Address by the Public Protect, Adv Thuli
Madonsela on the occasion of the Stakeholder Forum at the
Pinnacle Building in Nelspruit , Mpumalanga
30 March 2010
Programme Director;
MEC for Public Works Mr Clifford Mkasi (representing the
Premier);
Councillors;
Heads of Departments present;
Representatives of Chapter 9 institutions;
Representatives of Political Parties;
Traditional Leaders;
Members of the media;
Ladies and gentlemen:
Let me start by extending my warmest greetings to you this
morning and also express my appreciation to all of you for
seeing it fitting to come and interface with us.
This is my second visit to this province. Most of you will
remember that, early in February, I visited Siyathemba
township in Balfour, where the community was up in arms over
service delivery issues.
You may also be aware that I have been on the road for
nearly two months, interacting with your counterparts
elsewhere in the country as part of my stakeholder
consultative forums.
To date, I have been to all other eight provinces and
yesterday I met with national stakeholders in Pretoria. Our
meeting this morning, therefore, marks the culmination of
this consultative process.
The purpose of my meetings with provincial stakeholders is
to introduce myself to you as stakeholders and get your
views on the constitutional mandate of the Public Protector.
I also seek to share with you my vision for this important
anchor of our constitutional democracy and the strategic
priorities my office and I have agreed to having taken into
account stakeholder inputs we have received since December
last year.
These engagements also seek to create and strengthen
relationships to facilitate cooperation, particularly by
organs of state when approached by anyone on behalf of the
Public Protector.
At this juncture, Programme Director, I would like to
briefly discuss the constitutional Mandate of the Public
Protector to set the tone for our discussions this morning.
The Constitution establishes the Public Protector as one of
six institutions whose mandate is to support and strengthen
constitutional democracy. These institutions, which are
created by Chapter 9 of the Constitution, are usually
referred to as Constitutional Institutions or Chapter 9
Institutions.
The Public Protector has the most general mandate of them
all. Its powers and functions cover virtually every conduct
by the state or public authorities. The only public sector
matters excluded from the Public Protector’s jurisdiction
are judicial functions. What exactly does the Public
Protector do? Section 182 of the Constitution states the
following and I quote:
1. The Public Protector has the power
as regulated by national legislation:
- to investigate any conduct in state affairs, or
in the public administration in any sphere of
government, that is alleged or suspected to be
improper or to result in any impropriety or
prejudice;
- to report on that conduct; and
- to take appropriate remedial action,
2. The Public Protector has the additional
powers and functions prescribed by national legislation,
3. The Public Protector may not investigate
court decisions,
4. The Public Protector must be accessible to
all persons and communities
Key pieces of legislation that gives the Public additional
powers are the Public Protector Act, No 23 of 1994; and the
Executive Members’ Ethics Act, No 82 of 1998.
The Public Protector Act gives the Public Protector a
comprehensive mandate that basically involves accepting or
identifying complaints against any part of the state and
investigating or resolving them through investigating, ADR
or any other means that achieves remedial action.
In other words the Public Protector ensures that the state
and those who exercise state power (State actors) are
accountable for their actions and omissions.
The Executive Members’ Ethics Act assigns the Public
Protector the sole responsibility of investigating and
reporting on any violations of the Executive Ethics Code by
members of the Executive ( Cabinet and Provincial
Executives). There are a few differences between this and
the Public Protector Act. The first difference is that the
Executive Members’ Ethics Act restricts the power to
initiate an investigation to Members of Parliament and
Provincial Legislatures. The second difference is that the
Executive Members’ Ethics Act does not give the Public
Protector a discretion regarding whether to investigate or
not to do so. Another key difference is that this Act
specifies that an investigation must be concluded within
thirty days and that the Public Protector must submit
his/her report, with recommendations, to the President
within 30 days to forward to Parliament within 14 days.
The Public Protector’s investigative and dispute resolution
powers regarding state conduct are further reinforced by
additional mandates under legislation such as the Prevention
and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act, No12 of 2004,
Protected Disclosures Act, No 26 of 2000 and the Promotion
of Access to Information Act, No2 of 2000. The full list is
provided is the one page summary of our vision that we have
distributed and the actual laws are captured in a booklet on
Legislation Regulating the Work of the Public Protector that
we recently compiled.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I must quickly mention that the services of the Public
Protector are free. You may complain or make an allegation
about any matter involving improper or prejudicial state
conduct.
The complaint or allegation may involve a complex matter
such as fraud, corruption, poor service delivery for a whole
community or environmental degradation.
It also does not matter whether the conduct complained about
affected you personally or you are just a concerned
observer. For example my office also receives a number of
complaints from third parties, which we investigate.
Like elsewhere in the country, my office in this province
receives a lot of complaints regarding delays in the
processing of applications for IDs, various types of social
grants, low cost houses; and general service delivery
issues, among other things.
It is in this province and a couple of others where we have
seen communities resorting to violent protests in a
desperate bid to get the attention of government. While we
do not encourage such action, it shows that government is
often not as responsive as it ought to be.
As I mentioned earlier, the case that immediately springs to
mind is the demonstrations we witnessed in Siyathemba
Township in Balfour early last month, where we subsequently
visited the community together with the Minister for
Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Sicelo
Shiceka to give them an ear.
As I am speaking, a team of investigators from my office is
busy with an investigation into allegations of
maladministration at Dipaleseng Local Municipality in order
sort out the problems raised by communities and other
interest groups there.
There is also a Ministerial Committee, which meets regularly
to try and address the bottlenecks that hinder the effective
and efficient delivery of services in the area.
We hope that all these measures will bring about relief to
distressed communities.
Ladies and gentlemen;
While as the Public Protector, we have a general challenge
of poor cooperation and non-response from state institutions
when we ask questions relating to complaints, in this
province the situation is better.
We have seen a steady improvement in response times from the
time my office opened its doors to the people of this
province in 2001. All this is possible because of the
willingness of the Executive Authority to assist and Senior
Management. We wish to encourage others state organs to
emulate this exemplary leadership.
Programme Director,
Let me quickly run through the vision I referred to earlier,
the strategic priorities that seek to achieve the vision and
the institutional changes we are already implementing in
pursuit of the mandate, vision and strategic objectives.
The vision regarding what we seek to become as an
institution and which we refer to as Public Protector Vision
2020 has the following key provisions:
Vision
A trusted, effective and accessible Public Protector that
rights administrative wrongs and consistently acts with
integrity to ensure fair, accountable and responsive
decision-making, service and good governance in all state
affairs and public administration in every sphere of
government.
Mission
We strengthen constitutional democracy in pursuit of our
constitutional mandate by investigating, rectifying and
redressing any improper or prejudicial conduct in state
affairs and resolving related disputes through mediation,
conciliation, negotiation and other measures to ensure fair,
responsive and accountable public sector decision-making and
service delivery.
Values
- Independence and Impartiality;
- Human Dignity;
- Equality;
- Ubuntu;
- Redress;
- Accountability;
- Integrity;
- Responsiveness;
- Transparency;
- Justice and Fairness.
The key shift in the vision lies in the recognition of
the fact that the mandate of the Public Protector transcends
investigating and reporting. As can be seen in the above
direct extract from the Constitution, the Public Protector
is constitutionally directed to take remedial action.
Furthermore, the Public Protector Act outlines the powers of
the Public Protector as including investigation,
conciliation, mediation, negotiating, and advising and
taking any appropriate action to achieve remedial action for
any improper or prejudicial state conduct. In fact we can
safely regard the Public Protector as the CCMA of
administrative justice, among other things.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I now quickly turn to the matter of the operational changes
we are making to reposition this institution for optimal
achievement of the constitutional mandate, the strategic
objectives and ultimately, the vision.
Firstly, we are giving priority to the constitutional
injunction regarding ensuring accessibility to all persons
and communities. Plans include expanded outreach activities,
incorporating more radio, a Public Protector Good Governance
Focus Week, and a forward looking plan for additional
regional offices. We have established and are in the process
of rolling out an Intake and Early Resolution Unit. Since we
established this unit, cases are resolved more speedily with
some resolved within a day or two. The idea is to resolve
urgent and uncomplicated complaints within a day and up to
three months.
We are also working on rules under the Public Protector Act
that will outline mechanisms for case handling and the
regulation of conciliation, mediation and negotiation
activities. This will also cover compliance measures such as
subpoenas, which will help us deal with those that ignore
our inquiries thus prolonging the agony and suffering of
many complainants, particularly those seeking urgent relief
on matters such as social grants and pension funds.
We are also strengthening our skills and task
specialization. This reduces the time it takes to handle
cases and enhances the rigor or thoroughness of each
investigation. The move towards specialization has also had
the effect of lightening the workload on each investigator
since an investigator can now approach a public authority on
a batch of similar cases rather than one case at a time. Our
changes include the establishment of a Governance and
Integrity Unit to support the enforcement of the Executive
Members’ Ethics Act and other activities that focus on
promoting good governance and integrity.
We further plan to undertake systemic interventions in
addition to the standard systemic investigations. The
additional value of systemic interventions lies in working
collaboratively with a public authority to identify the
systemic governance and administrative gaps within its
internal operations that breed ongoing service delivery
failures and/or maladministration.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
One of the key reasons we are meeting stakeholders is to
leverage stakeholder relationships to enhance our
institutional performance. For those in government, our key
need is cooperation when we ask questions. It is a
constitutional duty of every state organ to assist and
protect the Public Protector and other Constitutional
Institutions “to ensure the independence, impartiality,
dignity and effectiveness of these institutions.” (s181 (3)
of the Constitution) We will also rely on your cooperation
for systemic interventions.
For the rest, the key assistance we need is that you help us
market the services of the Public Protector and, where
appropriate, allow us to use your platforms to reach out to
all our people. Off course we also rely on all of you to
give us candid feed- back on our services and to alert us to
matters of state conduct that we need to be investigating
and correcting. This is particularly the case with the
media.
I again assure you of my personal commitment and the
commitment of my entire team to work diligently with all
stakeholders, while vigilantly guarding our independence, to
promote public sector decision-making that is anchored on
accountability, integrity and responsiveness. We also seek
to contribute meaningfully to the realisation of the
country’s development goals, including commitments regarding
the achievement of the global Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Thank you
Public Protector of South Africa,
Adv T N Madonsela
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