Why cast aside a solution to problems of public administration?

An ingenious plan devised by public servants and put on ice needs to be revived

● Failures of governance are an existential threat to South Africa. Many of these problems are the result of deficiencies in the system of public administration. Incredibly, some dedicated public servants found a solution. Even more incredibly, it was buried.

In South African public administration, the battle between political discretion and merit-based appointments has persisted. Despite the constitutional mechanisms and jurisprudence that have begun reducing the overbearing influence of politicians in departmental matters, the country has struggled to reshape the public sector as capable and effective.

The constitution, in its quest to dismantle the legacy of apartheid, granted broad powers to the incumbent administration to transform the state apparatus.

While well-intentioned, this approach blurred the lines between politics and administration, leaving senior appointments vulnerable to the whims of politicians. Although the constitution includes safeguards and counter-majoritarian institutions, such as Chapter 9 institutions, these measures have failed to maintain the relative autonomy of political and administrative offices.

In South Africa today, the ANC’s “cadre deployment” policy has attracted the lion’s share of critical attention. The party has been heavily criticised, most recently by the judicial inquiry into state capture, for gaming the appointment process by preselecting candidates for key state positions. Cadre deployment, however, is a symptom rather than a cause.

What makes it possible for the ANC to manipulate the recruitment process in the first place is that it is already highly politicised by design.

In this regard, the New South Institute recently launched a report, “Personalising and De-personalising Power”, which considered the legislative and regulatory stipulations for the appointment of senior civil servants in key state institutions — among others, the National Treasury, the commissioner of police, the chief of intelligence and the head of the prosecuting authority.

What we found, astonishingly, is that in almost every one of these situations there are hardly any minimum requirements. Moreover, all such appointments are either at the discretion of the president or a relevant minister. In other words, the system of recruiting senior civil servants provides maximum discretion to the executive authority.

This is why cadre deployment is so effective (and so debilitating). If the ANC deployment committee instructs a minister to appoint a specific candidate, he or she has the legal discretion to do so.

An obvious remedy would be to strengthen what is referred to in the US as the merit protection system: introducing stricter requirements for the appointment of senior managers, professionalising recruitment and candidate evaluation processes, setting up an independent commission to oversee appointment procedures, and so on.

Nowhere in the world has the introduction of such a system been free from pressure or mistakes in implementation.

It could not be otherwise in South Africa. What is required, apart from the necessary legal reforms, is an implementation strategy well grounded in the political economy of reform.

The issue is that public debate in South Africa tends to focus too much on policy formulation, usually at the expense of policy implementation.

There is a growing sense that there needs to be a better distinction between administrative and political office, and the government has indicated that it is interested in implementing reforms in this direction. However, there is little clarity on how to reform, or how to sustain reform over the long term.

Current proposals in South Africa moot a reinvigorated Public Service Commission to vet applications, together with a National School of Government to provide a suitable pipeline of candidates.

Given the recent history of state capture and of the hollowing out of many public institutions, there is concern that such a centralised schema would be ripe for political capture.

Moreover, these proposals don’t adequately face up to the fact of high administrative decentralisation. Is it realistic to expect provincial and regional power brokers simply to give up their discretion in appointments when they do not have to legally?

It is not, which is why current policy proposals don’t adequately anticipate the kind of resistance and opposition these reforms are likely to generate.

What other options are there?

In the Public Administration Management Bill of 2008, for example, the department of public service & administration ingeniously traced a comprehensive

Today this work has largely been forgotten and current proposals for the professionalisation of the public service represent a setback relative to it

path to institutional reform that both satisfied difficult constitutional provisions and also recognised the highly devolved and decentralised character of governance in South Africa. Like the US and French systems, it offered to set basic state norms and standards for all public administrations in respect of ethics, operations and conditions of service including salaries and appointments, creating national offices to monitor their implementation and oversee compliance.

In this way, the law offered to respect the constitutional right of local governments, the judiciary and state-owned entities to run their own affairs, including in making appointments, while also setting out disciplining processes within a standardised framework.

This breakthrough approach was the brainchild of then public services & administration minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, and was seen to a truncated end by minister Lindiwe Sisulu in the form of the Public Administration Management Act. In its original form it would have replaced the Public Service Act altogether.

Today this work has largely been forgotten and current proposals for the professionalisation of the public service represent a setback relative to it.

This is a very South African story.

There is a great deal of talent and goodwill in this country. In key departments outstanding public servants developed solutions to Herculean problems, only to see them buried or cast aside by a volatile political culture or through indifference or even malice.

The struggle to professionalise public administration in South Africa has become an existential one for the country. The solution may have already been found; it is a matter now of reviving it.