A professional, efficient and effective public service is key to the government’s ability to deliver on its mandate. That’s why South Africa’s constitution requires that the public service be institutionalised as a profession. Appointments must be based on merit and public servants are supposed to be honest, neutral and fair.
Such a public service is a distinctive feature of a modern democracy. It means government bureaucracy is not tied to an incumbent political party. It remains in place no matter which party is in power and is non-partisan. Administration can continue when political power changes hands.
A professional public service optimises state efficiency by embracing meritocracy. This means employing only the best qualified, and most competent personnel with a strong ethical orientation. It requires that civil servants perform their duties with diligence, care, and empathy.
South Africa’s constitution is emphatic about this. It even establishes the Public Service Commission as the custodian of professionalism. It promises “an efficient, non-partisan, career-oriented public service broadly representative of the South African community functioning on a basis of fairness and which shall serve all members of the public in an unbiased and impartial manner”.
Almost 30 years into democracy, the country hasn’t got there yet.
Two key initiatives to build state capability through professionalisation of the public service are under way. One is the Public Service Act Amendment Bill, which is before parliament. The other is the draft Public Service Commission Bill, which is yet to be tabled.
The Public Service Amendment bill devolves administrative powers to the directors-general, who are the heads of government departments. The powers apply to the human resources management and organisation of their departments. The bill aligns these powers with the directors-general’sfinancial responsibilities outlined in the Public Finance Management Act.
The Public Service Act, which this bill seeks to amend, assigns the administrative powers to the ministers. Yet the Public Finance Management Act places the management of public finances on the directors-general. These contradictions cause conflicts between ministers and directors-general. The bill seeks to end these.
The Public Service Commission bill extends the commission’s mandate to cover local government as well as national and provincial public entities covered by the Public Finance Management Act. These bills are long overdue. They will give effect to a framework that was gazetted in 2020 for public comment, and has benefited from wide consultation.
The framework should not be allowed to fall away. It seeks to follow through with the intentions of the constitution and the 2012 National Development Plan. The plan is the country’s long-range blueprint for socio-economic transformation.
At the end of apartheid in 1994, the public service was bloated and inefficient.
The bureaucracy had to be dismantled to mirror the country’s demographics. That basically meant appointing more black people to key positions.
This was also important to avoid the sabotage of the democratic project by apartheid-era officialdom, which the governing ANC inherited.
But the need to transform was misapplied in a way that hampered efforts to make professionalism and meritocracy the guiding norms for a career public service. Without them, transformation became insidious. This was especially so during former president Jacob Zuma’s era of state capture (May 2009-February 2018).
In practice, the terms of directors-general, who are the administrative heads of government departments, are tied to those of ministers, who are their political heads. The bureaucrats are almost always replaced when a new minister is appointed or if there are conflicts between them.
This is one reason for the high turnover of directors-general – between 24 and 48 months. Institutional memory is lost and state capacity weakened.
The amendment bills need to be expedited. They are important to put the national framework in place for the professionalisation of the public service. Of critical importance, the framework proposes ditching deployment practices – placing party loyalists in key government positions.
As the late anti-apartheid activist Ben Turok said: “Public servants should be employed, not deployed… they should have security of tenure, and… the public service should be independent and not subject to the whims of politicians.”
- Maserumule is professor of public affairs at Tshwane University of Technology. This article first appeared on The Conversation
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