The bureaucratic buffer that can save a state

Lost in the swirl of the demented South African political news cycle last week was an absolutely critical announcement: from now on, directors-general in the government will report to the president. In other words, we may have seen the end of new ministers strolling into ministries or departments and almost instantly suspending or firing the sitting director-general.

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was a serial DG abuser when she was a minister, but almost all of Jacob Zuma’s many cabinet reshuffles meant that some blameless DG would be accused of a breach of the Public Finance Management Act and be suspended on full pay while some toady audit firm carried out a long and expensive “forensic” investigation that never seemed to include an interview with the suspended figure themselves.

One of the central tenets of the National Development Plan, drawn up by Cyril Ramaphosa and Trevor Manuel, adopted as official ANC policy in Mangaung in 2012 and completely ignored by Zuma, is the notion of a “capable state”. Remember?

But you can’t have a capable state if you keep firing the people running it. What Ramaphosa has done now is the beginning of what we should all hope becomes a much more professional, experienced and focused bureaucracy.

Ideally, what Ramaphosa should do is appoint a head of the civil service, a senior bureaucrat who works out of the Presidency and who can report to the cabinet but has the power to keep the rest of the civil service independent of political interference.

Some of you may remember the very funny British TV series Yes Minister, in which deeply experienced civil servants pretend to obey idiot ministers with strange ideas. Under pressure to save money, the general affairs minister says to his DG: “I think we’ll scrap the Royal Navy.”

“Oh that’s a wonderful idea, Minister,” shoots back the bureaucrat. “Very courageous.” “Is it? Good,” says the preening minister before wilting as he realises that doing anything “courageous” in politics is usually the last thing you do in politics.

The point being that a capable state isn’t run by politicians. It is run by trained and experienced bureaucrats. It was the exiled ANC’s greatest mistake not to appreciate this. Swapo trained its officials and was ready to run Namibia when the time came. Chilean exiles under General Augusto Pinochet swarmed all over US universities and when Pinochet fell, that country’s bureaucracy saved it. At all levels, Chilean bureaucrats are astonishingly efficient. It’s a matter of pride.

The same can happen in South Africa. A head of the civil service would decide who was to be DG of what department. They would have a string of bureaucrats moving through Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and Cambridge university courses all the time. South African universities like Wits, UCT and Stellenbosch offer public administration degrees and some are really excellent. The job would require legal protection from political interference, so Ramaphosa would have to choose carefully. You want a stickler for the rules, a sort of kindly sergeant-major type who will immediately intervene to help out a brother or sister DG under undue ministerial pressure to authorise a flight, sneak a gift or skip a promised appearance in parliament.

What you want to achieve with a distinct, if not totally independent, civil service is a tradition of excellence in service, of ignoring the politics and keeping the machine of state running. Politicians are by nature volatile and unpredictable, the two qualities you most badly do not want in a bureaucrat.

There’s a ministerial handbook, we always hear. It should be up to DGs to know what’s in it and to enforce it. Until now they haven’t had the power. Led by a quality citizen, the club of DGs, under the watchful embrace of the Presidency, could be a huge force for good in South Africa. Until now, a politician has been able to walk into a department as a new minister and get expensive new cars, travel wherever, hire family. Whatever. That will now end, I think we can presume.

Try, if you can bear it, to imagine what this country would feel like had Dlamini-Zuma won the ANC leadership election last December. Ramaphosa has got rid of Tom Moyane at the South African Revenue Service, survived a Moody’s rating, removed the corrupt boards at Eskom, Denel, SAA and soon, it seems, Transnet. Zuma is on trial. Ramaphosa has fired 10 dreadful ministers, set up a determined drive to attract investment into South Africa and now is strengthening our public administration. Not bad for two-and-a-bit months.

And I reckon we ain’t seen nothing yet.