• Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the Provincial Parliament
• My Colleagues in Cabinet
• Honourable Leader of the Opposition
• Honourable Leaders of political parties
• Honourable Members
• Director-General, Heads of Departments and members of the civil service
• Distinguished guests, leaders of faith, community leaders
• Comrades and Friends
• People of the Western Cape

A. INTRODUCTION

Mr Speaker - In my previous addresses to the house I devoted considerable time to make the case for the vision that the Western Cape must become a Home for All. Given the enthusiastic response from our people to the opportunity to re-imagine and rebuild this beautiful province, we are confident that the vision has found widespread resonance. People are ready and eager to put shoulder to the wheel to do the hard work to, bit-by-bit, build this vision as a lived reality. However, now we are confronted with the tough question, are we as government ready to provide the leadership and direction as to how we will make the vision a meaningful reality for all our people? The honest answer at this stage regrettably has to be, no. In this budget vote I will set out the reasons for this and, furthermore, what our agenda is to change this 'no', into an emphatic yes, in the immediate future.

To understand the nature of the scale of the challenges that we must address, it is necessary to spell out our understanding of the role of the modern African state in a context of rapid economic and social changes in the wake of globalisation. We also need to clarify the underlying philosophy of modern governance as reflected in our strategy, iKapa elihlumayo. On the basis of such an understanding we can then undertake a sober and strategic assessment of the state of the State. Such an analysis will directly shape the levers we will choose to transform government in order that it can lead and deliver towards the realisation of our vision. This, in brief, is the journey that I invite the house to take with me in this budget vote Mr Speaker.

B. PHILOSOPHICAL STARTING POINTS OF MODERN AFRICAN GOVERNANCE

1. Developmental state: It is worthwhile to recall that we gained state power at a time when the role of the state was under attack after a decade of neo-liberal ideological hegemony in a larger context of globalisation that favoured the powerful nations in the world. In this ideological milieu the State was under pressure to relinquish governance to private actors through privatisation and assuming a role as merely a facilitator of public goods. In a context of persistent large-scale inequality, it is now accepted in the era of the post-Washington consensus, that the State has a pivotal role to play in realising holistic development in this globalising era.
In other words, the earlier, and now obsolete debate about the withdrawal of the state, can be supplanted by the assertion of the importance of an interventionist developmental State. This is precisely the image and agenda that was presented by President Thabo Mbeki in his recent Opening of Parliament Speech. Building onto this conception, allow me Mr Speaker to specify four elements of the developmental state.

One, a State that is first and foremost interventionist to ensure that public goods are provided to all citizens, market failures are addressed and people have their dignity restored. An interventionist State gives leadership to its social partners about how we will, as a society with multiple constituent parts, move in the same direction to our shared goals. Two, a State that is enabling so that citizens and organised groups can come into their own to achieve their ambitions in a democratic society. Three, a State that is directive by providing a clear road-map for how we will address the many inter-related challenges that confront our economy and our communities. Four, a state that is supportive of the weak and vulnerable in our midst. It is obvious to us that whilst we work towards reconstructing our economy so that everyone can find meaningful employment, we need to provide safety nets for the vulnerable and destitute. This is simply non-negotiable irrespective what our political opponents might say about economic efficiencies.

Allow me Mr Speaker to now move onto the next dimension of our philosophy of modern African governance.

2. Ethical governance: Given our Constitutional mandate, the principles of Batho Pele, and moreover, the long tradition of the African National Congress to see the flowering of democracy and empowerment for all our people, we are committed to ethical governance. It is beyond the scope of this budget vote to spell out the details of this dimension of our guiding philosophy but let me merely restate our principles that inform our ethics: non-racism, non-sexism, human rights, democratic citizenship, transparency, accountability and ubuntu.

3. Holism: Flowing from the truism that people experience life and not government, we are committed to see the realisation of holistic governance that engages in an integrated manner with the full spectrum of people's needs at every point in their life-cycle. In others words, the State must be structured to function in a manner that appears and feels seamless to the public. Moreover, it must not only be seamless, it must also be accessible and transparent. We understand that holistic government emerges where government agencies and their partners share reinforcing objectives and can identify a shared commitment to a range of mutually supportive tools to achieve their shared objectives. Our primary challenge is to forge such mutually supportive practices in relation to our shared objective of making the Western Cape a Home for All.

4. Learning organisation: The former era of fragmented government operated on the basis of command and control, and even, fear. In this institutional set-up those who follow the rules and kept their heads down were rewarded with systematic upward mobility in the organisation. This compliant culture bred upward accountability and fear; features that are in direct opposition to the ethos of holistic government.
One of the challenges that must be embraced is that the provincial government as an organisation must become a learning organisation. This refers to a team-based practice of conscious reflection, analysis, problem-solving and experimentation within a performance-based framework.

According to Peter Senge, in the learning organisation staff effectively become 'researchers' and 'designers' rather than controllers and overseers. In other words, we have to inculcate a culture whereby our staff - who are in touch with our communities at the coalface of the organisation's daily interaction with the public - will offer their innovations to help us as a collective to become more responsive, effective, appropriate, developmental and integrated. However, in order to unlock such creativity and innovation, we need to actively encourage those who are eager to reflect, learn and think outside the 'fragmented box' of the old way of doing government. This implies a whole new criteria set for defining performance, which will in future be outcomes-based as opposed to the incessant focus on inputs.

5. Achieving 'public value': One of the recent innovations in international public management thinking has been the introduction of the notion, public value. According to Professor Mark Moore of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, public value can best be understood as the coming together of concerns in the public sector about the effective administration and development of public sector organisations through organisation change management techniques, along with the realisation of effective public policies. These two domains are inextricably linked. However, past approaches to the organisation design of government tended to focus merely on the optimal institutional design considerations but not in relation to public purpose, such as being more developmental and inclusive. Through the concept of public value, we raise the challenge that the public sector must determine the most efficient, effective and accountable structure in direct relation to our political vision for the future. This approach leads us again to the importance of results- and outcome-oriented government.

Mr Speaker, we thought it necessary to be explicit about our philosophical approach to Modern African Governance in order to create an intellectual climate within which we can debate the different and most optimal routes to the reconstruction of government so that it can deliver on our commitment to make the Western Cape a Home for All. As I have said before, we are building a state that has a mind, or rather, that works within a clear conceptual framework so as to ensure rigour, fairness, scrutiny and urgency during our term of office.

Mr Speaker, this philosophical approach leads us to the pursuit of holistic government as the only viable approach to realise the vision of a Home for All. However, before I turn to the tenets of holistic governance, it is necessary to take stock and define the state of the State.

C. THE STATE OF THE STATE

Mr Speaker,

For the first time in this Province, we experience the confluence of a number of significant factors:

1. A clear mandate to create work and fight poverty;
2. A politically stable and hegemonic government;
3. A consensus on the need for the state to be active, even interventionist, to achieve its outcomes;
4. A goodwill from all sectors of society, and
5. A strategy to deliver, not only basic needs, but also on the building blocks for sustainable livelihoods.

The critical question that this budget speech has to answer is whether we have the instrument to take advantage of these favourable conditions? Put differently, does the State have the capacity to play the role expected of it at this moment? This necessarily requires us to examine the state of the State. The conclusion we will come to is that there are significant strengths in the Western Cape, but we will need to overcome major hurdles if we are to reposition and transform the state in the Western Cape.

1. The Desai Commission

More than two years ago we encountered a state fragmented, unresponsive and dominated by a single individual, to whom even the political masters were beholden for their existence. The fact that those political masters now, more than two years later, settled out of court with the Harksen Trustees for an undisclosed amount, speaks to the fundamental correctness in having appointed the Desai Commission. What I want to illustrate out of the Desai Report is the prevailing culture that needs to be overcome. The Report says, "During the course of the Commission's work, it was introduced to an environment in which fear and intrigue stalked the corridors of the Administration".

This is hardly the kind of culture required if the Provincial Government is to build the Home for All through iKapa elihlumayo. Therefore, in order to transform the state as a precondition for transforming society, we will have to start responding immediately to the challenge put to us by the Desai Commission: "…The Commission… trusts that those in authority will have the courage, determination and vision to introduce and foster a changed culture essential to transparent and accountable governance". The recommendations of the Desai Commission will now receive their due attention, not to create the conditions for a witch-hunt, but to transform the culture of our administration.

Progress has been made on key recommendations, including filing practise, corporate memory, recruitment and procurement. These must be further strengthened and more attention paid to the implementation of the Public Service Act, ensuring that appointments meet our demographic targets and our information systems.

We need a change in culture. Where there is fear and uncertainty there can be no creativity and innovation, the key ingredients for a modern, globally connected government. Where there is intrigue, there can be no responsiveness to the needs and expectations of citizens.

2. Representivity

While to many there may be a contradiction between a Provincial Administration being asked to create a Home for All in the Western Cape, and that Provincial Administration itself not being representative of the Provincial Population, I believe that an interesting dialectic will be at work as we set about the process of both management and social transformation.

We are aware of the urgency of this task. We are determined to change the profile of the Western Cape in ways that are legally sustainable, morally defensive and sensitive to the needs implicit in our vision of a Home for All.

The profile of the Western Cape is characterised by the following:

• While Black Africans are 29,7% of our economically active population, they comprise only 15,8% of our entire administration, and only 9,9% of the Senior Management (from Director level up).
• While Coloured people make up 62,5% of the administration, only 38,2% are in Senior Management.
• While White people form only 20,86% of the Provincial Administration, 49,05% of Senior Management is white.
• While most of our employees are women at 63,94%, they are at the lower levels as teachers, nurses and clerks, but only 18,8% of Senior Management level are women.
• We are way off our targets to employ people with disabilities because we employ only 0,25% of a target of 2%.

The Director-General is being asked to lead a campaign to get us compliant provincially with our Employment Equity targets. Given our late start as an ANC-led Province, we may not be compliant by the prescribed deadline and I will enter into discussion with the Minister of the Public Service both to renegotiate our compliance and to invite her assistance through a task team to fast-track our efforts to build a representative civil service in the Western Cape.

3. Strategic Competence

Representivity cannot be the alpha and the omega of transformation. What government needs more than anything else to respond to the President's agenda, and to implement the strategy of iKapa elihlumayo, is a strategic competence - the ability by every member of the administration, at whatever level, to understand his/her role in building the Home for All and implementing iKapa elihlumayo.

These necessarily require a daily series of interpretations and decisions by our staff appropriate to their level in our complex system. Yet, at our recent Cabinet Lekgotla, we identified an inability at critical points in the system for strategic thinking and planning, which could either be a function of the historical culture of fear and fragmentation or a deficiency in the management capacity of the administration or both.

This, therefore, means that not only must the culture and management demands be changed, we would also have to become more outcomes and results based. The alignment of Strategic Plans with Budgets with Performance Agreements must become absolute. Towards this end we must not only obtain management and staff buy in for our vision and strategy, but develop and train staff in the art of strategically implementing these by interpreting their mandates, making the required decisions and monitoring the outcomes through a series of indicators and milestones.

The role of the Cape Administrative Academy must change to serve this need. Kromme Rhee can no longer be a monument to perceived Western Cape superiority, but will change through a transformed curriculum and ethos to become a driving force in providing us with the strategic and operational competencies we require in our civil service.

4. Functional Incoherence

While there has been an evolution of the State in the Western Cape from its roots in the autocratic, fragmented, apartheid system, through to the system of "fear and intrigue" of the Barnard-era, we must say that we have in the last two years only succeeded in creating a greater level of co-ordination in the government of the Western Cape around iKapa elihlumayo and the role of Treasury.

We have not eliminated entirely the silos, the turf battles, the fragmentation and the incrementalism, which hamper and hinder our single-minded desire to create work - through integrated strategies - and to fight poverty through seamless, coherent interventions.

The transformation of the state in the Western Cape relies fundamentally on our ability to overcome this weakness both in the attitude and design we bring to our people and structures. It is integration we strive towards - the ability to implement through common organisational structures, and merged professional practices and interventions. What we have now, at best, is greater co-ordination through dialogue in planning and decision-making. If left unchecked, we could have destructive competition.

5. Unresponsive Governance

We may have an extremely busy state, efficiently spending their money and also absolutely accountable to the legislature. We cannot afford the kind of functional incoherence I have described. Such functional incoherence results in unresponsive governance because we will be unable to make a significant impact on society given the magnitude of the challenges we face.

Government, unable to impact significantly on society, becomes defensive. It hides by working to rule, by passing the buck, by being powerless, by assuming a mask of rudeness or imperviousness, by being afraid of a ringing phone or a visiting client, or of opening a piece of correspondence. Batho Pele becomes a slogan, ubuntu a platitude, courtesy a memory and service a rarity.

But responsiveness cannot merely be voluntary. It will have to be systematised, taught, measured and monitored. It will have to be built into the structures of government, and institutionalised in our workings, if the next 5 years are indeed going to be the best 5 years yet for our people in this Province.

6. Using our Strengths

In this brief overview of the state of the State, some critical weaknesses have been identified. These will be the major focus areas of our efforts to transform the state of the Western Cape. But we also have some significant strengths from which to draw in these efforts.

I think, for example, of our pioneering work in maintaining fiscal discipline. This is partly the result of good systems and monitoring, but mostly because we have had to learn to do more with less money.

Add to this a tremendous asset base in the Western Cape, the collective value of which reaches almost R30 billion, then it adds to the strength of our Province.

Our human resources, while showing signs of strain in the face of great challenges, remain disciplined and dedicated, in the main, and I am confident, within the context of a learning environment that we will soon see the impact of 70 000 people at work in building a Home for All.

I am also delighted at the goodwill that has been built up since the election. Most people in this Province want us to succeed, and the organised sections of society want an active partnership with government. This increases the responsibility on us to give leadership, not as Premier, not as Cabinet, but as a united, coherent force of 70 000 people where each one of us understand not only our job in the government, but our importance in delivering the better life that our people deserve.

D. TOWARDS HOLISTIC GOVERNANCE

Speaker,

If I can find a short hand to explain what it is that we're busy with, then I will simply put to this House that Government needs to change the way it does business. Government needs to adjust to the complex lives of people, not expect people to adjust to the complex structures of government. People's problems do not occur in ways that are packaged for a specific sphere or department of government. Solutions to great societal challenges will not come through a series of disjointed, if well-meaning and committed, interventions from a series of government departments.

This line of thinking begins to take us towards the thinking and operations of The President and other governments facing similar challenges across the world. The notion emerging to describe this line of thinking is "Holism" or "Holistic Governance" where objectives are consistent across and between governments, and the collective means to achieve those objectives are aligned and used in mutually re-enforcing ways.

The four pillars for Holistic Governance in the Western Cape are:

• Integrated Governance;
• Co-operative Governance;
• Responsive Governance, and
• Globally Connected Governance.

We must move from two points of departure viz. that these 4 pillars of Holistic Governance are critical if we are to achieve our mandate of creating work and fighting poverty; and that both politicians and bureaucrats must become activists for the achievement of Holistic Governance.

In the Western Cape Government, there are two major instruments for the achievement of Holistic Governance. Treasury is a natural instrument through the use of the Budget, and the Department of the Premier (previously called Vote 1 or PAWC) is the other through its policy and strategy functions. Both departments are naturally transversal and cross cutting, but this does not absolve any other department from Holistic Governance.

The Department of the Premier has the opportunity today to signal its own transformation and its willingness to accept the challenge of driving the four pillars of Holistic Governance in the Western Cape.

1. Integrated Governance

1.1 Transversal Support Function
The Department of the Premier can significantly achieve integrated governance using its natural and statutory functions in new ways. If integrated governance primarily brings synergy and coherence within a sphere of governance - in this case Provincial Government - then the existing functions like personnel management, legal services, the provision of Information Technology and other Corporate Services, all of which have a transversal impact, must be utilised in ways that unite and integrate government. The personnel management will be transformed into a dynamic instrument to build internal social capital among our 70 000 staff members so that they become advocates and deliverers of the Home for All and implementers of iKapa elihlumayo.

Similarly, the provision of IT must be in accordance with its new designation as the Centre for e-Innovation, and through technology help to re-engineer government processes.

These components need to shift from being mere transversal support agencies to being active integrators of government functions.

1.2 Strategic Leadership
The Department of the Premier is also the seat for Policy Co-ordination and Strategic Leadership. It can do so passively by merely co-ordinating the Cabinet Meeting and ensuring that Cabinet processes happen through Cabinet Committees and Clusters, or it can be more dynamic and provide strategic leadership.

Again, the transformation of the Department of the Premier will be to unfold coherent, multi-disciplinary strategies to meet the challenges of economic growth, employment generation, anti-poverty strategies, and any other interventions requiring more than one agency or department.

The Strategic Leadership that the Department of the Premier will seek to provide is consistent with the strategic thrusts of iKapa elihlumayo and include the efforts towards a Human Resource Strategy, a Spatial Development Strategy, the Asset Management Strategy, the Micro-Economic Strategy, the Infrastructure Strategy, the Crime Prevention Strategy, Healthcare 2010, the Strategy to Build Social Capital, etc.

The Department of the Premier has to be the strategic centre for iKapa elihlumayo because all of these strategies, while important by themselves, are mutually reinforcing strategies towards the single outcome of creating work and fighting poverty. The programme of Government will be steered from the Department of the Premier.

1.3 Results Based Management
Work, activity and management can no longer be measured only by "Time on Task". We must see the results or outcomes of having spent time on task. The essence of Results Based Management is the ability to measure and evaluate and to hold to account on the basis of measurement and evaluation.

The first innovation, therefore, towards Results Based management, is that government should work off an accurate and reliable Statistical Information Base. Some work in this regard has already started with the Socio-Economic Review, but government needs to draw on the wealth of resources from our Universities, Technikons, Research Institutions and other organisations so that we always have sound, useable information at our disposal.

The second component of Results Based Management is the capacity for Monitoring and Evaluation. We need to track a programme from the decision that brought it into being to the final product delivered to the end user and all the implementation steps in between. We must be able to identify from the time of decision which agencies will be involved, which processes will be unfolded, what budgets will be mobilised, and what blockages to anticipate. We must plan our intervention at every stage.

Furthermore, we must evaluate not only quantitavely - how many - but also qualitatively - how good. For both these measurements we will have to build in the budgets, the time frames, the indicators and flow chart of integrated responsibility.

The third element of Results Based Management is the dynamic application of Performance Management of, and Performance Agreements with, our Managers, Administrators and Staff. Contracts entered into with our staff must commit them to the achievement of measurable outputs and outcomes.

There is no place for free loaders in the process to create the Home for All.

These we hope will start us off on the long and hard journey towards integrated governance in the Western Cape.

2. Co-operative Governance

In addition to integrated processes within a sphere of government, there is also the need for the alignment of goals, resources, and processes between different spheres of government. This is a more difficult area of integration because of factors like autonomy, historical relationships regarding functions and powers, and very rudimentary institutions of co-operation especially with Local Government.

We are fortunate that the Inter-Governmental Relations Bill will go to Parliament this year and its role will be to institutionalise Co-operative Governance. To a large extent the relationship between National and Provincial Government have evolved through Budgetary relations, MINMECS and the President's Co-ordinating Council.

The Municipal Finance Management Act and the IGR Bill will have the significant impact to bring greater synergy between the Province and Local Government, and at a mass gathering of Councillors on Monday (21 June 2004) I have already asked that we start co-operating in anticipation of these laws by convening a Co-operative Governance Forum in the Western Cape between Provincial and Local Government.

We can see the negative effect if we are not aligned in housing delivery. We under-spent by R150 million. We can see the duplication of efforts and wastage of resources if we do not plan together. But we can see the clear benefits and success of joint ventures like the CTICC when Province and Local co-operate.

We will see a more aggressive drive to institutionalise Co-operative Governance, because in the pooling of our resources, our people, our expertise, we create the conditions to deliver the better life our people want. Our people make the most eloquent case for co-operative governance, because they do not distinguish between which level of government to blame and to expect services from. For them, government is government.

3. Responsive Governance

We cannot compromise on Government being responsive. Too many people find government remote and inaccessible. Organised sectors find us too complex to partner with. Our services are not always user-friendly. Our contract with the people must be one that fulfils the promise of a government that is responsive to the people.

3.1 Social Dialogue
The first element of Responsive Governance is social dialogue through institutionalised ways. This Province has laid the basis for this when we convened the Growth and Development Summit last year, effectively drawing in government, labour, business and civil society, and setting for ourselves a set of objectives and outcomes that need to be achieved collectively.

As both an outcome and the means to the realization of the other outcomes, Social Dialogue has been identified as an urgent requirement. In the State of the Province address I had undertaken to present the necessary legislation to the Legislature, which will transform the Provincial Development Council into such a platform, allowing the four Social Partners to organize themselves, to remain faithful to their primary responsibilities and roles, but to co-operate in the sphere of common objectives.

The path of institutionalized social dialogue may not always be comfortable, and may even be threatening, but it is the only way forward. Government cannot govern without partners providing consent, co-operation and resources. The tasks are too big and the resources to meager for us to do it alone.

We are on track with our efforts to ensure Social Dialogue in the Western Cape.

3.2 E-governance
Another means of Responsive Governance is to harness the technological capacity available to us. This Province is at the cutting edge of communication with our citizens. The citizens of the Western Cape have the ability to access their government by walking in, phoning in to any department or service through a single number, or logging in through the internet to a variety of services and information organized by the life events of the citizen rather than through the departmental structures of government. Not only is technology forcing government to be responsive, it is also forcing government to re-engineer its services in the image of its citizenry.

3.3 Service Excellence
Responsive Governance will also be effected through encouraging service excellence. Standard Bank has approached us to partner us in rewarding Service Excellence through an Awards ceremony for those deserving among our 70 000 employees. Conversely, the public should note that we will not hesitate to deal with those who fall woefully short in carrying out their tasks and compromise the commitment of government to responsiveness, as seen in the way we are responding to the Forensic Report in the Housing Department.

3.4 Social Mobilisation
Government cannot also only be responsive to a passive citizenry. This will soon result in dependence by citizens on government, in ways which there is a loss of agency by the people themselves. Social Mobilisation therefore becomes critical to the way in which we work. At one level this mobilization is about us creating the imbizo platform for interaction with people, but at another level it is about making people the agents of their own lives through volunteerism to run schools, to keep communities safe, to ensure road safety, etc. At an even higher level we will be developing our plans for the roll out of Community Development Workers whose job it will be to dynamise and catalyse communities to meet the challenges of poverty, hunger and unemployment through development initiatives like food gardens, as opposed to food parcels, and enterprise development initiatives, as opposed to welfare dependence.

3.5 Corporate Communications
Citizens feel disconnected from government in the absence of communication from government, and disempowered when that communication is not accessible. It is only through dynamic communication that citizens are not merely informed about the slogan "a Home for All" but in communicating the slogan we also seek to acknowledge the divisions and the pain, and already communicate the unity and the healing. What people need to see at work is government championing the causes that bother them, whether it is a development node, the fight against drugs, or skills in schools. People are reasonable enough to understand that things don't improve overnight, but they need to see a government working tirelessly for them, not wasting resources, and systematically delivering until it is their turn. All of this is possible through good communications by a responsive government.

3.6 Responding to Sectors
In addition to being generally responsive to people, the Department of the Premier, through its Human Rights Programmes, also has the ability to be specifically responsive to, and inclusive of, sectors of our society, some of whom are vulnerable, others marginalised, and yet others very powerful when mobilised.

It is for this reason that the Moral Regeneration programme will now, not only get a fresh impetus, but a new direction in response to the very specific challenges of the Province. While the police must deal with gangs, we must undo the gang culture that has already taken root. While drug lords must be arrested, we must rehabilitate those addicted. While women must be protected, we must reconstruct the meaning of masculinity. All of this must show a government in touch with, and responsive to, the issues bothering our citizens.

Before a permanent hopelessness sets in among our youth, we must as the whole of government take responsibility for the well being of this troubled sector of our society. I have already undertaken that in the first 100 days, the Department of the Premier would present to the Legislature the necessary legislation to bring into being the Western Cape Youth Commission to guide and monitor our work as government.

Similarly, our responsiveness as government will be tested by the way in which we transform the Department of the Premier's women and disability units in order to bring about both the Home for All and the equality inherent in iKapa elihlumayo.

4. Globally-connected Governance

Mr Speaker-

The last feature of the Government we are building relates to our relationship with the World. Globalisation requires of us that we must ensure Globally-Connected Governance if the Western Cape is to benefit from the best that globalisation has to offer and to ward off the worst of globalisation.

More than that, South Africa as a Country has, particularly through President Thabo Mbeki, played an influential role in the World, especially in the Developing World and particularly in Africa. The Western Cape has no choice but to define its Global-Connectedness in consistent with objectives of our foreign policy nationally.

It is this national foreign policy that has helped us so far to benefit from the African Growth and Opportunities Act in the United States, and also from the agreement we have with the European Union. This has resulted in North America and Europe, most particularly the UK, being the biggest trading partner of the Western Cape.

Clearly this has to be retained and grown. But we must be conscious of the fact that when we are trading almost exclusively with Countries in the Dollar, Pound and Euro zones, then our manufacturers and traders are vulnerable to currency fluctuations. It, therefore, becomes crucial to diversify and trade relationships in order to overcome a possible dependency on those zones.

But our relations, while they are largely going to be driven economically, are also determined by political and cultural factors. This Western Cape Province has entered, over the years, into a series of partnerships and agreements with states and provinces in other Countries. A cursory glance at what has informed these relations point to the very strong federalist, almost secessionist, rightwing tendencies prevalent in states or provinces like Quebec, Upper Austria, Bavaria, Florida and others. This is not to say that they have not had material, economic or technological benefits, Clearly Bavaria has much to offer, but the penchant of the Western Cape towards this yearning for federalism must be at an end. We will re-examine each of these agreements, meet our obligations, but immediately shift the basis of our relationships off the ideological and political premises, and restructure those relations purely in answer to the question: What is in our interest?

Our fascination with the Northern federalists have blinded us somewhat to the obligations and benefits emerging out of South Africa's pivotal role in NEPAD. Not only has the Western Cape much to gain from participating fully in NEPAD, it also has much to offer. Already we can foresee sound and mutually beneficial relations with Angola, the DRC, Nigeria, Egypt, Somaliland, etc. NEPAD will feature in our efforts towards Globally-Connected Governance.

Similarly, there are markets and investors that are available to us, but remain unexplored, in the Middle East, South America (particularly Brazil), Asia (particularly India and China) and South East Asia (Indonesia and Malaysia) that we will be exploring in the next 5 years.

Globally-Connected Governance often has elements of competition, such as the competition with India to be the destination for Call Centre investments and Business Process Outsourcing, but mostly has the feature of complementarity such as offers from other parts of the World to assist us with rapid housing schemes and e-learning technology.

Each of these has to be evaluated on their merits and each relationship pursued for their strategic value, and not simply for the ceremonial benefit of a twinning agreement. It is this strategic approach that must guide the work of each Minister and department in determining who travels where, anywhere in the World. We cannot simply hop on the plane simply because we have an invitation in hand.

E. CONCLUSION

Mr Speaker -

For all of this work to be done, we have R308 million, of this R176 million (57%) is earmarked for the Centre for e-Innovation, most notably for the IT function. This does not give us much room to manouvre and so the Department or the Premier is going to have to lead, not by the size of its budget, but by the strength of its strategic leadership. We are going to have to use the existing budget to effect the transformations required, and through reprioritisation, drive IKapa Elihlumayo as the strategic path towards the Home for All.

I think we are up to it. I want to thank the Director General in anticipation as well for the work that we are going to do together. I want to assure the senior management that the work is challenging and tough and that they will always be given a fair chance to show their mettle. I want to welcome Dr Lionel Louw and all the staff in the office of the Premier. Life is certainly going to be interesting.

Finally, let me say to the 70 000 people who work for us, and on whom we rely to give effect to our plans: show commitment to our vision, demonstrate service excellence, build the Home for All, but, most importantly give leadership where you are. You will be recognised. You will rise in the system, because we need you.