A competent civil service

6 October 2020

In his weekly newsletter on 20 January 2020 the President wrote: “A capable state starts with the people who work in it. Officials and managers must possess the right financial and technical skills and other expertise. We are committed to end the practice of poorly qualified individuals being parachuted into positions of authority through political patronage. There should be consequences for all those in the public service who do not do their work.”

However, in his speech on Monday 6 October 2020 after the meeting of the ANC’s National Executive Meeting het confirmed the ANC’s outdated viewpoint that the ANC must be strengthened with, amongst others, deployment of ANC cadres to the state.

We once again refer the President to section 197 (3) of the Constitution, which provides: “(3) No employee of the public service may be favoured or prejudiced only because that person supports a particular political party or cause.” It can therefore not be accepted that either the ANC or the ANC president can hold the view that loyal cadres will be deployed to the state to build and strengthen their party.

One would have thought that the devastating effects of state capture and corruption would have convinced the ANC of the outdated methodology of loyalty to the party in the first instance. On Wednesday 17 July 2019 Mr Jacob Zuma told the Zondo-Commission that “loyalty to the party [ANC] was one of the prerequisites for individuals being appointed to the boards of State-Owned Enterprises or government positions.”  It seems as if this is still the viewpoint of the ANC and its leadership.

Through the ANC’s enforcing of cadre deployment, the ANC absolutely politicised the public service and other semi-state-owned institutions, with catastrophic consequences for the failed state through state capture, corruption and mismanagement. A once-successful state infrastructure fell into disrepair through mismanagement, bad management or simply through incompetence, because loyal party cadres had been put into positions of responsibility for which they had not been trained and had no experience – except that they were loyal to the ANC. 

If Mr Ramaphosa is serious about a social compact then a competent public service  must be dependant on the premise that it will include all South Africans and NOT the unconstitutional viewpoint that it will extend to loyal card carrying members of the ANC.  A competent public service can only be achieved if party loyalty and discriminatory measures are renounced, and if the focus is far rather placed on merit, expertise, accountability and the acceptance of responsibility. Anything else would simply allow the state to sink even further into failure.

Issued by Jan Bosman, Chief Secretary, Afrikanerbond, 6 October 2020