Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs

For example, the whole issue of the water crisis.

There should be an early warning system that is in place that allows the National Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, the National Treasury, and the Water and Sanitation Department to proactively detect this and respond to this situation facing these municipalities, which adversely, incorrectly, right, it affects the livelihood and also the circumstances of many residents.

All right, so the revised white paper on local government has been approved by Cabinet.

What happens next? Is it out for public comment before it goes through the processes in Parliament?

It cannot be.

And I think whether he did it in unpalatable language or not, the Abba Tembu King is correct that the minister of Cocteau...

Cooperative governance.

Yes,

And of course, looking at our voting stations, we have four thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine voting stations in the province, uh, some of which are temporary voting stations tents.

But at this late stage, we are currently working with, uh, Cogta, the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, and, uh, other stakeholders and departments, your Telkom, S, um, Eskom, uh, network providers, to ensure that where there are still deficiencies in the voting station venues that we intend using, those are addressed before the 4th of November elections.

Yes.

Certainly.

So how the minority fund the reforms you are proposing, particularly around infrastructure, billing, safety and service delivery?

Well, you know, I spent 25 years in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature, and the one sore thing with the Cocteau or local government, and especially Itikwene because we were in this province, was that we always never had people or thinkers or planners in the city who really went out and fought like other provinces for infrastructure budgets, for MIG grants, etc.

And even when they got whatever they got from the national fiscus, they always returned a lot of that money or a lot of the money was wasted where they came to even flood damages and repairs.

We used to be given a lot of money, but the money never used to be used eventually.