Who are the main victims of a failure of provincial government to work if not ordinary citizens? Once again, disproportionately the poor and the disadvantaged. The very same citizens, mind you, that vote for us in national elections. The very same citizens that we are constitutionally and morally obliged to support and serve.

Say a province doesn't work, our own workers at national Parliament, the NCOP in particular is undermined. In other words, for the national Parliament to work the provincial legislatures and the provincial government have to work. So it is we said in our report that the national government is under a constitutional duty to assist provinces by legislative and other means to develop the administrative capacity required for the effective exercise of the executive authority of implementing inter alia provincial legislation and all national legislation within their functional areas as listed in schedules 4 and 5 of the Constitution.

Also, as we mention repeatedly, the Constitution makes provision for the national government to intervene if a province fails to fulfil its executive obligations. So, our report notes that there needs to be and I quote, 'far more effective co -operation in the NCOP committees and our

counterparts in provincial legislators so that both the NCOP and the legislatures are far more effective in our oversight of the provincial executives thereby reducing the prospects of section 100 intervention.'

It is this co-operative governance system that can facilitate the developmental state that the Minister referred to. A developmental state is difficult to effect in a federal structure as against a wonderful system we have in theory but of course in practice of co- operative governance it doesn't work the way it should. Not least because we, in the NCOP, have also responsibilities in that regards that perhaps we are not fulfilling.

Ms Visser goes on and on about the problem almost as if we are hiding it. Yet, on the other hand Mr Fanie Du Toit refers to press statements that constantly referrer to the crisis that the North West confronted before the intervention, and to some extent, it still experiences those challenges. So, you can't hide these things, Ms Visser, nobody is. I mean it doesn't help to melodramatise it because it is out there in reality the media will not run away from it. Suddenly it is the civil society action, it is the civic associations andordinary

citizens that very lastly prompted this intervention by their actions on the ground.

You say the ... [Inaudible.] ... should have been acted on sooner or before collapse. Again, you see it is an anomaly, Chairperson. On the one hand the DA will insist on the autonomy of the province, they want this provincial system and so is the FF Plus, and yet on the other hand they say intervene, intervene! And then they will complain that the national government's intervening unduly.

For example, it would be very interesting to know Chairperson, if the intervention was in the Western Cape, would the DA be so keen for interventions too soon? Yet, we all agreed with the Minister and the Department of Cogta that there is a need for early warning signs. This has been on the agenda of government and Parliament for years now. We say that the NCOP, through the Select Committee on Cogta, needs to develop a framework based on our experience and understanding of the North West intervention and other section 100 interventions on how we more effectively monitor the provinces so that we are better able to pick up early warning signs of a province's faulty governance that might lead to a section 100 intervention.

The aim of such a framework would include trying to prevent a province deteriorating to the extent that the section 100 intervention becomes necessary. The lessons learned from these interventions, including what measures work, need to be part of this framework and Ms Visser very well know because she was in the committee yesterday when we chose to put that in.