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ZIWAPHI • VOL 4 NO 3 • 12 - 25 FEBRUARY 2010

It is that time of the year again when the whole province descend to the seat of Parliament at the Government Boulevard at Riverside, those who cannot fit into the August house mill around and bask in the fanfare of the SAPS Brass band and other commercial musicians. Those at home hug their transistor radio’s with keen interest to hear if the Premier’s speech will touch them in ways that would ease the wholesome strife and struggle against starvation, illnesses, poverty and joblessness. Most are willing the Premier to justify their choices of exercising their suffrage each public election session.

This State of the Province address could not have come at a better time with the province under fire with negative publicity from the media over allegations of state sponsored murders and of the presence of a “hit list” containing names of people to be assassinated two of whom have already been brutally murdered. The State of the Nation comes at a time when municipalities are ablaze with violent uprisings perpetrated by residents who are beckoning for improved service delivery.

The Premier has had to bear the brunt of angry masses at Standerton where he was showered with mantras of war which were an exclusive preserve of the apartheid politicians. The same happened at Mashishing now it’s Dipaleseng and one wonders where these scary phenomena will flare up next. We pray that it does not start at Kanyamazane, Pienaar, KaBokweni and Matsulu because if it does then the province will be in flames, judging by the sheer numbers and the militancy displayed by the residences of the mentioned places during the struggle for freedom.

Ziwaphi advised the Premier and his Cabinet when they took office to:

• Conduct performance audits on certain departments whose budgets disappeared without any tangible benefit for intended beneficiaries. Top on the list was the Department of Education which spend the year of the elections (2009) concentrating on infrastructure projects while neglecting their core function of learning and teaching. The results of this are there for all to see: the metric results stink, thousands of our kids have been sentenced to a future of scraps, morsels and crumbs unless they become criminals.

The Cabinet ignored our call for the audits, instead, they opted for the strategies of migrating dodgy senior officials from one Department to another. This caused an outcry which fed some national newspapers with endless front page scoops. It was messy and has caused a lot of harm to the image of the province which is now conveniently labeled, the Banana republic.

Ziwaphi also advised the Cabinet to communicate with the public and to be transparent and forthcoming with information. It is only when people do not have a clue what government is doing that their poverty is emphasized and frustration is heightened. The media always take the opportunity to fill the void in communication by supplying a steady diet of stories that may fan the frustration of the people to boiling point.

• Ziwaphi, also reminded the Premier that while it appreciated him bloodying greenhorn politicians to be in charge of government, he was lucky to have a Legislature that is teeming with experience and talent to come in at any stage as MECs and perform.

Until now the reserve capacity has not been called to action by our Premier which means he is satisfied with the current crop of MECs. Put differently, the Premier is saying the current MECs are better than any of the ANC politicians that are sitting in the Legislature.

All these advises could have been achieved within the first hundred days of occupation of office by the Premier. However, that is water under the bridge now, our young Cabinet is already in the centre of a whirlwind, they are fighting fires and storms all around, hopefully, they will learn quickly and quell the disastrous “tsunamis”.

Except for those incidences of violent protests, Premier Mabuza should be glad that, generally, his administration has received a warm welcome from the populace, and have demonstrated their will to give him and his cabinet a chance.

Only time (and we think soon) the people will either affirm or reject the Premier’s selection. God forbid, if they choose the latter because our people have learned that currency lie in their ability to come together and create a very destructive force as we have recently experienced in Balfour, Mashishing, Mkhondo and other places.

As Mabuza will, in a period of less than one year, be delivering another State of the Province, we review and preview his previous and his second SOPAS respectively.

On Education

The Premier set pulses racing by announcing that finally the Province will have a fully fledged University. The people would be anxious to hear on the 19th of February how far the government has gone in establishing the life-changing University on our provincial “shores.” So far the public has been kept in complete darkness on the government’s efforts or lack thereof in so far as this promised facility is concerned. The morsels of information the public received on this matter was when Blade Nzimande announced that Mpumalanga would have its own University “this year” which is laughable to say the least, however, the University thirsty optimistic people of the province dotted on the words of the Minister, however, bizarre they sounded because they gave us hope.

The Premier also promised to cast the net wider in terms of including more schools under the “no fee” schools which was appreciated. The scholar transport presented problems in the past which the Premier promised to sort out. Since then the officials that had been suspended on charges that included graft and embezzlement on scholar transport have won their case and must be restored to their positions.

Generally the province’s state of Education leaves much to be desired, the failure rate is alarmingly high. The less said about leaks of exam papers and teachers helping candidates to crib, the better. It is one scandal after the other in this Department. In fact, Ziwaphi wants to argue that the violence that is sweeping across the province started with kids from Mataffin whose schools had been bulldozed to make way for a stadium. The kids rioted and even burned an expensive German sedan belonging to SAPS before government responded to their legitimate basic demand of a proper school. Soon after several municipalities took a leaf on the actions of the kids and the rest is history.

The province would expect the Premier not only to give assurances that the rot that has bedeviling the Department of Education will be stopped but also to outline a clear programme of transformation that should stretch from the families of scholars along the school centres to the top of the value chain in the central Department. Failure of our exams should be an exception rather than a rule. A nation devoid of proper education is a nation that is destined to perish like the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah (forgive my spelling, I received my biblical studies in Siswati).

The province wants the Premier to give a positive progress on the establishment of the University. Pronouncements that the University will be a reality by the ANC Youth League are reassuring but not enough if they are not backed up by concrete resources, plans and political will by the Cabinet. The tenure of the Cabinet is a mere short five years and by now the province expects that plans are at an advance stage to deliver a state of the art University.

On Health

The Premier promised to establish a Tertiary Hospital in the province, a hospital that will provide highly specialized services and also provide training for medical and clinical practitioners. The province ululated at this ground breaking announcement. On the 19th of February, the province will want the Premier to give feedback on how far the government has gone towards the long awaited hospital.

The shortage of skill in the medical industry should be a thing of yesterday once the Tertiary Hospital starts producing highly trained nursing and medical professionals.

On the other hand Ziwaphi wants to congratulate the Department of Health for effort in trying to improve the state of the hospitals in the province. There are still many problems but the some facilities are clearly showing steady improvement. On the services’s side, though, Ziwaphi is disappointed by the long queues, shoddy treatment and continuous shortage of medicine at some health centres. The Premier is expected to lay down a programme that is consistent with the basic Human rights of people to receive primary and other health care services.

The jury is still out on whether the health facilities in Nelspruit have the capacity to deal with an influx of soccer lovers who will be in Nelspruit during the month of June. Disaster management and readiness is still questionable but we are hoping the Premier will allay any such fears

On Roads

The state of the roads in the province is atrocious. Ziwaphi welcomes the appointment of Mathew Mohlasedi as the new Superintendent General at Public Works Roads and Transport. His experience on roads and transport and the intimate knowledge of the province should translate in marked systematic improvement of the state of our roads and most importantly, the usage thereof. Moloto road has been improved but the users are reckless and continue to spill innocent blood on the road dubbed the “killer road.” The taxi industry needs serious attention to elevate its services to respected levels. The coal haulage project on the coal truck routes needs immediate attention. The Premier announced a programme in partnership with Eskom to rehabilitate the ravaged roads and the province will expect a progress report on that project.

On Public Works

The state is investing hundreds of billions of rands in infrastructure as one strategy to promote the concept of a developmental state. This elevates Public Works to the epicenter of the state’s mantra of war against poverty and under-development. Therefore the Premier is expected to give a countdown of projects and resultant jobs and enterprises benefiting from public infrastructure programmes. He is expected to give details on the Private/Public partnerships already formed and resultant benefits from such. In his speech last year he emphasized the value of PPPs.

The merger of Roads and Transport seem to be complete except for the establishment of the Roads Agency which was promised much to the chagrin of many in the province. These kinds of agencies have proved to be sinkholes which take down public resources with no discernible benefit for the public. Look no further than the National Roads Agency which has squandered public resources, Road Agency in Limpopo is in a perpetual state of limbo wherein the MEC has been having protracted wars with the Board of Trustees resulting in paralysis which earned Limpopo the coveted prize of having the worst roads in the country. Ziwaphi has always said that formation of structures is not a panacea to most of the problems which are as a result of greed, graft, corruption and lack of capacity in most cases. The Premier will be expected to pronounce his thoughts on this matter.

The President promised to generate 4 500 000 job opportunities by 2014, most of which would be created through the EPW Programme. It would be of provincial interest to learn from the Premier how much progress has made on this front in this province.

On Energy

Ziwaphi has always been a forlorn voice in articulating the obvious fact that while we acknowledge that energy management is a national competence but our province cannot abdicate its responsibility to have not only a passing interest on matters of energy because we are the number one producers of that commodity in this country. The mining that feeds the power stations is happening on our home turf. The environmental degradation and associated health problems affect our people and place directly while very little benefit accrues within our borders.

Most of the mining houses and petrochemical firms have their headquarters in Gauteng where the proceeds of their operations in Mpumalanga get accounted for. This is a travesty of justice which the Premier and the people of the province must fight to reverse

We are aware that we are not a federal state but it is a weak argument to say we must not take an interest in strategic commodities that are exploited on our backyard just because we are a unitary state. Just take a look at Limpopo, a significant of mining rights around the Waterberg area have been given to Limpopo enterprises. It would be interesting to hear from the Premier how much of our mineral resources are in the hands of Mpumalanga enterprises.

This province should be leading on alternative sources of energy production but we still have not heard of any specific programme to propel us towards that direction. We hope the Premier will take a lead on this subject and assist the DDG responsible for Environmental management in the province. Global warming is an issue that we take seriously, Ziwaphi, knows that there is a school of thought that trivializes this matter and rubbishes it as ploy engendered by tree-huggers to generate wealth for themselves but we have also had Dr. Raath and his associates among them President Mbeki who shouted on roof tops that HIV does not cause AIDS, that’s beside the point when people are dying droves. I am not Prius driver but I know enough to acknowledge that a time has come for the humanity to start treating the life supporting environment with a little bit of respect.

On SMME Development

Ziwaphi and many people have repeatedly asked questions about the Growth Fund that government was going to kick start with R200 million and the private sector was going to complement it with R600 million. Until today government is ducking and diving when questioned about this fund.

It was a shock last year when the ink on the resolution document of the Provincial Summit had hardly dried to learn that MEGA was launching a new fund which only had a paltry few million rands. The fanfare generated around this laughable fund was grossly exaggerated and was just a public relations affair meant to pull a fast one over the most gullible of the gullible of our people. The Premier needs to make good of the Growth Fund to restore faith if not to really assist develop SMMEs.

On Agriculture and rural Development

We suggest that the Premier change the name of the department responsible for Agriculture, Rural Development and Land Administration to something like, the Department of Tractors.

Those that have long memories will remember that one senior official of the Department of Agriculture  left the department with a cloud hanging over her head as a result of procurement and subsequent disappearance into thin air of tractors.

Recently, the Department has been reported to the Presidency for flouting legislation on, you guessed right, procurement of tractors.

Rural development is one of the priorities enshrined in the ANC manifesto and subsequent medium term strategy framework. We are expecting the Premier to outline good programmes to advance this ideal especially because our province is 61% rural depending on the definition use choose for “rural”

In conclusion, we would like the Premier to announce solid programmes to address:

• Crime especially in townships and trustlands which often does not enjoy prominence in the white control media

• Economic Development programmes with a bias towards black empowerment of the people of the province

• Address 2010 business opportunities. The Bergvlam fan park has caused an outcry. Real football lovers in townships and rural areas want to know what infrastructure has been devised for them.

• Disaster management capacity especially during the world cup tournament

• Skills development for the people

• Basic services, such as shelter, potable water, energy, primary health care and, transport and education

• Scholar transport and feeding scheme at schools

• Old age facilities

We are the first to acknowledge that all these requirement cannot be met at once but we want to see honest effort and sincerity from those who owe their office to the general populace of our tolerant and beautiful people. In the recent municipal by-elections the ruling party swept all the vacant positions which is a sign that the people believe in the ruling party and that they are no turn coats. Aluta continua!

Premier - David Mabuza

COMRADE SPIKIRI LOOKS AT THE PAST SOPA AND GIVES AN OPINION ON WHAT SHOULD BE ENVISAGED IN THE 2010 SOPA