We can either have cadre deployment, or a capable state. But not both.

The mismanagement and corruption of the public service is a crisis that directly impacts every South African on a daily basis in the form of, among others, poor service delivery, decaying infrastructure, higher taxes, and forced spending on private services that the state is supposed to deliver. Stories of looting and mismanagement at state-owned enterprises, in schools and hospitals, and in myriad other branches of the public service, also account for a large share of daily media reports.

Indeed, the ongoing revelations around state capture that continue to dominate press reports are all part of the story of state collapse in South Africa. However, despite the visibility of public service decline, the root causes of the crisis, as well as the reforms needed to reverse the decline in the state, hardly ever receive serious media attention.

In my capacity as a Senior Research Specialist at Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies (ISS) program, I have spent the last three-and-a-half years travelling throughout the developing world, studying and publishing research on instances of successful public service reform. From Rwanda and Ethiopia to Liberia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Kenya and Tanzania, I have had the privilege of interviewing and learning from dedicated reformers who are determined to build effective, competent and professional public service institutions that do exactly that – serve the public.

Among the most striking and important lessons I have learnt on this journey is that there is no predefined set of conditions that fosters public sector reform. No government has to sit back and wait for a magical set of circumstances to appear before they are able to begin building a capable state.

From Vietnam, a one-party state of 95 million people; to Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim-majority democracy that is home to 264 million people; and small, landlocked Rwanda, with its 12 million people under a centralized presidential system – all of these widely divergent countries have taken proactive steps, nestled within their distinctive local contexts, to begin transforming bureaucracies into fit-for-purpose public services.

In comparison, despite having access to greater resources and better infrastructure than many of our peers, South Africa’s state capacity appears to be regressing while other countries move forward. Tax collection – a fundamental function of any state – is perhaps the most vivid example.

Over the past year, my colleagues and I have worked on a project to document cases where developing country governments have significantly improved tax administration. As I learned about Indonesia’s efforts to coordinate tax collection across hundreds of different islands and a land mass that is 1.5 times larger than South Africa’s,[1] as well as fantastical technological advances that enabled small business owners in Rwanda to declare and pay their income taxes using only a basic mobile phone,[2] the Nugent Commission of Inquiry into the South African Revenue Service (SARS) was laying bare the collapse of this once-proud tax authority.

Ironically, ISS previously published a case study on how SARS had become one of the more efficient revenue collectors in the world.[3] In my interviews with tax officials across Africa, many pointed out that SARS used to be a continental role model. But by 2018, as it emerged that SARS’ IT infrastructure faced collapse and that the tax collector was only operating at 20% to 25% of its previous capacity,[4] it was clear that South Africa’s flagship state institution had been reduced to a shadow of its former self.

The disgraceful testimony recently delivered to the Nugent Commission by SARS’ IT head, Mmamathe Makhekhe-Mokhuane, who reportedly earns an annual salary of more than R3 million,[5] seemed to perfectly encapsulate all that had gone wrong with the organization.

With trust in the police in the doldrums,[6] 80% of public schools deemed dysfunctional,[7] and nearly every state-owned enterprise – including the Eskom behemoth with its R367 billion in debt[8] – in a state of seemingly terminal decline, the collapse of SARS in a context where some of our peers are powering ahead offers final confirmation that South Africa’s public service is in desperate need of fundamental reform.

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At the heart of the public sector collapse in South Africa sits the ANC policy of cadre deployment. As a tool to extend the party’s grip over all parts of the public service, including state-owned enterprises, it stands in direct contrast to the approaches taken by both developed and developing countries in their efforts to build capable states. By making political party loyalty the sine qua non for appointment to positions in the state that are supposed to be separate from party politics, cadre deployment has, over two decades, prevented the South African public service from excelling. Instead of appointing officials on the basis of skill and merit, cadre deployment selects officials on the basis of their party loyalty and ability to funnel tenders and patronage back to the party.

Here too, the case of SARS is an instructive one. One of the key factors that initially enabled SARS to become an outlier amid general state decline was the 1997 adoption of legislation that made the revenue service autonomous from many of the country’s public service rules.[9] SARS’ status as a semi-autonomous institution, combined with the ANC’s initial appreciation of the central importance of tax collection to sustaining the state, at first insulated it from the worst effects of cadre deployment.

But even a relatively autonomous institution like SARS eventually collapsed under the weight of political interference and cadre deployment with the appointment by Jacob Zuma of Tom Moyane. Even SARS, initially regarded as an island of excellence in a sea of rising patronage, was eventually flooded.

SARS’s story reveals that we need much more fundamental change. Instead of basing appointments on political criteria – perhaps with the exception of one or two islands of excellence – the solution to the capacity crisis in the South African state is to appoint public servants on the basis of their ability to do the job.

Importantly, this does not mean that all political direction will be removed from the public service. Even in merit-based public services, the governing party still appoints ministers, advisers, and personal spokespeople on political grounds.

It is right that these senior elected office-bearers and their advisers should provide political leadership to the state departments they head. However, all other officials who are tasked with implementation – from directors-general on down – should be selected on the basis of their ability to perform their duties as public servants, not as political sycophants.

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A key element in transforming a patronage state into a capable state lies in removing power over appointments from a political body – in this case, the ANC’s so-called “deployment committee” – and vesting it in the hands of a non-partisan and professional Public Service Commission (PSC). South Africa seemed to be heading in this direction during the negotiations to end apartheid with the adoption of the 1993 interim Constitution. Section 210 of the 1993 Constitution provided for the creation of a PSC with some real teeth.[10]

Not only did that document envision a PSC with the power to conduct enquiries and make recommendations to the cabinet, but it could also “give directions” on the “organisation and administration of departments and the public service” as well as on personnel practices, appointments, promotions and transfers in the public service.[11] Crucially, subject to a few limitations, any recommendation or direction issued by the Commission had to be “implemented by the appropriate person or institution within six months.”[12]

Unfortunately, the final 1996 Constitution pulled the PSC’ teeth. Perhaps precisely as a result of some of the constitution-writers’ fear that a powerful and independent Commission would undermine the potential for cadre deployment and patronage, section 196 of the final Constitution only gave the PSC the authority “to investigate, monitor and evaluate” the public service.[13] Crucially, the final Constitution completely scrapped the requirement that the government had to implement recommendations or directives issued by the PSC in a timeous manner.

In effect, between 1993 and 1996, South Africa’s vision for the PSC morphed from an institution with some powers to enforce compliance with the principles of a capable state, to one that could only monitor and report without effective enforcement powers. Instead of pre-emptively enforcing merit-based appointments, the PSC became an organisation only empowered to bemoan destructive appointment practices after the fact[14] – without sufficient power to overrule purely politically-motivated appointments. With a powerful PSC filtering candidates on the basis of merit and clearly defined criteria, it is hard to imagine that a Mmamathe Makhekhe-Mokhuane or Hlaudi Motsoeneng could ever have happened.

Although the principles contained in the 1993 Constitution, if they had made it into the 1996 version, would have helped to stem the current crisis in the state, even the interim Constitution did not go far enough. To truly fix the public service, South Africa will ultimately require a total legislative – even constitutional – revamp of the PSC, which turns it into a competent and professional body with the power to direct appointments in all non-political ranks of the public service.

At the same time, a clear legal framework should define those positions, such as cabinet members, deputy ministers, advisers and personal spokespeople, that can be appointed on the basis of political considerations. With the exception of such overtly political positions, the PSC must be empowered to directly manage, supervise and nullify appointments across the public service, including state-owned enterprises.

South Africa would do well to learn from the approach enshrined in Kenya’s 2010 Constitution, which empowers that country’s PSC to establish and abolish offices in the public service, appoint people to hold or act in those offices, confirm appointments, and to discipline and remove officials across the public service.[15]

Additionally, Kenya’s approach clearly spells out the limited but important exceptions where appointments are open to political considerations, or where the PSC’s involvement would be inappropriate. The well-defined exceptions include ambassadorial or diplomatic posts, the personal staff of the president, as well as appointments to other independent regulatory bodies like the Judicial Service Commission.[16]

Until it follows the lead of Kenya and other developing countries that have prioritized the creation of a meritorious public service and the elimination of toxic practices like cadre deployment, South Africa will not be able to stop the corruption and inefficiency that have crippled the state. Creating a powerful and well capacitated PSC with authority over all professional appointments in the public service is a key requirement for wresting control away from the ANC’s deployment committee – the original state capturers.

Dr. Leon Schreiber is a Senior Research Specialist at Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies program and the author of "Coalition Country: South Africa after the ANC" (Tafelberg). These are his personal views.