A public service of incompetents the root cause of corruption

WHEN the new South Africa dawned and its citizens found themselves in a dispensation in which their human rights were guaranteed for the first time – the state being obliged to “respect, protect, promote, and fulfil” the rights in the Bill of Rights – there was cause for celebration. A new order, in which transparency, accountability and responsiveness in governance would hold sway, would be established in accordance with the founding values of the new consensus-based supreme constitution.

The principles and values governing the public administration would include high ethical standards, efficiency, fairness, sound human resource (HR) management practices, accountability, participation by citizens and the use of resources in an effective manner.

Perhaps best of all, politicians and public servants would be constrained by the values of the constitution – any law or conduct inconsistent with it would be invalid and would be liable to be struck down if impugned by a challenge in the independent new-order courts.

Irrational decisions, in regard to either policies or appointments of officials, would be vulnerable to attack by constitutionalists seeking to keep on the high road to the future as envisaged in our collective, consensus-based blueprint.

Healing the divisions of the past and the enjoyment of unity in diversity are the stuff of the preamble to the constitution.

They are the very reason for creating a new order out of the ashes of apartheid, and the failure of the ideas that motivated the Soviet Union and China to be the main backers of the liberation movements.

With our “rainbow nation” on life support, our dreams of a non-racial and non-sexist future in tatters, and our youth without work or any prospect of getting work anytime soon due to the failure of the education system to prepare most of them adequately for anything other than menial labour of the kind in short supply in a modern knowledge-based economy, we are in trouble.

Jakkie Cilliers, of the Institute for Security Studies, says: “Corruption and patronage at the top have made tackling inequality almost impossible. That’s before we factor in the policy incoherence and lack of leadership from the ruling party.”

A thoughtful law student, interviewed for television about the future of the youth of the country, highlighted the need to address inefficiency and corruption if the future was to be better than what has unfolded in the past 22 years. She was even prepared to tear up the much-vaunted constitution and start a fresh project in which what she called “the gatekeepers” of “white monopoly capital” would be driven from their positions in a tsunami of decolonisation of the mind to go with radical reform of the institutions and the workings of the country.

There are many within the ranks of the tripartite alliance, which is largely responsible for the mess in which the country finds itself, who have done no more than pay lip-service to the values of the constitution, while actively undermining it. These are known as the “cadres of the national democratic revolution”.

This merry band of comrades is bent on seizing all the levers of power in society in a project aimed at exerting hegemonic control. Not only in politics, but also in the public administration, the courts, the professions, the commercial and industrial sector, the mines, the banks, the farms and indeed in all aspects of life, not least of which is control of our partly free media.

There are, however, also those in the alliance who recognise that the constitution is the correct blueprint for our collective future and that the national democratic revolution is incompatible with the constitution, and downright bad for the future of the country.

It was dreamt up by Lenin, and it is plain to see how his revolutionary ideals panned out in Mother Russia and the Soviet Union in general.

While the tension between the deployed cadres of the revolution and the constitutionalists within the alliance continues, we have a dangerous stalemate in the affairs of the country. The courts are still intact and their “counter-revolutionary” efforts earn them the chagrin, and sometimes wrath, of the leadership of the alliance.

There is also the problem of state capture by the well-connected, those who regard politics as a get-rich-quick scheme, rather than a means of serving the public good. The tendency to make appointments to crucial positions in the public administration on the basis of party loyalty and “safe hands”, rather than on the basis of merit and proper qualification for the job, exacerbates our nation’s decline.

The public administration is shot through with cadres who have been deployed to do the bidding of those who paint outside the constitutional lines that are meant to bind them.

The constraints of the constitution are all too often ignored, overlooked or fudged away in the struggle for power that has replaced the struggle for freedom.

On far too many occasions, it has been necessary to strike down laws that have been passed by parliament and signed by the president because they do not pass constitutional muster. This reveals a signal failure to respect the boundaries that the constitution sets.

For how long the courts will be able to deal with this without coming to blows with the executive and legislative branches of government is an open question.

Deployed cadres are not put in jobs in the public administration because of their ability to do the work required. This leads to inefficiency and to corruption.

If those with political ambitions are employed in the public service in preference to those with a genuine desire and the qualifications to serve the public, then an unhappy ending involving corruption, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, and worse, is the result. Consultants are hired at great expense to do the work that the cadres are not qualified to do.

The cadres play politics and feather their own nests with the proceeds of kick-backs and other nefarious activities not contemplated in the constitution. A reality check is required.

The public administration is bloated, overpaid and underworked. The incidence of corruption is unacceptably high.

The inefficiency of the public service is strangling the life out of the economy. Cadre deployment in the public service is both illegal and unconstitutional, according to a high court finding that stands unchallenged.

Corruption will remain unchecked until an integrity commission is created, populated with trained specialist, and given sufficient resources to go after the corrupt, independently of political influence or interference. The HR management practices in the public administration need to be revisited, so as to eliminate cadre deployment at all levels, and replace them with what the constitution requires: appointments made in line with sound HR management practices.

The symbiosis between corruption and inefficiency can be broken by taking these two simple steps. The political will to take them is not in evidence yet, but polls indicate that the voters of South Africa have had enough of the status quo.

The tendency to make appointments to crucial positions in the public administration on the basis of party loyalty . . . exacerbates our nation’s decline