Long, winding road to a reformed state

President Cyril Ramaphosa pledged in his first state of the nation address to streamline the Cabinet. The DA has since called for a long-delayed overhaul of the ministerial handbook, which details senior politicians’ entitlements.

The handbook is a wonderful comic creation. The only obvious obstacle to profligacy it presents is that ministers and their spouses can pick flowers planted for ornamental purposes on ministerial estates only “after consulting horticulturists of the Department of Public Works”.

Although disruption of the gravy train would indeed be welcome, Ramaphosa has indicated that he is more interested in the capacity of the whole current “configuration of government” to deliver on policy objectives. A proactive, strategic and joined-up system of government is unlikely to be fashioned easily out of the current partial shambles.

Two decades of tinkering — including a cabinet cluster system, national-provincial “MinMECs”, implementation forums and a planning commission — have not yet resulted in passably effective co-ordination of the activities of national departments, provinces, municipalities and parastatals.

Different parts of the state machine continue to impose unnecessary costs upon one another, and on SA’s citizens.

A recombination of government departments is one likely reaction to the proliferation of ministries under former president Jacob Zuma.

Departmental minnows such as small business development, sport and recreation, science and technology, water, arts and culture, and military veterans, are likely to be absorbed into larger entities.

Telecommunications Minister Siyabonga Cwele and his communications counterpart, Nomvula Mokonyane, are likely to be joined together again after 2019’s elections.

Perhaps more improbably, “governance” departments could be more or less eliminated. The work of the Department of Public Enterprises could be allocated to functional departments such as energy and transport. The management of the public service could be absorbed into the Presidency.

Such structural reforms save less money than might be expected, and often simply transfer cross-departmental co-ordination problems to the inside of larger departments. Where, then, can we look for more productive reforms?

Half of the national budget moves more or less directly to the provinces. The discretion of provincial governments to spend this money as they see fit could be reined in.

An asymmetrical settlement, no doubt hard to impose, might oblige provinces like the North West to demonstrate a capacity to allocate resources productively before they are progressively freed from Pretoria’s conditionalities.

There is a communications challenge across the public service. Policy proposals need to be translated into ordinary (or at least intelligible) language so that they can be understood by the public servants who are supposed to implement them and by the citizens who are supposed to benefit from them.

The Presidency, meanwhile, has been getting bigger without getting much better. It needs to provide a strategic counterpoint to the Treasury, which is most properly concerned with efficiency and value for money.

The establishment of a Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation has built a promising foundation for an effective “information state”.

But the Presidency probably needs a more nimble and political trouble-shooter to bring to bear the authority of the highest office in the land on the most intractable conflicts between departments. In particular, there is a case for a small and high-profile delivery unit to focus on unblocking implementation bottlenecks.