Within the West there are two conflicting conceptions of South Africa's future. The one is that South Africa will lead the continent along the path of political and economic recovery. President Thabo Mbeki has become a vocal proponent of the idea of an African Renaissance. And the view expressed by one senior British government official was that "Africa needs a successful South Africa, and the world needs a successful South Africa. Mbeki is critical to that success."
The other is the ever present, though often unspoken, concern that South Africa will "go the way of the rest of the continent". These fears were amplified by the ANC government's refusal to unequivocally condemn the violence and intimidation in the run up to the Zimbabwean parliamentary elections, and its subsequent recognition of those elections as "free and fair".
Despite the fact that the example of the rest of the continent weighs so heavily on on the political imagination in South Africa, the post-colonial experience of the rest of the continent is simply not a point of reference in South African debate.
For the ANC one either ascribes to President Mbeki's vision of an "African Renaissance" (and what more worthy goal could there be) or one is an "Afro-pessimist" or a "prophet of doom".
The political opposition meanwhile does not generally draw analogies to the rest of Africa, partly out of a belief in South African exceptionalism and partly out of sensitivity to the charge of racism.
Yet if the ANC does end up following the same trajectory as other African nationalist governments after independence, it will not be the inexplicable result of a cruel game of chance, but because, as the saying goes, those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
In recent academic writings on Africa there is an increasing attempt to explain the weakness of African states, ones which manage to be at once overbearing and ineffectual. Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, drawing on [Max] Weber, write that the emergence and institutionalisation of the modern state is dependent, not only on the state acquiring a monopoly of the legitimate use of force, but also on the "successful establishment of a truly independent bureaucracy". Such a modern bureaucracy is only possible where appointment and promotion are made on merit, and where there are real bureaucratic career paths [see the founding document of the British civil service here.]
Africa though, the authors write, remains stuck in a patrimonialist mould, where "the ruler allocates political office to his clients on the basis of patronage, rather than according to the criteria of professionalism and competence which characterise the civil service."
Thus, within the continent, appointments to positions within the public service, even at a fairly junior level, are made according to the wishes of political leaders. The overriding criterion of selection is loyalty to the ruling elites rather than any qualification or competence. The author's exclude from their analysis the "admittedly very different case of South Africa".
Yet, if anything, South Africa has experienced a move towards neo-patriomonliasm over the past five years. As a result of deliberate ANC policies there has been a rapid erosion of bureaucratic norms and standards.
In the run up to the 1994 elections party spokesmen made the assurance that under an ANC government people would be appointed on the basis of ability to avoid political patronage; and that the "former" political activists then being integrated into state structures would set aside old political loyalties and become "non-partisan" public servants.
In 1996 South Africa adopted a constitution which (supposedly) enshrined the principle of a non-partisan civil service, and which protected the independence of various statutory bodies such as the central bank.
From then on though, the ANC began moving towards an overt policy of bringing state institutions under party direction. The ANC began shifting senior politicians from parliament to key positions within the state. And in early 1997 the ANC admonished its members within the civil service for being insufficiently loyal to the party: "You are not ANC cadres only ‘after hours'."
In July 1997 a document was released in the run up to the ANC's 50th National Conference, which called on the ANC to "wield and transform the instruments of power" through inter-alia "a cadre policy ensuring that the ANC plays a leading role in all centres of power".
A resolution on "Cadre Policy" was duly adopted at the National Conference in December mandating the party leadership "to deploy cadres to various organs of state, including the public service and to other centres of power in society".
The resolution called for the establishment of "deployment committees" at each level of government; to oversee the appointment of party activists to positions in the state, and to ensure that they remained informed by and accountable to the party leadership afterwards.
The following year the new elected ANC leadership under Thabo Mbeki began aggressively implementing this policy, going so far as to threaten to change the Constitution if it got in the way.
In the event the existing constitutional protections proved ineffectual and the ANC was now able to deploy senior politicians to head up the army, the internal revenue service, the prosecution authority, the central bank, the public broadcaster, and the government communication service.
The intentions of this policy were most clearly spelt out in a party document released that year which stated, "Transformation of the state entails, first and foremost, extending the power" of the ANC "over all levers of power: the army, the police, the bureaucracy, intelligence structures, the judiciary, parastatals, and agencies such as regulatory bodies, the public broadcaster, the central bank and so on."
This new political class really emerged out into the open at the ANC's National General Council (an interim conference of the party) in July 2000.
A discussion document prepared for the Council baldly stated that the first strategic task of the ANC was the seizure of state power: "Political revolutions are about the capture of state power, and the use of that power to advance the purposes of the revolutionary forces..."
At the Council itself the assembled delegates, now including a large number of senior civil servants, were informed by the ANC secretary general, Kgalema Motlanthe, that "The principles of Democratic Centralism continue to guide our structures" and that they had "a responsibility to abide by, defend and implement" the decisions of the party leadership.
The report of the Council acknowledged that while the party had made "considerable progress in the deployment of political and administrative heads" our "transformation objectives arise from the fact that the movement is not yet in control of all levers of state power."
The report therefore called for a deepening of party control within the civil service, particularly at middle management level. It also called for an expansion of the scope and reach of state "transformation" within "the security forces, the judiciary, parastatals and regulatory bodies."
Although information is sketchy it does appear that this resolution is now being implemented. In August this year [2001] the Public Servants Association (a non-ANC aligned public sector trade union) in the Free State complained that after the short-listing of four candidates for posts in the provincial Education department "an instruction was given by the senior management... that the lists of candidates must be forwarded to the offices of the ANC for their ‘recommendations'."
According to a source in the Association this was not an isolated incident, "there is definitely an instruction that requires the submission of names of candidates for posts to be vetted by ANC structures before an appointment or promotion is approved."
The ANC has pursued this policy hand in hand with the Africanisation of the state. The principle of promoting and appointing civil servants on the basis of meritocracy has been progressively abandoned, ostensibly in order to make all levels of the public service reflect, in the shortest possible time, the racial composition of the society as a whole. As one ANC Member of Parliament injudiciously put it, "it is imperative to get rid of merit as the overriding principle in the appointment of public servants".
The ANC has placed an almost complete block on the career paths of any remaining (non-ANC) white civil servants. A senior advocate in the prosecution service described the effect as follows: "The department is supposed to render a service, and the best service is supposed to be the criterion [for promotion.] What now happens is that promotion does not depend on performance but on race. The result is that whites are too demoralised to perform because there's nothing in it for them-- no incentive. Conversely, there is no incentive for people of colour to perform because promotion is not dependent on performance."
The space opened up by the abolition of individual merit has been filled by these political appointments, racial patronage and nepotism. A mediocracy is steadily being established: the best person for the job is seldom, if ever, appointed to the position.
Thus, the South African bureaucracy is increasingly conforming to a pattern where "the ruler allocates political office to his clients on the basis of patronage." These policies have, as in the rest of Africa, had devastating effects on the institutional capacity of government departments, parastatals and the judiciary.
With the collapse of the distinction between party and state, internal party feuds and divisions now play themselves out within the state structures. Earlier this year [2001] the Minister of Safety & Security announced that three senior ANC members were being investigated for "plotting" against the President.
The investigation was, it appeared, an attempt to snuff out a putative challenge to Mbeki's presidency of the ANC. It emerged that, at one point, the chief of police had met with an informer in the toilets of the Pretoria station to hand him a sophisticated listening device. While the informer had then gone on to meet with one of the "plotters", the chief of police had gone back to police headquarters to listen to the conversation.
But why has Mbeki pursued such policies when their deleterious consequences are evident across the entire continent? The answer can be broken down into three component parts: the political, the personal, and the ideological.
When Mbeki returned from a lifetime spent in exile, he had no domestic constituency of his own. So from early on he set about cultivating the most important constituency of them all: the party itself. Opening up the public service to political patronage, under the guise of "affirmative action", was a way of delivering to, and ensuring the loyalty of, the new political class.
Mbeki is a person with an extremely fragile sense of self. He finds criticism, whether from within the party or outside of it, intolerable. As a consequence he surrounds himself with yes-men. After Mbeki's election as ANC President in 1997 Nelson Mandela warned his successor against the temptation of using his "powerful position to settle scores with his detractors, marginalize them and in certain cases get rid of them and surround himself with yes men and women." It is advice Mbeki has not heeded.
Finally, there is the ideological. Mbeki a firm adherent to the principles of "democratic centralism": The ANC has adopted a "correct plan", the time for debate and discussion has passed, and what is now needed is "unity in action" (this theme has been returned to in a number of Mbeki's speeches this year). In order for the plan to be implemented across the state and social apparatus loyal and obedient party members are needed in all key positions.
James Myburgh
November 2001
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