomes the important one.
We have to ask the question, how is it that it is particularly at the sub-national level that we are getting globally competitive entities. It is no longer simply the fact that countries compete against each other economically. I think that countries facilitate that economic growth but I think that it is sub-national entities whether it is large metropolises that begin to really compete for a share of the global economy, that really begin to want to get export markets or draw investments. Countries can put out the call, 'invest in South Africa', but it is the sub-national level that identifies the precise investment opportunities, the land that goes with it, the set of incentives that go with it and how investors will be assisted to maximize their investment opportunities. Unless we begin to rationalize this debate in this way, we will miss out on global opportunities.
We are beginning to find that the existing jurisdictional boundaries of local governments particularly at the municipal level or even at the metropolitan level may be far too small to appreciate the full impact of wanting to become globally competitive. The question we must ask is: can Cape Town plan without Saldanha Bay? What I mean is that the idea of releasing land in Atlantis for more housing may have a dormitory origin when it is planned in Cape Town. But plan together with Saldanha Bay, it could be the creation of social, spaces and economic hubs that could create the objectives of viable sustainable human settlements.
So again the jurisdictional boundaries are one thing, where as life does not operate according to those neat jurisdictional boundaries. What stands above it to be able to introduce that kind of thinking into what is a simple housing set of planning by one municipality, when another municipality is thinking of the growth of an economic node around Saldanha Bay? Who has the overview that lifts people and municipalities outside of their constitutional mandate outside of their immediate needs and imperatives to solve an immediate problem? I think these are the key questions that must inform a re-jigging of a provincial, or the local government system or broadly called the sub-national system.
Can Cape Town, where the bulk of the populations is, plan for climate change or global warming without planning with Overberg when most of our water catchment areas are in the Overberg? Can we stand on constitutional mandates? Can we stand on our jurisdictional boundaries when the life-force of the majority of citizens depends on what happens with forests and other related issues in the Overberg particularly in Theewaterskloof? Who mediates this process and in whose interest are these things done? Can you plan public transport within jurisdictional boundaries when the trains have to run to Stellenbosch, Worcester and other surrounding areas because people are commuting between these areas and goods are flowing between these areas? Can you plan that according to jurisdictional boundaries this instance what happens at the sub-national level?
How do IDPs begin to not only speak to each other but interface with each other so that you do not have a housing imperative decision in one municipality whereas another municipality in that same broad area is trying to create economic growth? That you do not have a transport planning system in one municipality without taking into account what happens in the Boland. The same with electricity grids, the same with the biodiversity fields. Can each municipality just decide to intervene on the biodiversity levels and just decide to open up land for more housing, for elite activities without looking at the entire biodiversity belt that spreads from Cape Town through the Overberg, through to the South Cape? It has to be planned for as one single entity, against the idea of a more defined role at the sub-national level.
Indeed it will take a lot of stress off us if we did have a rethink about a provincial boundaries. Because the fiscal anomalies are beginning to hit as has happened in the Western Cape for the last few years now. Because if you consider that a province such as the Eastern Cape on a poverty index which is the basis for the way in which provinces get funded, the Eastern Cape scores high on the poverty index and therefore is the net beneficiary of increased financial transfers from the centre to the provinces. So the Eastern Cape has an increase in the budget. The Western Cape is seen to be better off and is therefore the net loser on the budget because its poverty index is lower than the Eastern Cape's. However the infrastructure deficit and the human capital deficit in the Eastern Cape means that they have more money but they do not have a better institutional base to look after the poor and so the poor vote with their feet to where the institutional base is but the budget is declining.
So it may be that for as long as we divide the budget between the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape, it may be that the Eastern Cape within the jurisdictional boundaries of their fiscus, must use the money in their geographic area and we ourselves in the same way. We cannot go and raid the Eastern Cape coffers due to the fact that we have received a quarter million people from their province and force them to give us a portion of their budget. But one budget may allow us to spread it so that what you have is an increase in the institutional capacity of the Eastern Cape, but while you are doing that you have relief on the institutions of the Western Cape such as schools and hospitals to deal with the issues.
The point is not about saving provinces. It is a bout rationalizing the debate. It is not about numbers of political power. It has to be a lot more about what works and what will be in the interest of our people. But more importantly, economies, as Atlantis has shown, you can create the best green fields for economic development, but it does not mean that the factories will jump and that the investment community will fill the factories.
There are also ways in which ordinary people when they migrate, show an intelligence about where the economy is growing. People do not necessarily move because they like the area or they for example want to be close to the mountain in that area. They move because there is intelligence right or wrong sometimes, that says that says that you have a better life chance if you move with various industries that will provide employment for entire families. So we must engage in this debate in that context as well.
I want to summarise in the term that we have begun to put into the national lexicon called 'functional regions'. It does not mean that you change the jurisdictional boundaries. Cape Town's boundaries will be Cape Town's boundaries. The Winelands boundaries will remain that, but the fact of the matter is that out of this IDP conference, someone has to create the conditions for the IDPs of the Winelands, the Overberg, West Coast to speak to each other in order to speak to the imperatives of what people have made effectively a functional region, what nature has made a functional region and what inherited infrastructure has made a functional region. That is the critical debate that must come out of it.
To end up it means that if the IDP's are going to be credible, I am now shifting the definition of credible from the old one where credible was mainly put against consultant driven templates. You would remember two, three years ago the debate was how do you all hire the same consultant, they pull out the same document and just attach your name and sometimes they make a mistake and leave someone else's name in a paragraph. That was an incredible IDP. And we said that credible IDPs have to be something else where you do the original research and you respond to it. I want to expand the definition of credible IDP by saying that:
1. A credible IDP responds to the constitutional mandate of the local government. It is underpinned by a local economic plan and a growth and development strategy-IDP must include the imperatives of facilitating job creation, economic growth and the sharing of the benefits
2. It must have a spatial development framework. It is not just about shifting urban edges. It is about beginning to understand the principles of the NSDP and the PSDF so that we can begin to understand where we are the custodians of the natural environment, where we are the followers of peoples economic intelligence when they set up certain patterns, where we will mix housing with economic activities within sustainable human settlements
3. It must have an infrastructure plan. You have to understand how your rail should run. You must understand how public transport must function. It is about its functionality within the Spatial Development Perspective, within an LED programme you have to understand what infrastructure is needed, including your constitutional mandate on the sub-structure. But more importantly the broader range of economic, transport, electronic for global connectivity through broad band. Your logistics, ports in your area, the airports and others.
4. A programme for people to access government to access opportunities. Ward communities fulfill the important function of keeping people in touch with government, helping people in the planning process of government and being the listing post for people.
We must use this conference to learn from Brazil particularly, begin to define the sub-national space because this is the debate that is happening in the country that is still an unformed debate, to be able to allow our IDPs to speak to each other and engage each other and to be able to intervene collectively as we go forward. This round of IDPs must begin to allow us to enable the sub-national space to become a global economically competitive space for every municipality and every area in the Western Cape.
Thank you.
