TERENCE CORRIGAN: Be pragmatic — the SA state is not up to its tasks - Business Day
Terence Corrigan
Jonny Steinberg’s analysis of inequality in our politics made some cogent points about how this manifests through the ability of some to privatise themselves out of failing public services. He also touches, rightly, on the need to realign politics across these divides (“Inequality may shape future of DA”, October 4).
For those of a certain age, Steinberg’s column is a reminder of those passionate debates in the 1990s about which responsibilities should fall to the state and which to the private sector. For the most part this was a sterile, binary conversation. In hindsight it was also profoundly misplaced, for its premises were normative, not pragmatic — what the state should do, rather than what could it do.
As it turns out, after briefly flirting with privatisation and liberalisation the ANC’s statist impulses took charge. But the party lacked not only the requisite depth of administrative talent but also an appreciation of just how critical a skilled public service was to its aspirations.
My colleague Sara Gon and I show in a recent report, In Service of the Public: Reforming SA’s Public Administration, available on our website (irr.org.za) how a failure to inculcate merit, an obsession with political control (without consummate management) and the abuse of the state for patronage have left it widely dysfunctional.
This is hardly disputed. The result is that by now even the ANC — after three decades in power — talks about “building a capable state” and “professionalising the public service”, acknowledging these as novel initiatives, which they are.
Forget what the state should do; much of that is simply beyond its capabilities. Remarkably, even as state failings became apparent, the official response was invariably to castigate critics and demand more intrusive state control — certainly not to relinquish it. Think about the resistance to private power generation, restrictions being lifted only in 2022 after 15 years of load-shedding.
Hence the great middle-class opt-out. Sadly, the mismanagement of the state has undermined the quality of its service offerings along with the reputation even of centres of excellence, some of which indeed exist, even in such badly compromised areas as education and healthcare.
However, seeking a comfortable standard of living and to protect the prospects of their children, middle-class households are frequently unwilling to trust anything associated with the state if they can avoid it.
Meanwhile, in both education and healthcare new legislation proposes expanding state control. The National Health Insurance (NHI) Act envisages establishing a monstrous monopsony. (This will be a state-owned enterprise whose only function will be to collect and spend money, a Transnet-like monolith moving trillions over your cataract surgery and chemotherapy. How does that sound?)
The Basic Education Laws Amendment Act seems tailor-made for education bureaucracies — themselves sites of institutional capture by politically connected union interests, as set out in a ministerial report published in 2016 and then largely forgotten — to assert themselves over schools that are actually functioning. Whether this makes for good politics is debatable, but it would do nothing for our dismal educational outcomes.
Steinberg laments the decamping of middle-class households from state services as this deprives them of important advocates for quality and efficiency. That is fair comment, also obliquely echoing debates in the 1990s. Democratic participation, the argument went, would ensure accountable, developmental governance. But now what is on the books aims to remove much of the scope for that sort of input.
Expect more flight from the public sector; or, indeed, departing the country entirely, if private options are abolished, as the NHI would largely do to health financing, and as some have demanded vis-à-vis private education.
The very real danger is that attempting to compensate for the collapse of state services by corralling the middle class into them will only serve to cripple it. The consequences for SA — for its economic and political future — would be dire.
So what do we do? First, acknowledge the limitations of the SA state. It is detrimental rather than developmental. Second, accept the important role the private sector, and the nonstate realm generally, is playing, and embrace it. Certainly, SA’s less affluent people do, as is evident in the growth of low-fee private schools and out-of-pocket spending on private medical care. Remember that, if anything, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s attempt at a populist appeal through signing the NHI Bill seems to have cost his party support.
Third, rather than penalising nonstate providers, help SA’s poorer people gain access to them. One possibility would be to introduce a system of vouchers for services such as education, providing families a genuine choice for their children.
Fourth, take seriously the imperative of fixing the state. To argue that the state is not capable of meeting its developmental responsibilities is not to say that it should not. Refocusing the public service on its core duties, with a strictly meritocratic ethic, and empowering managers to handle operations (giving them appropriate political support where needed), SA will be able reshape its public offerings.
Above all, protect and nurture excellence where it exists. Where services are competitive, state institutions may be able to build credibility and attract users from across the population, and generously contribute to the betterment of society.
More than anything, as we at the Institute of Race Relations have argued, SA needs a growing economy. This is not possible without a frankly pragmatic approach to the country’s ailments. And perhaps this is the path to bridging SA’s divides.
Corrigan is projects & publications manager at the Institute of Race Relations.