21 October 2015

Dr Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, surely one of our brightest politicians, was predicted to play a leading role in the transition to a democratic South Africa. Instead, after resigning as leader of the Opposition in 1986, he was unable to live up to the expectations of his admirers and became marginalised, not least by the ANC.

He is said to have offended Mr Thabo Mbeki who had asked him for advice about running a government. Slabbert said if he were Mbeki, he would know he knew nothing about government and would make sure he got some people to help who did know. Apparently, Mbeki took such offence that their strong friendship cooled, never to be restored.

If Mbeki had followed Slabbert’s advice, South Africa might have been different today, with a state that worked. Mbeki saw a racial insult, not realising the advice was good: get people with skills, irrespective of colour, culture, nationality and political affiliation, so that government works.

The results are there for all to see. Instead of looking for officials who had the skills to administer a modern, sophisticated country, the ANC chose to proceed with cadre deployment, often breaking down what worked instead of making it better and using ‘transformation’ as the cover. Transformation should mean improving things, not make them worse. Simply getting rid of engineers and managers and technicians at every level did not improve government; it made it worse and set the scene for the lamentable service dished out to the public today.

The ANC decided that ‘to the victors go the spoils.’ People who had done a lot (or in some cases surprisingly little) in the struggle, had to be rewarded. Some of the people appointed were excellent and grew into the jobs they were given.

Others – too many others – were simply not up to the task and have been bed-blockers for a generation, enjoying political protection despite their ineptitude, and seldom moved out to make way for a new wave of young people with skills, except when the inept were promoted to ever-more senior and glamorous posts that they could not properly fill.

Look around and take note of the relative shambles in so many state- owned enterprises. Often these days, entirely undeserving people who cannot do the job get the appointment, increasingly not because of merit or even real service to the liberation forces, but because they are said to be ‘close to Number One.’ What sort of basis is this to create a state that works?

With a few honourable exceptions, most government departments, provincial administrations and municipalities under ANC rule are to a greater or lesser extent failures, delivering sub-standard service, despite the best efforts of some very dedicated and worthwhile officials.  The same goes for so many other instruments of government: think of Petro SA; the Post Office; the SABC; SAA. The list is as long as your arm.

When President Mbeki was in office, the rot had already started but at least he had a finger in most pies and he knew what was going on. One cannot say the same for our current president who after installing in high office supporters and friends of varying degrees of closeness, governs with an incredibly light hand.

Admittedly, though, President Zuma has fired more cabinet ministers than any president before him. The problem is that he generally replaces them, after splitting departments to create more jobs, with inadequate and sometimes downright inadequate appointees, leaving them to do as they please.

Cadre deployment has been a failure. Dump it now in favour of merit appointment.  The public service is now so overwhelmingly black that in ANC terms it is transformed. Wonderful, because now when one talks of fitness for purpose you cannot be accused of being a racist who wants white officials to be preferred and blacks to be left out. There are many well-qualified and suitable people of all races, not related to a politician or ‘close’ to anyone in power. Now would be the time to transform into something better, using many of the younger officials, with skills, who are knocking at the door.

Added to that should be an all-out effort to professionalise the public service to enable officials to build careers, especially at the more senior levels, instead of the limited contracts which get terminated with a golden handshake every time another (often inept) minister is appointed. In most successful governments in democratic countries, ministers come and go while the officials go on forever. In South Africa, ministers come and go but so do officials, often with bewildering speed, so that there is no continuity of policy or institutional memory. Each time there is another ‘turn-around strategy,’ that pushes accountability into the ‘never-never.’

I have appealed many times for us to recruit suitable skilled immigrants from the rest of Africa, Europe and Asia, when there are gaps with no qualified candidates available.

Finally, civil society and business in particular must come to the party. The government needs help. How about people like Patrice Motsepe helping us achieve government that is more efficient? His companies and many other businesses have senior people, or even outstanding younger executives they could second to government for a year or two, giving the executives valuable additional experience and making a real difference near the top of some departments and state owned entities. Some could also be appointed as non-executive directors of state-owned enterprises, and be a vast improvement over some of the completely inappropriate current directors, some of them ‘close to Number One,’ who pretend that they know what they are doing, or far worse, don’t know that they don’t know what they are doing.

Politicians will argue about policy but no one can seriously argue that it is not time to have a state that works.

Douglas Gibson is a former Opposition Chief Whip and former ambassador to Thailand.

This article first appeared in The Star.