We aim to get Cabinet approval for the National Strategy Framework by the end of the year. We intend from January to March next year to take this Strategy Framework to every municipality in the country. We would like to see every municipality develop, within the parameters of the National Framework Local Government Turnaround Strategy, through a fully consultative process, its own specific Municipal Turnaround  Plan by March 2010, and actively implement it through involving the widest range of stakeholders and local communities. Yes, yes the March deadline is onerous – but we all need to help to meet it. Let’s certainly try!  Provincial governments should play an active role in assisting municipalities to develop these Municipal Turnaround  Plans and ensure that they are within the framework of the National  Turnaround Strategy.

Of course, there are aspects of the turnaround strategy that will be implemented in the period leading to the 2011 elections and other aspects that will be implemented after the elections. 

We are to appoint a National Coordinating Committee, comprising a wide range of a stakeholders and experts, to monitor progress on the implementation of the National Local Government Turnaround Strategy. We believe provinces and municipalities should also set up Municipal Turnaround Strategy Coordinating Committees.

All of this is very well, you may say – but this is just yet another strategy. What’s so different about it? Why will this one fare any better? And you’ll be right to think this. But you’ll be wrong to think you’re right. This turnaround strategy is different. And how so will depend on you – on the role you and others play in giving effect to this strategy. Make no mistake about this! This is not government’s strategy. It’s society’s strategy - at least as represented by the wide range of stakeholders that were present at the National Local Government Indaba two weeks ago. And remember: these stakeholders gave their commitment to making this strategy work. And we are going to hold them to it!

The prospects for this strategy are better, even if by no means guaranteed, because it is based on a unique, comprehensive report on the state of local government in the country. The strategy has a very high level of support from a very wide range of stakeholders. In fact, there’s a far higher degree of support for this turnaround strategy than previous ones. Partly it’s because there’s an increasing recognition of the dire straits in which municipalities are and how this adversely affects all of us. We all sink or swim with local government. We have no choice. We must get it right! So local government is indeed everybody’s business.     

The prospects for the turnaround strategy are better too because there is going to be a phased, temperate approach to implementing it, with practical and realistic deadlines. We are also clear that the strategy has to be sustainable and lead to sustainable outcomes. Over time, we hope to rationalise the many capacity-building programmes and ensure greater co-operation between the reconstituted service providers. We are grateful for the good work done by the DBSA in local government, but it does concern us, for example, that the Siyenza Manje project is not adequately geared to ensuring that municipalities acquire their own capacity over time to do at least some of the work that the project currently does.     

The prospects for this strategy working are better too because of the serious attention national government is giving local government. The President’s meeting with mayors and municipal managers was the first of its kind. And it wasn’t just a symbolic meeting. He committed himself to, in cooperation with Minister Shiceka, responding practically to the issues raised with him by the local government representatives. I suggest you read the President’s speech at the beginning of the meeting, but perhaps even more important, his speech at the end of the meeting.