Green Paper on National Strategic Planning: Response by the Congress of South African Trade Unions
1. Introduction
The Minister in the Presidency responsible for the National Planning Commission has tabled a Green Paper: National Strategic Planning (see here - PDF), inviting discussions to inform the establishment of the National Planning Commission (NPC). The formation of the NPC should be viewed within the context of the need by the movement "to build the strategic, organizational and technical capacities of government with a view to a democratic developmental state"[1]. This does not mean that the NPC is a panacea to the problems of strategic, organizational and technical capacity gaps that have plagued the state in the past 15 years. Departments across all spheres of government are duty-bound to over-come these problems by building their own strategic, organization and technical capacities in their field of competence.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is of the view that the NPC should not only be conceptualized in terms of what it is supposed to do, it should also be conceptualized within the concrete institutional context within which it is supposed to operate. COSATU appreciates the role of international experiences when designing institutions. However, such experiences cannot be divorced from the broader institutional context within which they evolved. For example, planning commissions operate in the context of other departments. In the presence of the existence of these departments, dedicated to fulfil specific roles, the planning commission cannot duplicate the functions of line departments as the basis to justify its existence.
COSATU is of the view that the conceptualization of the National Planning Commission as laid out in the Green Paper is severely flawed. The very idea of forming a National Planning Commission was informed by the need to eliminate duplication, improve efficiency in service delivery and increase the technical and organizational capacity of the state. However, the Green Paper justifies the existence of the National Planning Commission, and outlines the functions that it will do, by encroaching on the functions of other Departments, particularly the Economic Development Department, and thereby duplicates the functions of this Department.
There is however more to the Green Paper than this. For example, the strategic location of the NPC in the Green Paper is problematic. Specifically, the Inter-Ministerial Committee that the Green Paper proposes is chaired by the Minister on National Strategic Planning, which elevates this ministry above all other ministries. This is a recipe for inter-governmental conflicts and disputes, the very thing that the Green Paper seeks to eliminate. Instead we propose an alternative structure that gives proper regard to institutions of authority in government, especially the Presidency. This critique takes up these issues in detail, and concludes that the Green Paper should be rejected by the Ad Hoc Committee on National Strategic Planning, and a re-conceptualization of the National Planning Commission along the lines we propose here be adopted.
Further we note that when the current Cabinet was formed, one of the Ministries formally created in the Presidency was that of the Minister responsible for the National Planning Commission. However, throughout the Green Paper references are made instead to the "Minister for National Planning". The variation in title is not as subtle as it appears especially when viewed against the organogram reflecting the "institutional arrangements" proposed to apply to this Ministry. The proposal would locate the Minister as part of a distinct institutional structure in the Presidency separate from the NPC, and is consistent with the overall strategic positioning of the Minister to impose undue control over policy planning. This, we believe, is inherently problematic.
In line with the resolutions adopted by COSATU's 10th National Congress held in September 2009, we wish to register the following:
1. There is a need for a complete overhaul of the content of the Green Paper and for its alignment with a perspective on the NPC developed in Polokwane and the Alliance Economic Summit.
2. The underlying basis for defining the role and constitution of the NPC, the role of the Minister responsible for the NPC and the Ministry of Economic Development should be undertaken in the broader context of building the developmental state.
3. The NPC and the Ministry responsible for the National Planning Commission should not be allowed to veto decisions of other departments; this is the responsibility and powers of the cabinet.
4. The Ad hoc Committee should identify and develop urgent measures to strengthen newly established ministries and departments into fully-fledged entities with adequate capacity to fully discharge their mandate in the context of processes geared at building a developmental state.
2. Conflation of Policy Formulation and Planning
We note that the Green Paper elaborates extensively on the need for "strategic planning" "policy coherence" and "policy co-ordination". In COSATU's view this emphasis on planning is correct, including policy planning of a long, medium and short-term nature. However, we strongly contest the location of the responsibility for policy planning and economic development under The Minister responsible for the National Planning Commission (NPC) or the NPC itself, whose main function should be to develop plans to implement government policy.
Fundamentally we believe it is necessary to maintain the integrity of Cabinet's oversight role over policy formulation, planning and coordination, including in relation to its associated structures such as Cabinet Clusters. Additionally any national strategic planning process needs to properly define the role of Cabinet clusters, cross-cutting Departments (such as Economic Development or Rural Development), line function departments, provinces, local government, and the various State institutions including parastatals.
In Section 5, the Green Paper notes: "The distinction between plans and policies varies in different contexts. In some contexts, a plan is a detailed account of how to implement a policy...In this context, planning means translating policies into long-, medium- and short-term objectives, prioritizing objectives and sequencing implementation. However in some ways the distinction is less clear cut. It could be argued that the very act of developing a vision and setting long-term objectives is part of the essence of policy-making. In addition, implementing a strategic plan necessarily exposes critical policy gaps, giving impetus to policy reform".
The Green Paper then proceeds to state that it is "not a place to resolve this philosophical debate. The planning process outlined here is mainly about providing a coherent vision and strategic outcomes around which policies and programmes need to be developed".
Critique: The point of this "philosophical debate" in the Green Paper is not clear, especially in the light of the fact that drafters of the Green Paper claim to have drawn from research on international best-practice on these matters. In the first paragraph of the last page of the Green Paper, it is stated that, on the basis of international experience, "Planning is not policy-making: It is a process to inform and then realize the objectives of that policy". This is our understanding too. However the issue here is not about what the Green Paper says about the relationship between planning and policy-making, but what the Green Paper says should be the content of the mandate of the NPC. The content of that mandate effectively puts the NPC in a position to develop policy, determine policy priorities and thereby, determine the content of the budgeting process and plan the implementation of policy.
In this part of our critique, we focus on the policy-making process and show that despite the claim in the Green Paper that it is not a place to resolve the "philosophical debate", the Green Paper in fact resolves it by sneaking in policy-making into the functions of the NPC. The evidence of this strategy is found spread in bits across the document, so that an unsuspecting reader would be convinced that indeed, the Green Paper does not show that part of the NPC's core mandate is policy development.
The Green Paper illustrates that the core of the NPC's activities will revolve around economic development. Although "development" encompasses aspects beyond the economic, it is also true that economic development in the last instance underpins broader social development. The Green Paper for example notes, in Annexure I, that "better strategic planning and the resultant more effective management of development processes require quality institutions that can resolve co-ordination and integrative problems that constitute barriers to inclusive growth and development", "there is no ‘single institutional tap root' to drive growth and development", etc.
The following constitute some pieces of evidence to show that the Green Paper seeks to encroach into the policy-making functions of Departments.
Evidence 1: In the Executive Summary, paragraph 6, it is stated that "there will be a series of papers on thematic cross-cutting areas that impact on development and on government's policies; areas on which the Presidency will provide ongoing leadership". The question then arises: if "planning is not policy-making", then how will the NPC "impact" on policy without developing it? Why should the NPC engage in a "series of papers on thematic, cross-cutting areas", if its intention is not to develop policy but simply to "impact" on it, or plan? These questions are critical in clarifying the "philosophical" aspects of the mandate of the NPC.
In our view, matters of policy formulation and prioritization should be left to relevant departments. The NPC should instead make sure that the prioritization by departments, once approved by Cabinet, is implemented to advance the long-term vision and the electoral mandate. Each department must put its policies in front of Cabinet, and convince Cabinet that its policies and priorities are in line with the mandate and long-term vision. The NPC should not have authority over departments on matters that are specific to departments. For example, in the case of health, the NPC should not have authority over the Department of Health over health policy matters. Instead, the NPC should make sure that the programmes of the Department of Health are implemented in as efficient a manner as possible, by aligning programmes from other departments on matters of health, to advance the health aspects of the long-term vision.
Evidence 2: In the section on the Medium Term Strategic Framework and Programme of Action, the Green Paper says, "A further core activity will be to initiate focused reflection by the Executive and/or society at large on major areas of government work. Specific areas of policy research would be identified-mainly the kinds of issues that are key drivers of the nation's development trajectory, that have major macro-social implications and that are therefore critical for long-term planning." Once again, if "planning is not policy-making", what is the NPC doing with these "specific areas of policy research"?
In our view, the so-called "specific areas of policy research" are nothing but areas of competence that are within the remit of specific departments. The NPC should not be engaged in policy matters, it should instead focus itself on matters of implementation of policy and gaps in the policy will be identified through the Monitoring and Evaluation mechanism. We will elaborate below the location of the NPC in the broader institutional arrangement of government.
Evidence 3: In section 7 of the Green Paper, bullet 6, it is written that "we need a clear mechanism for weighing options and making hard choices in the context of fiscal limitations and where policies are contested". The Green Paper thus sees the NPC as such a mechanism. Bullet 6 basically says that the NPC will determine what should and should not be implemented, which is tantamount to informing departments what they should do. This is contrary to the principle of the NPC being a synthesizer of departmental plans and on this basis a driver of efficient implementation by line departments. Bullet 6 turns this principle on its head. Instead, it is the NPC that will inform departments what priorities are and what they should do.
Although the Green Paper denies that the planning function will not do budgeting, it does mention that, through the MTSF, it will guide budget allocations by identifying strategic priorities. The Green Paper also says the NPC will have the ability to interrogate and critique the quality of spending, and it will be directly involved in the committee(s) dealing with budgetary matters. The only way in which the NPC can be so involved in budgetary matters is when it also engages in policy development, so that resource allocation reflects policy priorities. But then, if "planning is not policy-making", on what grounds is the planning commission involved in budgeting?
What the NPC should be concerned about is not resource allocation; resource allocation should be function of the National Treasury, in co-operation with departments that are relevant to policy development. Instead the NPC should be concerned with "building the strategic, organizational and technical capacities of government with a view to a developmental state"[2]. The NPC should drive efficiencies in the state apparatus and ensure intergovernmental co-ordination so that programmes are implemented in a seamless fashion. The Green Paper instead, seeks to compromise the "authority" that should be vested in the NPC by making the NPC to "forcefully" insert itself in matters of policy. The Green Paper wants the NPC to be a mechanism that "weighs options and make hard choices" by forcefully driving a particular policy agenda in the context where "policy is contested". But "planning is not policy-making" and therefore there is no place for the NPC to enter the "policy contest".
Instead, the NPC must allow those who make policy to do so and, once policy emerges and priorities identified, the NPC should then "authoritatively and forcefully" drive inter-governmental alignment and efficiencies to ensure that those policies are implemented. Once the NPC enters the "policy contest", its role as the over-arching strategic driver of implementation of government policy will be severely compromised. The reason the NPC will be compromised is because if within the state apparatus there is ideological conflict over the direction of state policy between a department and the NPC, and the NPC decides to forcefully drive its agenda through, the department concerned will not "buy into" the NPC's efforts to increase efficiencies and state capacity. This will undermine the whole point why we have the NPC in the first place, which was to increase state capacity to implement policy and, using the Green Paper's words, to "eliminate fragmentation and resolve disputes of the kind which have in the past led to paralysis" (see section 5).
The task of building "strategic, organizational and technical capacities of government" has nothing to do with budgeting, whose content should be informed by policy development-an activity which the Green Paper itself acknowledges, is not planning. As the Green Paper correctly notes, on the one hand planning informs the objectives of policy in so far as it provides a long-term vision. Planning is not policy-making. On the other hand, planning informs the realization of the objectives of policy in so far as it ensures implementation by sequencing and harmonizing government programmes. Those who are dealing with policy development will have to sit down and prioritize issues that will have to be attended to in order to position society towards the vision articulated by the NPC. This will involve informing budgetary processes, so that resources are made available to ensure that relevant departments are financially empowered to carry their programmes through. The NPC's role in all of this is to ensure that technical capacity and co-ordination exist to take forward these programmes.
Our view therefore is that the NPC should fulfil two major tasks: providing a long-term vision and improving implementation across all spheres and across departments. We therefore agree with the Green Paper when it proposes that the NPC should operate at a high level, providing a vision of where our society must go. We are, however, not in agreement with the proposal that the NPC should be responsible for the development of the outcomes that must be produced to determine the extent to which our society is on track. This function should reside with the Ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation where, for each priority area identified in the policy development sphere, inputs, outputs, outcomes and impacts are to be determined in order to monitor and evaluate the implementation of policy and to gauge the extent to which our society gravitates towards our long-term vision.
Evidence 4: In Annexure I the Green Paper says that "the examples of the Philippines and Nigeria show that development performance will not be improved by focusing just on planning without sufficient attention to policy development and political and administrative institutions that support planning and drive implementation". The Green Paper therefore urges for the NPC to pay "sufficient attention to policy development". Having noted that "planning is not policy-making", the Green Paper then proceeds to warn that "where planning was used to legitimate poorly conceived policies, planning retarded development". Is it because of poorly conceived policies that development was retarded, or was it because "planning was used to legitimate" these policies?
Be that as it may, at the heart of the Green Paper is actually an attempt to pose the core functions of the NPC in neoclassical economic terms. Listen to this, in the last page of the Green Paper: "Having set this broad vision about the direction and destination of society, a national development plan identifies specific areas that the nation wants to prioritize to achieve its vision. The imperative for setting priorities arises from a simple realization that societies face constraints-these are constraints of limited resources and sometimes limited opportunities". This means that, at the heart of the NPC's activities is an economic planning function which enables "resource allocation and investment to be coordinated in a spatially targeted way". Clearly, the Green Paper sees the content of the NPC's activities to be revolving around economic development planning.
This shows that the drafters of the Green Paper have not fully and properly appreciated the institutional context within which the NPC is supposed to operate. The NPC operates within the context where economic development has been isolated as a focal area of a specific department called Economic Development Department. This department is tasked with the responsibility to formulate and design macro and micro policies and to economic planning. The arguments by COSATU that the Green Paper wants to the NPC to encroach into the policy-making arena are therefore not informed by some ill-conceived urge to criticize an individual, as some have suggested. Our arguments are informed by the fact that the Green Paper has sought to position the NPC as a centre where policy-making, particularly economic policy-making, economic planning, implementation planning and even monitoring and evaluation takes place.
If the Green Paper entertains the idea that "the very act of developing a vision and setting long-term objectives is part of the essence of policy-making", then it is clear that that removing the "visioning" part of the mandate of the NPC would go a long way in resolving our problems. In any case, the national growth and development strategy that is being formulated by the Economic Development Department must of necessity contain the socio-economic vision of a society that we want to build. Consequently, it could be argued that, because of its core mandate, the Economic Development Department must spearhead the development of the economic vision of our future society. The point made in this paragraph should be debated in detail by the Committee.
3. National Strategic Planning and Monitoring and Evaluation
Our critique has so far dealt with attempts by the Green Paper to effectively put the NPC in a position to develop policy, determine policy priorities and thereby, determine the content of the budgeting process and plan the implementation of policy. The content of the monitoring and evaluation process, whilst residing with the Ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation in the Presidency, is also determined by the NPC because, as the Green Paper states, "The MTSF will be more detailed than it has been until now, complete with high level outcomes and targets for priority functions. These outcomes and targets will be a key input into the performance management component of the Presidency's work".
This reduces the Ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation into a number-crunching desk of the NPC. If the NPC is to set targets, then it means that it will have measurable indicators through which to quantify its outcomes and to calibrate its targets. The role of the Monitoring and Evaluation Ministry would then be to programme these indicators into a spreadsheet and churn out M&E reports. The Green Paper seeks to make sure that the Monitoring and Evaluation function is to some extent linked to the NPC and is informed by reviews from the NPC: "The National Planning Commission will from time to time contribute to reviews of implementation or progress in achieving the objectives of the national plan" (see section on "Systems and Structures").
Instead what the NPC needs to focus on is the design of programmes, alignment of programmes and the specification of technical capacity required to implement policy. Once it has done this task, the Ministry on Monitoring and Evaluation will assess the extent to which those programmes have been carried forward and if so, the extent to which they have been successful in meeting their desired goals. If it is found that these programmes do not function well, another process of re-design will have to be undertaken by the NPC until the programmes function properly.
In the current institutional arrangements there is therefore a clear separation of functions. The NPC cannot "from time to time contribute to reviews of implementation and progress" because that would be tantamount to being a referee and a player at the same time. Rather, the Monitoring and Evaluation Ministry should have the required autonomy, undisturbed by encroachments, to provide credible and authoritative assessments of progress and challenges of implementation.
4. Confusing the Plan and the Vision
The Green Paper hops between the concepts of the plan and that of a vision. This is good because it shows that the Green Paper is struggling to find a mandate for the NPC. No wonder the Green Paper says, in the Executive Summary: "Effective national strategic planning requires clarity on the role of the planning ministry and the National Planning Commission". The key question that we want to address in this section of our critique is: what should the National Planning Commission be planning, in the light of the current institutional arrangements of government? The answer to this question will resolve part of the problem.
The Green Paper suggests that because the NPC will be developing a vision for the country, then it should plan for the development of the country towards the attainment of that vision. This would make sense if such planning does not involve economic development planning, because already there is a dedicated Department to perform this function. Nevertheless, as the Green Paper recognizes, economists are leading figures in the history of planning. It follows that development planning without economic planning is devoid of content. For this reason the Green Paper aggressively seeks to place the NPC on the pedestal of economic development planning because, in its view, the planning aspect of the National Planning Commission has to do with "development planning". That is to say, National Strategic Planning is nothing but development planning in general and economic development planning in particular.
Once we agree that development planning without economic development planning is devoid of content, we should then agree that those mandated with economic development planning should be responsible for development planning. Or alternatively, those that want to position themselves to do development planning, because they are mandated to develop a long-term vision, might as well do economic development planning. In the former case, the National Planning Commission will have to do the type of planning that the Green Paper wants the NPC to do, i.e. "providing a coherent vision and strategic outcomes around which policies and programmes need to be developed" (See the section on Planning and Policy-Making). This planning actually entails "building the strategic, organizational and technical capacities of government with a view to a developmental state".
These to us should constitute the core functions of the National Planning Commission. In short, the National Planning Commission should plan the implementation of government policy by sequencing programmes and activities, fight inefficiencies and identify required technical capacities. The confusion that besets the Green Paper lies in the fact that, because the National Planning Commission is mandated to draft a vision of our future society, then the drafters assumed that this implies that they have to make the NPC to plan development. This assumption would have been justified if we had an alternative arrangement where the Economic Development Department did not exist. However, such a Department exists.
It is for this reason that we say that, perhaps, a long-term vision of the future society may as well be crafted by the Economic Development Department because economic development planning is at the heart of long-term planning. This matter needs to be debated by the Ad Hoc Committee. It could as well be argued that we should leave the "visioning" part of the mandate to the NPC, but when the vision is developed and adopted, what role will the NPC play afterwards, except to plan for implementation? Hence, our view is that the Green Paper should have been consistently true to its claim that it wants the NPC to engage in providing strategic outcomes, or perhaps, because this too encroaches into Monitoring and Evaluation, limit its role to elaborating programmes and aligning programmes to drive government policy.
And so the NPC in our view should indeed plan, but it should plan for implementation of policy. It should not plan development, that task is located in a dedicated Department already. We agree with the view expressed in the last page of the Green Paper that "planning is not policy-making: it is a process to inform and then realize the objectives of that policy". The Planning Commission, in the light of existing institutional arrangements, should be inward-looking, dealing with implementation issues, and not deal with development planning. The Green Paper has therefore failed to conceptualize the content of the mandate of the National Planning Commission within the context of existing institutional arrangements of government.
5. The Content of the Mandate of the National Planning Commission
One of the remarkable things to emerge from the Green Paper is its seemingly innocuous use of words. There is what is called "strategic planning" which is "about providing a coherent vision and strategic outcomes around which policies and programmes need to be developed" (see section 5 on Planning and Policy-Making). The Green Paper claims that it is concerned with this type of planning. If this were the case, COSATU would not have a problem at all with the Green Paper. However, reading through the Green Paper, it is striking to notice that in the majority of cases, it cannot fail but to centre its activities on economic planning-which is not what it is supposed to do. It is true that other NPC internationally are involved in economic development planning, or simply development planning for that matter, but these functions are informed by the country-specific institutional arrangements and socio-economic conditions.
Had the Green Paper remained true to its claim that it wants the NPC to be concerned about "providing a coherent vision and strategic outcomes", we would not be having this discussion. But the Green Paper centres its point of entry through economic development planning and not through building state capacity to implement policy. A number of examples can be marshalled to prove this point:
Example 1: In the very first sentence of the Executive Summary, the Green Paper says: "Growth and development require a long term perspective to frame shorter term trade-offs". But this issue is an economic planning problem, particularly concerned with the formulation and design of an "economic growth and development path". It is therefore not surprising that, over the years and correctly so, the ANC has consistently located, at a provincial level, the formulation of "provincial growth and development strategies" in provincial departments of economic development. Now the Green Paper seeks to dislocate the formulation of a "long term perspective" on economic growth and development from the national Economic Development Department and shift this function to the NPC.
Example 2: The Green Paper sees the NPC to be responsible for managing the relationship between the developmental state and markets, which is once more a question of economic development policy. In section 2, "Blazing a New Trail", the Green Paper mentions that "the state has to play a leading role in shaping the economy", that "markets on their own cannot initiate and lead such fundamental change". In fact this section deals more with economic development questions than "building strategic, organizational and technical capacities" of government, which is what the NPC should be talking about.
Example 3: The discussion based on Galbraith, which attempts to justify the need for "strategic planning", which is in essence economic planning, is overwhelmingly economic in content and form. That discussion is framed within the context of "state and market", it is in terms of strategic planning being essential to finding the correct balance between the role of the state and the role of the market. This, too, is an economic development planning problem. Almost all seminal thinkers on questions of economics and economic development since the 1930's have been concerned with this problem. The Green Paper is clear that in its view, for strategic planning to be effective, it must concern itself with issues such as, among others:
- promoting structural enhancement of the economy through an industrial strategy,
- adopting macroeconomic policies that promote investment and the creation of sustainable jobs
- providing efficient and competitively-prices economic infrastructure
- regulating market activity
- using the fiscus as an instrument of redistribution
- providing public goods
All these matters are a subset of concerns relating to macroeconomic and microeconomic policy development and economic planning. The Green Paper cannot therefore use these issues as the basis to justify the need for the NPC. The reason is that none of these issues concern the role of the NPC in the current institutional arrangement. Most of these issues fall within the ambit of the Economic Development Department. They justify why we formed the Economic Development Department in the first place. Instead, the Green Paper should have elaborated on the need for a long-term vision, and the need to build state capacity as the bases for a dedicated capacity in the Presidency for strategic planning. For example, the NPC cannot determine the types of economic infrastructure we need unless it also formulates a national growth and development strategy for the country. But formulating a national growth and development strategy falls within the mandate of the Economic Development Department, just as much as provincial growth and development strategies fall within the mandate of provincial departments of economic development.
6. The Role and Function of the National Planning Commission
The role of the NPC is two-fold: to provide a long-term vision of where our society should go and to build the technical, organizational and strategic capacities of government with a view to a developmental state. Contrary to the Green Paper, which is concerned about the "development plan", uncovering the drivers of the "long-term development trajectory", "enhancing regional stability", "shaping policies", etc. the NPC's role is to ensure that a plan to implement government policy is in place and, with feedback from the Ministry on Monitoring and Evaluation and Economic Development, should constantly refine its implementation plans and the programmes it has developed in consultation with departments, to ensure that government policy is implemented.
As we mentioned above, the Green Paper is off the mark when it focuses on matters of economic planning and when it urges for the NPC to do "development planning" including "the management of social dynamics and key drivers of social development". What the Green Paper should have focused on was to elaborate on the role of the NPC in developing a long-term vision for the country and how the NPC will embark on "building a developmental state with the capacity to lead the process of national development". Instead, the Green Paper missed the mark and focused on matters that are already dedicated to specific ministries. In so doing it proposes to centralise powers within the Presidency under the Ministry for the NPC, which is in direct contradiction of the shift adopted by the current administration towards a more participatory and inclusive model of governance.
Notably it is proposed in the Green Paper that the NPC should consist of commissioners who are "respected intellectuals, leaders and experts", suggesting a composition that is likely to be very technocratic in nature. Its function to "develop a national plan" therefore is likely to displace accountability to the overall political mandate as determined by the electorate, which would be better achieved with policy development being left up to the relevant line function Ministries before final approval by Cabinet.
Apart from supplanting the role of other ministries and even Cabinet, the institutional arrangements proposed in the Green Paper would also ensure centralisation of the control of the flow of information and communication under the Minister not only between different government and institutional structures but also with civil society. In section 17 the Green Paper states:
"The Minister for National Planning will lead the interaction between the government, the commission and society on the development of a national plan.... through institutions such as the sector forums set up for consultations with the President, NEDLAC and sectoral interest groups...."
The above statement makes no provision for consultation with civil society through a dedicated structured mechanism, but rather through ad hoc arrangements at the instance of the Minister. Further the statement that "such interaction should not become a negotiating forum where ideas are watered down to meet the lowest common interest of stakeholders", does not bode well for expectations of a more participatory role for civil society.
Figure 1 illustrates how the NPC is supposed to operate, within the context of the new institutional arrangement of government. Departments develop policies and programmes, and articulate short, medium and long-term outcomes in their line of function. Departments then tables these output to Cabinet for discussion and approval. Once they are approved, the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Planning chaired by the President and in his absence, the Deputy-President will discuss, together with the relevant Department, how each Department's submission to Cabinet can be integrated into government's long-term plan for socio-economic development.
Once the Inter-Ministerial Committee chaired by the President and in his absence, Deputy President has integrated the Department's submission, the National Planning Commission will then be tasked to develop a plan-of-action to ensure that such a submission is efficiently executed across government Departments and by all spheres, leveraging on existing cross-department complementarities. In other words, the National Planning Commission will be vested with sufficient authority to convene Departments with relevant complementary capacities to develop partnerships so as to implement identified policies from particular Departments and for the National Planning Commission to propose programmes for these Departments that should be undertaken to attain certain policy imperatives. The National Planning Commission will also revert back to the Inter-Ministerial Committee to report on progress and the types of programmes it would have proposed for the implementation of government policy.
Departments will submit their progress reports to the Ministry on Monitoring and Evaluation for the assessment of progress in implementation. The Ministry on Monitoring and Evaluation will table a report to Cabinet on progress, give feedback to Departments, and interact with the Economic Development Department to highlight gaps in policy development and to discuss challenges faced by Departments in the implementation of policy. This interaction is important because it will serve to sharpen and refine policy formulation in the light of practical implementation experience.
Departments will also interact with the Economic Development Department to ensure that their sectoral policies and programmes respond to the general thrust of the economic development planning. This is important because each Department, whilst responsible for its line function, must ultimately contribute towards the realization of the national growth and development strategy. The Ministry on Economic Development will therefore be responsible for bilateral and multi-lateral engagements with Departments on how they may contribute towards the national growth and development path.
The Ministry of Economic Development will lead the formulation of macroeconomic and microeconomic policies and will also be responsible for economic planning. This includes all aspects of economic development, such as local and spatial economic development planning. Once policy is formulated, the Economic Development Department will engage in discussions with the National Treasury on the financing mechanisms for the planned economic development, which will include calibrating the macroeconomic stance required to realize the outcomes of the national growth and development strategy. The Economic Development Department will also engage in the same process with the Department of Trade and Industry in relation to micro-economic policy issues.
As part of what Departments must do, the policy formulation outcomes of the Economic Development Department will be tabled in front of Cabinet for discussion. Once approved, they will go to the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Planning to constitute the long-term socio-economic development plan of the country. On the other hand, the Economic Development Department will also hold discussions with the National Planning Commission to ensure that proposed programmes address the imperatives of the national growth and development strategy. In other words, part of the tasks of the National Planning Commission will have to be the design of programmes that advance the policy imperatives that have been identified by the Economic Development Department.
Figure 1: Location of the National Planning Commission in the Government System
This structure, although not detailed, provides a comprehensive perspective on how the NPC should be located within the current institutional arrangements of government. In our view, the NPC must "look at everything", have a strategic high-level view of the implementation of policy so that it can provide the required co-ordination capacity in the Presidency, identify duplication, align programmes, propose new programmes and identify critical Departments to implement those programmes. The NPC should design an efficient organizational structure and specify technical capacity required to implement policy consistent with that structure. Because economic development is the centre-piece of government activity, the NPC will have to put emphasis on designing programmes and aligning the state apparatus so that it is best positioned to execute a comprehensive national growth and development strategy. It is for this reason that the National Planning Commission and the Economic Development Department need to strike a close working partnership.
Because the NPC needs to propose programmes and align the state apparatus, it needs to work closely with the Department of Public Service and Administration, whose core mandate is to ensure an efficient and people-centred public service. Once these discussions are finalized, budgetary implications of such decisions will have to be referred to the National Treasury for determination. It is therefore important to note that, whilst the National Treasury implements the macro-policy stance that is required to sustain the national growth and a development path, it must also consider budgetary implications of the programmes and alignments that are proposed by the NPC, through its discussions with the DPSA. The DPSA therefore is a critical Department that will ensure that the implementation proposals of the NPC are taken forward to the budgeting process.
Noting our concerns about the lack of provision for a structured mechanism for the role of civil society, we believe that as a minimum the composition of the NPC should be reviewed to allow for numerically meaningful and direct participation within its structure, taking into account such factors as ensuring of a broad range of sectoral, public and community interests. We are also calling for the explicit inclusion of Labour representation in the NPC.
Additionally we believe that consideration should be given to the process involved in identifying the "respected intellectuals, leaders and experts" that the Green Paper proposes will make up the composition of the NPC. While expertise is key to planning of implementation of government policy, it would be of vital importance to ensure that this does not have the effect of diluting the accountability to our political mandate. Additionally such experts should play a supportive technical role to the NPC, without necessarily casting them in the role as commissioners.
It would also be critical that a permanent dedicated and structured mechanism be provided for Parliament to exercise its oversight function over the work of the NPC. Accordingly we propose the establishment of a Joint Standing Committee on Planning and Evaluation. The function of this Committee would be to provide for oversight over the work of both Ministries in the Presidency, namely that relating to the "National Planning Commission" and the "Performance Monitoring and Evaluation".
Finally as reflected in figure above, we see no reason for the provision of a separate institutional structure called the "Secretariat to the Commission", which would only create confusion. We would assume that the normal administrative support and resourcing provided to the Minister, as with other ministries, should be sufficient for the purposes of the Minister as well as members of the NPC.
1. Clarification of the Roles of the Minister, the Presidency, the President
There is a need to enforce the proper distinction between the different roles of the Minister, the Presidency, and the President, as the leader of government. Further the proper relationship between the Minister and Cabinet needs to be defined. Current proposals in the Green Paper attempt to blur these roles and create the very real danger of undermining the Cabinet collective, thereby facilitating unaccountability of officials in the Presidency who may then exploit this to drive their own agenda.
Further in line with concerns indicated earlier, we are proposing that there is a need to compel reverting back to the usage of the correct title of Minister responsible for the National Planning Commission as opposed to the Minister for National Planning.
2. Conclusion
The above analysis of the Green Paper shows that its conceptualization of the National Planning Commission is severely flawed. It duplicates the functions of other Departments and, if not well managed, can initiate disputes that can paralyze the functioning of the state apparatus. On this basis there is a need to re-conceptualize the role of the National Planning Commission to ensure that these issues do not crop up.
In principle, the planning commission concept is powerful and can enable SA to successfully and efficiently address its electoral mandate priorities by aligning the state apparatus to implement the government's strategic plan. However, the challenge is to ensure that the Alliance develops a uniform view on what the National Vision is, based on among others, the electoral mandate and the strategic plan. The Alliance's national vision should then be used by the NPC to conduct broader consultation. If the NPC is left unattended in this fashion, it can become the most powerful stumbling block the movement has ever created for itself.
The NPC requires co-operative leadership, a bureaucracy that is loyal to the principles and ideological orientation of the Alliance and a leadership that fully embraces the policy changes that emerged from Polokwane. Without these three ingredients, the NPC will throw the functioning of the state apparatus into disarray and sabotage the new administration, because it will fail to win the confidence and co-operation of departments, especially if these departments are treated, or seen to be treated, like kindergarten children.
COSATU therefore urges the Ad Hoc Committee to reject the concept of Ministerial Committee under the chairpersonship of the Minister for the National Planning Commission on the grounds that it de facto creates a forum wherein one Minister is above others, and thereby becomes a Prime Minister. The Chairperson of any committee where ministers meet, either as ministers of clusters or all of them together, should be the President of the Republic. In his absence the Chairperson should be the Deputy President of the Republic. Failure to recognize the dangers of what is being proposed in the Green Paper will create two centres of power in the state apparatus and indeed, unending strife among ministers and departments.
Finally, having taken into account all of our comments made herein, we believe that the title of the Green Paper should be amended to that of the "National Planning Commission" and not National Strategic Planning.
Issued by COSATU parliamentary officer, Prakashnee Govender, October 16 2009
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