Excellence Not a Necessary Condition for Employment
Last week a human resource company called me to ask for a reference for one of my colleagues. She is the senior administrator of Impumelelo Social Innovations Centre, highly competent, experienced and diligent, despite the lack of a matriculation certificate. She has set up a meticulous book-keeping and filing system for the office; works on Pastel; has set up all kinds of systems for student intern recruitment, purchases, events management, and for organising workshops and master classes, frequent activities of Impumelelo.
I started the interview by saying "every office in SA, especially the Presidency, needs a Yasmina." She is competent; she gets things done; she works hard; she has a range of skills and is loyal; she has pulled herself up by her bootstraps to such an extent that I sent her to Harvard Kennedy School of Government for a month, to work with my counterpart there to help with the Innovations Portal.
Subsequent to the interview, the company called her in for an interview, but rejected her for the job because she had no matric qualification despite her wide range of competences in addition to all the courses she had attended over the years to hone her management and financial skills. Based on all her experience, UWC gave her a conditional exemption for admission purposes, although she did not pursue a degree. Apparently, all these qualifications are not good enough for a job similar to or lower than her current job.
Yet when Hlaudi Motsoeneng was appointed Chief Operational Officer (COO) of the SABC despite wide media coverage of his fraudulent qualifications, mismanagement, and partiality towards the ruling party, his salary increased from R1.5million to R2.4 million in one year. The Minister of Telecommunications, Faith Muthambi, claims that some legal firm had cleared him of all wrongdoing despite the Public Protector's report casting serious doubt on this charlatan's character.
In the Department of Social Development, Virginia Petersen, SASSA CEO, employed one of her relatives as an intern, doubling the salary; she also employed a relative of Ebrahim Rasool's, lacking all the relevant qualifications, to a top position with a grossly inflated salary as well as a wardrobe account. And now we have President Zuma's daughter, Thuthukile Zuma, kicked upstairs to the Ministry Telecommunications and Postal Services as Chief of Staff, at the age of 25, with a salary of R1million a year.
Granted she has degrees, but where is the evidence of relevant experience, especially in a ministry that is complex, mismanaged and riddled with corruption and mismanagement? According to the Mail and Guardian (M&G) that position demands "extensive management experience, an understanding of ministerial services and parliamentary functions to take charge of the overall management of the ministry, knowledge of the Public Service Management Framework and Public Finance Management Act".
And this is the nub of the matter. Affirmative action appointments as part of the crony capitalism model, often eschew the need for qualifications and experience. That is why the Auditor-General's report of 2013 makes for horrendous reading. The sheer scale of the corruption, incompetence, and national ineptitude of public officials is mind-boggling. Public service salaries are clearly out of kilter with the qualifications or lack thereof of civil servants.
The relevant question here is: what message are we sending out to school kids and university students? Are we telling them that it is ok to cheat your way through life; that you will be promoted to top positions provided you are black and under-qualified; that education, skills, experience and qualifications no longer matter? Granted many people excel without a matric, that is why candidates must be assessed holistically - not just on demographics!
This article first appeared in Die Burger.
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