Minister
Essop Pahad
Address:
GCIS budget vote, National Assembly
16 May 2002
Madame Speaker
Honourable Members
No longer can GCIS
be presented as an infant institution, impressing its elders with
the speed of its transformation into a communications agency for
a democratic government.
In the time-scale of
our young democracy, a department entering its fifth year must be
counted amongst established institutions and it must be assessed
as such, on the basis of its performance.
It must be assessed
not only by its success in breaking with the past, but by its responsiveness
to the needs of the moment and its sensitivity to future trends.
It must be measured
by the degree to which our government as a whole is communicating
in a way that assists the people of South Africa to participate
actively in improving their own lives and in the governance of our
country.
How well prepared is
GCIS to lead the communication of a government whose watchword is
the call to all citizens to Lend a Hand. And whose line of march
is to push back the frontiers of poverty.
Indeed it is precisely
these directions that define the major communications initiatives
that the government communication and information system has been
involved in during the past year and which it is planning for the
coming year.
The list includes:
Multi-Purpose Community Centres; the International Marketing Campaign;
Imbizo; the redesign of our National Orders; multi media mass communication
campaigns - these are all about government and society acting together
for transformation that eradicates the legacy of apartheid. They
are about uniting a nation in pursuit of a better life for all South
Africans, especially the poor.
I would therefore like
to note the progress that is being made on all these fronts.
Bringing government
close to the people, especially the poor
Bringing government
closer to the people and to the poor in particular means extending
the infrastructure of government information and services into previously
neglected communities.
The imperative of doing
this in an integrated way is a central tenet of this government’s
programme. Public understanding of this need has deepened through
media focus on the distress of families unable to access Child Support
Grants for lack of birth certificates and ID books.
The roll-out of the
MPCCs is therefore a priority. There are now 18 MPCCs in operation.
During this financial year over 20 new ones are to be launched and
by the end of 2003 there will be 60, one in each district.
This morning I attended
a public event at the Bonteheuwel MPCC, as part of the public account
that needs to be given of what use is made of the funds which are
granted to GCIS.
There are many kinds
of centres known as Multi Purpose Community Centres. Although the
Bonteheuwel centre is not one of those fully-fledged MPCCs that
offers several government services, its service to the community
underlines the importance of MPCCs.
Those who were present
at the event were a cross section of those in government and civil
society who work together to make a success of the programme.
They included people
from MPCCs across the country, who have also been invited to be
present in the House today to witness our democracy at work as I
account to you.
They have come from
various areas across the country – such as Botshabelo in the
Free State; Sterkspruit in the Eastern Cape Province Province; Lebotlwane
in the North West Province; Atlantis in this Western Cape province;
Tombo in the Eastern Cape; Mbazwana in KwaZulu-Natal; Kwanobuntu
in the Western Cape; a client of the Matsamo MPCC in Mpumalanga;
and, of course, from Bonteheuwel, Western Cape Province. Though
it was not possible to get representatives here today from other
provinces, they too have thriving MPCCs.
Our guests give visible
expression to the spread of the MPCCs across the length and breadth
of South Africa.
As the programme advances
new possibilities and challenges arise. In a country of over 40
million people, 60 MPCCs can only be a base from which we start.
We need therefore to begin to think through a framework for a second
phase after 2003.
Executive support for
the MPCC programme over the past year has sharply raised its profile.
Launches by the President, Deputy President and several Ministers
have given impetus to the programme and strongly linked it to the
government’s commitment to interactive governance. I would
like to take this opportunity to thank members of the executive
for what they have done in this regard.
Bringing government
closer to the people and to the poor in particular means that members
of the executive, in all spheres, should interact directly with
the public around implementation of government’s programme
of action.
It means going to communities
wherever they are and assessing the effectiveness of our programmes
in improving their lives. It means listening to the people and learning
from them how government could better work with them to implement
the things that government was elected to do. This interaction,
through Imbizo, is an essential contribution to the participative
and people-centred democracy that we are building.
The Imbizo programme
had just begun when I last addressed this House on the GCIS Budget
Vote. It has advanced beyond expectation.
By now the President
has made extended Imbizo visits to three provinces – Limpopo,
Eastern Cape and three weeks ago to the Free State. The Deputy President
has made two such provincial visits. The first National Imbizo Focus
Week in November saw national, provincial and local government interacting
with communities around the theme of cooperative governance for
local delivery. In the recent Focus Week in April, Imbizo took place
in some 300 localities.
Such is the public
enthusiasm for this interaction, and government’s commitment
to it, that we expect the next Focus Week in October to be even
more extensive. There is no reason why there should not be Imbizo
events in every local government area in the country!
Attention has been
given to involving the media in Imbizo. Their role has been an important
and supportive one. In reporting on Imbizo they have helped popularize
it. Radio phone-in programmes in various languages have extended
the interaction between government and the people. When the President
visited the Free State he was accompanied, for the first time, by
members of the soon-to-be-established Presidential Press Corps.
Initially there seemed
to be scepticism amongst the media, even cynicism at what they suspected
might be merely a public relations campaign. Exposure to the practice
has, we believe, shown it to be an important part of enhancing the
effectiveness and accountability of government. From what we read
and from our own interaction with the media, it would seem that
Imbizo is not only bringing government closer to the people, but
that it is also succeeding in bringing the media closer to the experience
of the majority of South Africans.
The lessons of the
recent Imbizo programmes are currently under review with a particular
focus on the effectiveness of follow-up and feedback.
Bringing government
closer to the people and especially to the poor means communicating
with the mass of South Africans in the media they use and in the
languages they prefer.
It means conveying
information they can use to improve their own lives – information
that allows them to participate in shaping the direction of the
country. It may be about how to get the birth certificates that
are necessary to benefit from Child Support Grant. It may be about
government’s policies and programmes.
This includes ensuring
that the public hears the facts about the progress that is being
made in improving the lives of the majority of South Africans. This
matters in a climate in which wrong perceptions of "lack of
delivery" are repeated almost daily and have become something
of a paradigm in perceptions of our country, tending to erode confidence
in our democracy, in South Africa and internationally.
The result of last
year’s census will in due course give a comprehensive picture
of how life has changed since we achieved democracy. But the steady
implementation by departments of programmes of reconstruction and
development, reflected in their regular reports of output, is certainly
having an impact.
The scale of that impact
is beginning to be discernible. A "Development Index"
recently published by the private sector South African Advertising
Research Foundation concludes that its data "shows extensive
development in South African living standards for the period 1994-2001".
This is consistent with the report Statistics South Africa published
last year based on its Household Surveys, showing increased access
to social service infrastructure from 1995-1999.
Given the limited access
that especially poor South Africans have to the media, extending
the reach of government information through direct communication
is imperative.
To that end GCIS has
been extending the scale and the range of its information products
in mass multi-media campaigns. Since this year’s State of the
Nation Address government’s message and programme has reached
millions through advertisements in the main newspapers; two million
copies of the Mid Term Review; radio dramas on the Programme of
Action in all official languages; and radio phone-in programmes
in which millions of listeners to the public broadcaster and community
radio have been able to put direct questions to the President and
other members of the Executive.
The information in
the recent advertisements on continuity and change in government’s
policy on HIV/AIDS will soon appear in five million leaflets in
South Africa and abroad.
We would be the first
to say that while there is improvement, there is much more to do
to ensure that people everywhere have the information they need
to know about their rights and the services that are available as
a result of government’s programmes. In particular the economic
cluster of departments is discussing a campaign to publicise the
economic opportunities that have been created.
And while there has
been a shift towards more use of radio compared with a previous
emphasis on print, the needs of those who do not read will receive
more attention. GCIS has just completed its second video using sign
language for the deaf, and in future all videos will be made that
way.
Building partnership
so that all can lend a hand
Partnership does not
imply identity of interests or perspectives, nor does it require
either partner to subordinate its view to that of the other. It
is based on the fact that shared interests provide a basis for joint
action.
The International Marketing
Campaign is now well into its work of mobilising South Africans
in a common effort to present our country to the world as an important
destination for trade and investment. This public-private partnership
and those it is working with, including the Proudly South African
Campaign and Tourism South Africa, will be making a major impact
in the coming period. It will provide a channel for the pride that
South Africans feel for their country and its achievements, and
in countering negative sentiments that have unduly shaped international
perceptions.
Strong partnerships
in the work of communications have involved our parastatals as well
as non-governmental and private sector organisations.
The MPCC programme
has seven parastatals on the national steering committee including
a number who, apart from ensuring that the provision of utilities
and services are in place, have made material contributions to MPCC
launches and in some cases their functioning.
Multi-media mass communication
campaigns have benefited from parastatal sponsorship of advertisements
carrying the State of the Nation Address and the Mid-Term Report
and by the provision of toll-free connections for radio phone-in
programmes.
As yesterday’s
Second Reading of the MDDA Bill made clear, the ultimate success
of that initiative is premised on a partnership of government and
media, including a joint commitment for public and private sector
funding. The objective is to overcome the barriers to participation
in the media that our history has placed before the majority of
South Africans. The development of the community and small commercial
media sectors will, we believe, lead to greater diversity in our
country’s media, more adequately reflecting the diversity of
our society.
The process towards
the transformation of the advertising and marketing industry, initiated
by the Portfolio Committee on Communications, is likewise benefiting
strongly from a partnership of government – GCIS and the Department
of Communications – with the industry itself. It is now under
way in earnest and will be reporting to the Portfolio Committee
in October.
The SANEF/Cabinet Indaba
held at Sun City last year and the directions emerging from it constitute
a rare partnership between two institutions which across the world
tend to regard one another with some suspicion or antagonism. Without
either side subordinating autonomy or the right and readiness to
criticise one another, we have resolved to work together to ensure
that the South African public is better informed about what government
is doing.
Many debates will continue
and no doubt each institution will pull no punches in saying what
it believes must be said. But underlying the co-operation is the
shared conviction that the people of a country who are struggling
to extricate themselves from the morass of poverty resulting from
past neglect and discrimination deserve no less from their government
and media, than to work better together in the interests of the
public and the nation.
All in all, then, government
is on a communication path consistent with the imperative to join
hands in pushing back the frontiers of poverty.
The positive response
from civil society expresses the extent to which South Africans
are defining their unity and their identity in a common effort to
create a just and prosperous society.
GCIS has been privileged
to contribute to the work of giving broader expression to that emerging
identity. That includes in particular work with the Department of
Arts, Culture, Science and Technology in the renewal of our National
Orders, in the project to establish the Freedom Park and a monument
to mark the inaugural Summit of the African Union.
Consolidating the
communication system
If we are to make effective
progress towards achieving our communication objectives, then it
will be necessary to further improve the capacity of government
to communicate in an integrated and focused way.
In part that will come
from implementing the creative suggestions emerging from Sun City.
A start has been made. For example more effective relations have
been established between the media and the economic sector Ministries.
Progress is also being made in the establishment of the Presidential
Press Corps, one of those agreements that emerged from Sun City.
One of the dilemmas,
as we approach the formal launch of the Presidential Press Corps,
is to strike the right balance between rights and obligations. We
are confident that the continuing discussions between government
and the Interim Press Corps Committee will find solutions that define
in a workable way the point around which that balance must be struck.
As programmes for the
co-ordination and training of government communicators continue,
and as they begin to make an impact, attention is being increasingly
given to the challenge of greater integration in the work of government’s
communication system. As the business of government in both planning
and implementation becomes more integrated, so must communication.
Indeed without this there would be little justification for claiming
to have a government communication system.
As we continue to consolidate
the communication system, the emphasis is falling increasingly on
bringing communication into the business of government.
This includes greater
integration of the work of communication clusters with the Clusters
of Directors-General, and discussion by Cabinet of cluster communication
strategies, in the context of the government-wide strategic communication
framework. As Minister in the Presidency, with responsibility for
GCIS, I have been given the task by Cabinet to provide its meetings
with reports and proposals on Current Affairs so that it can reflect
on issues of the day, in addition to its normal business.
These developments
are helping government communicate in a more integrated way.
As far as GCIS is concerned,
growing demands and the gradual consolidation of government’s
communication system has led to a drive for greater effectiveness
and some restructuring. During 2001/02 this was done within the
allocated budget, revised only to deal with historical anomalies.
Overspending during the previous year, for reasons which SCOPA did
accept, has been replaced by an under spending of R1,48m or 1,2%,
well within the requirements of the PFMA. Of that amount, R1,42m
was committed during the financial year and in that context National
Treasury has been requested to roll it over, implying effective
under spending of only R0,06m or 0,05%.
The increased allocation
to GCIS under the MTEF, rising from R124m in the last financial
year 2001/2002 over three years to R162m by 2004/5, will provide
resources for expanded and more effective efforts to ensure that
the people of South Africa can be informed and active agents in
improving their lives and governing their country.
Madame Speaker,
For the contribution
that is being made towards the achievement of these goals, I wish
to thank the CEO of GCIS, Joel Netshitenzhe, as well as the GCIS
Secretariat and staff.
GCIS has drawn much
encouragement and guidance from its interaction with the Portfolio
Committee on Communications, for which I would like to thank the
Committee and its Chairperson.
And I would like to
thank all government communicators for their commitment and professionalism.
On their shoulders
rests government’s capacity to speak with and to listen to
the people of South Africa.
I commend this Budget
to the House, thank you.
Minister
in The Presidency, Dr Essop Pahad
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