Patrick Cull on Monday

Call in business to help get EC on track

ADDRESSING media after a national executive committee (NEC) meeting last weekend ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe stated that government had all the policies that were required in place, what was needed now was implementation.

Of course he is absolutely correct and it was recognition of this that led President Thabo Mbeki to set down deadlines for his cabinet when he delivered his state of the nation address in May last year after the ANC had won an overwhelming mandate in the April election.

Many of those deadlines, such as the unveiling of a new housing plan and the issuing of a tender for the provisioning of new generating capacity to provide for growing energy needs from 2008 have been met. Others, such as piloting the National Ports Authority Bill through parliament, have not.

It would be unreasonable to expect that all the deadlines would be met. The failure to do so in some instances may well be due to factors beyond the control of the relevant cabinet minister. What is significant is that recognising the need to expedite delivery across the whole spectrum of government Mbeki has brought out the whip and is using it.

Further, progress reports are being issued regularly, affording the average citizen an opportunity to assess where government has succeeded – and where it has not.

Essentially, the problem does not lie at the level of national government, where policies are made. It lies at provincial and local government level, and that is where all too often implementation does not take place.

That was clearly evident last week with the start of the school year.

In what has become a dreary and disappointing annual event, schools once again had not been issued with stationery on time and, despite the undertaking by the provincial government, there were also schools without textbooks. Add to that the fact that the school nutrition programme was also not functioning properly.

In addition, there was the customary litany of complaints with regard to infrastructure – a school damaged in a tornado in June last year that had not been repaired, buildings that had been vandalised, and the sorry state of many of the buildings and classrooms, and lack of facilities such as libraries and computers.

The simple truth of the matter is that many of the children of this province are being badly let down by the administration and the worst affected are those in areas neglected during the apartheid era.

What hope have those children got of being able to compete with their peers for places at institutions of higher learning? If the present situation continues, many will be as damned as their parents were.

Certainly, there is a shortage of funds. But that is not an issue that can be taken up with the national finance department, for as long as the Eastern Cape government is unable to demonstrate that it has the capacity to spend the funds allocated to it at present. If the province is unable to deliver stationery on time or operate an efficient school nutrition programme, what justification can it have for requesting additional funds from Finance Minister Trevor Manuel?

The notion of a Marshall Plan for Africa has been mooted in recent weeks and it is perhaps time to look at a similar strategy for the Eastern Cape so that we bring an end to the cycle of inefficiency and weak administration once and for all.

This is not a call for yet another intervention by national government, because it is a moot point whether any of the previous attempts have produced very much. Rather it is a call for bold decisions that harness private sector expertise to ensure that what are effectively simple tasks are carried out efficiently.

This has already been done in some areas of the administration, such as finance, and it is now time to expand that initiative.

Would it, for example, not be possible to enlist the private sector to assume control of the process of ensuring that schools have textbooks and stationery delivered on time? If after 10 years the provincial administration has demonstrated that it is unable to carry out this task, give it to someone who can.

Let the private sector conduct an audit of what is needed in terms of infrastructure at schools and draw up a plan for ensuring that all children in this province are provided with the opportunity to compete equally. Let the private sector finalise the asset register of properties owned by the province and assist in identifying those that can be disposed of, so providing funds for school infrastructure.

Let's expedite the establishment of public-private partnerships for State-run hospitals so that they become beacons of excellence; let's explore ways of attracting sponsorship for traffic police vehicles, as has happened in Cape Town, so that we make our roads safer; let's speed up the identification of provincial roads, responsibility for which can be handed to the SA National Roads Agency.

There are a host of areas where private sector expertise can be harnessed. All that is needed in general terms is the political will and courage to take the initiative.

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