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Page 1 of 7 ADDRESSING THE FINANCIAL CHALLENGES IN MUNICIPALITIES IN THE CONTEXT OF A REVIEW OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT MODEL INSTITUTE OF MUNICIPAL FINANCE OFFICERS ANNUAL CONFERENCE JOHANNESBURG, 6 OCTOBER 2009 Yunus Carrim, Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs
Allow me, in the first place, to say how pleased and honoured I am to be here. I convey too the heartfelt good wishes of Minister Sicelo Shiceka, who, as much as he was keen to attend, simply could not be here today. He spoke last Tuesday at the Association of Public Accounts Committees Conference in Cape Town, and I would commend his speech to you, as it is of immediate relevance to the work you do. On behalf of both of us, I extend our sincerest congratulations to you on your 80th Anniversary. I am struck by the value of your theme for this Conference “Making the Elephant Dance”. And I agree with your President, Mr George van Schalkwyk, when he says in the Foreword to the Conference programme, “So making the elephant dance is not easy. We will have to do things differently as the current strategies, management practices, environmental governance and work ethic are just not sustainable. We will need to innovate and learn the new tune, the beat and the appropriate steps to better utilize the available resources.” And I agree too when he says “what really matters is not what IMFO members put into the profession or what they get out of serving the profession, the real test is what they leave behind when they move on.” And it is around these themes of “Making the Elephant Dance”, and on innovation and leaving a legacy that this talk is pegged. You are indeed, as municipal finance officers, crucial to the success of local government. Much, much depends on you. How much, it sometimes seems, you are not aware of. But, believe me, you are absolutely crucial. And so it is too that we welcome the Memorandum of Understanding you signed with SALGA last year – and we hope it will be effectively implemented. It is clear, certainly, that unless we improve financial management and fiscal governance in municipalities we will not be able to significantly improve service delivery and development. There is a very close relationship between improved financial management and fiscal governance, and effective service delivery and development. Indeed, it may well be too that if we improve service delivery and development, we will, also, in turn, improve financial management of municipalities.
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