Letter: Public service reform’s big challenge - Business Day
Your editorial on the Roman Cabanac affair correctly noted that the issue is larger than the appointment of a controversial person and raises the issue of the talent pool available to the DA (“Fixing the DA’s talent problem is easier than it thinks”, September 4).
I would go further and suggest that it foregrounds something more profound: the nature of a reformed public service, and how this is understood and received by SA’s people. Public service reform is a seminal challenge confronting the country. As a recent Blueprint for Growth study by my colleague, Sara Gon, and myself — “In Service of the Public: Reforming SA’s Public Administration” — argues, that three decades into democracy government is now promoting the “professionalisation” of the public service is testimony to the catastrophic missteps taken so far.
A failure to ensure technocratic state capacity has left us with state structures that are frequently unable to manage themselves, let alone their assigned responsibilities, and certainly not the aggressive developmental mandates envisaged for them. ANC MP and later public service commissioner Maria Rantho once emphatically declared: “It is imperative to get rid of merit as the overriding principle in the appointment of public servants.”
The baleful consequences of elevating political loyalty and reliability over skill and experience demand a fundamental reorientation of recruitment, promotion and management of the public service. Something like the ANC’s cadre deployment programme has no justification whatsoever. But this needs to be understood correctly. Cadre deployment as the ANC instituted it consciously sought to bring constitutionally impartial institutions under party control.
Driving agendas
Depoliticisation is not only crucial, but also constitutionally mandated. For this reason we argue for an empowered and reinvigorated Public Service Commission to replace the politically inflected appointment procedures that have long held sway. However, the distinction between administration and political functions is rather more blurred in ministerial offices — these are inherently political, and linked to the incumbency of the principal.
Driving political agendas is part of what ministerial appointments are meant to do. (One might cheekily suggest that cadre deployment in these offices is quite acceptable.) It comes with risks, which have nothing to do with the political fallout a minister might face for a contentious hire. There are real dangers that such positions could be used as patronage, and that those engaged might lack the skills or experience needed for the functioning of a ministry. This will in turn have implications for the operation of the portfolio and the activities for which it is responsible.
There are real-world administrative consequences for injudicious choices. This side of public service reform has not received the attention it deserves; it should be properly and thoroughly thought through. Much of the public discussion has failed to recognise this. Indeed, some of it seems to have conflated the head of a ministry with that of a department. Rather, as your editorial indicates, there are learning moments in this matter, and they have to do with the form of public administration, rather than the outlook of any individual.
Terence Corrigan
Project & publications manager, Institute of Race Relations