Columnist wins top award
CAPE TIMES columnist Shanil Haricharan has been honoured with Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Public Administration (ICPA) in Ghana for his paper on Operation Sukuma Sakhe (OSS). Dr Haricharan was awarded for his research on lessons in managing across organisational boundaries, based on KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) government’s OSS, which he said was aimed at challenging the common frustration of government’s “silo mentality”.
The award, hosted by the University of Ghana, University of Cape Coast and Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, took place in Accra and Cape Coast in Ghana last week. This was his second ICPA Best Paper Award – the previous one was in 2013, awarded to him in Cape Town, on leadership transitions in the South African public service. At the conference, he was also appointed by the Centre of West African Studies (CWAS) based at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), as an academic researcher.
Operation Sukuma Sakhe, which in Zulu means “Stand Up and Build”, was launched by the KZN government in April 2011. Haricharan said the KZN Office of the Premier set up community level, wardbased war rooms that is the crucial link between vulnerable households to government services and social partners to addresses the weak co-ordination and collaboration in service delivery. He said the award has inspired him to spend more time writing academically. “As I spend most of my time as a practitioner working with government’s senior managers in building their leadership and management capability and the performance of their departments, it was an honour to be recognised by the international academic fraternity.
“The award shows the importance and value of practitioners’ involvement in academic research,” he said. Haricharan teaches on the Master’s programme in development policy and practice at the Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice at UCT. More than 200 papers were received and 45 were accepted for the conference in Ghana.
More than half the papers were from leading Chinese universities. According to Thomas Stanton, the ICPA Academic Chairperson and chairperson of the peer review panel, Haricharan’s paper linked theory and concepts with practice. His paper outlined the OSS integrated service delivery model and showcased its workings, achievements, constraints and lessons. “While showing the successes of OSS, I also highlighted the shortcomings, so it was balanced and objective. I assume it’s the advantage I have working in academia and on the ground,” he said. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) and UNAids have lauded the OSS model as a best practice model.
“The OSS has attempted to counter the dominant public governance models and approaches to service delivery to the severely marginalised communities. Instead, an integrated, bottoms-up, household-centric, and social partnership driven service delivery model was introduced through OSS.
“The Presidency and the Department of Public Service and Administration should support mainstreaming the lessons from the OSS model across government. Actually, KZN’s Office of the Premier continued with the War on Poverty programme introduced by former president Mbeki, despite the withdrawal of leadership support (during) President Zuma’s term of office,” he said.