Writing last week on PoliticsWeb, the historian Hermann Giliomee disputed claims that there were major similarities between the cadre deployment policies of the present South African government and the promotion of members of the Afrikaner Broederbond by the previous one after it defeated the United Party (UP) in the general election in 1948.
One of his key points was that under the National Party (NP) government, “civil servants, whether belonging to the Broederbond or not, still had to work their way up through the ranks, acquire the necessary expertise and experience to do the work, and compete with each other for promotion”.
Professor Giliomee, a former president of the South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR), also argued that the replacement of UP-aligned civil servants “occurred gradually without any abrupt loss of expertise in the civil service”.
By contrast, the current minister of public service and administration, Ayanda Dlodlo, told Parliament in November last year that 26% of senior managers in the public service did not have the “requisite qualifications” for the posts they occupied - although that was an improvement on an earlier figure of 35%.
At municipal level, the minister of water and sanitation, Senzo Mchunu, said earlier this month that “at least” a third of the 144 municipalities that were also water services authorities were dysfunctional. “More than 50% have no, or very limited, technical staff”. The reliability of services had been declining, so that only 67.8% of household had access to a “reliable water supply service”.
All these figures should shock everyone, but they don’t of course, for the simple reason that we all know that this is how the country runs under rule by the African National Congress (ANC). No wonder the director general at the National Treasury, Dondo Mogajane, said recently that “the things that define a failing state are beginning to show, where we don’t care about the poor and improving their lives”.