The success or failure of a civilisation is not only a function of how innovative a society is, but how that society preserve what it already has by innovating towards sustainability. In this rendition an argument will be posited that as a society and country, South Africa has innovated one of the most enviable constitutional dispensation whose risk has now become its maintenance. The maintenance deficit, manifest in the physical infrastructure is in fact an outcome of a bigger deficit in how we think of maintaining the democracy itself.
In facile terms, maintenance is described as 'the process of preserving a condition'. It is a concept that is generally applied in contexts of physical maintenance of infrastructure, notably building and the physical facilities with utility importance to humanity. In fact, and at a technical level, 'it involves functional checks, servicing, repairing or replacing of necessary devices, equipment, building infrastructure, and supporting'. This therefore means maintenance is, and strictly speaking, connected to the utilisation stage of what ever was or is put in place. The continued relevance and importance of what is in place will forever be dependent of how 'users' invest in the continued functionality of what has been innovated and established.
A casual observation of the general infrastructure of South Africa speaks volumes of the capacity of its policy makers to think of maintenance as a public policy imperative and thus a public expenditure focus. The almost derelict mass human transportation systems in the railways and airways, as a function of the matured neglect of publicly policing a metal scavenging industry reliant on the criminal element, is but one in a myriad of manifestations of the maintenance deficit in the public policy space.
This rendition draws from the physical infrastructure maintenance discourse its analysis of the deeper deficit in the maintenance of our democracy. The South African democracy, an outcome of a society that was in conflict on how to agree on arrangements to govern itself, is one whose construct remains influenced more by a fear of its past than an embracement of a common future of peaceful co-existence. Its design, though not in actual text but more in practice, reflects a growing commitment to move away from what is not wanted and less about working towards what is envisioned.
In drafting it constitution, the founding fathers and mothers, established it as a democracy that should have as a central focus, 'a never and never again' theme on almost everything about South Africa. This theme has, and by implication, meant that the country needed to 'transform, overhaul, review, change, and even undo' a lot that was existing in order to usher a new, whose newness would later prove to have been a renaming of the old that worked, albeit in a differently construed context. In this approach, the new democracy elevated to undue importance those that advocated 'new' to a level where the country was turned into an 'ideas' Mecca to the exclusion of 'maintenance' workers that knew how to keep and make a democracy work and function.
The euphoria that engulfed the country, especially the myth of a new South African State, when what was new was in fact the way the State would treat it citizens, created a fascination with novelty to a level where our capacity to maintain and care for what we already had was impeded. In this euphoria we lost the ability to guard our answers to the question 'what if any can our democracy not live without'. Using the metaphor of a house, there will always be walls, a roof, windows and doors, and yet there will be new ways of roofing, walking, window opening, and door closing. The problem starts when the idea of having a door is allowed to be a subject of change. This is what may have created the 'maintenance deficit' in our democracy or its imagination.
As a democracy we started on a footing that was cognisant of the dangers of unregulated power and the risks of allowing prerogative politics to determine the pulse of our democratic co-existence. We would have seen and known how those with powerful interests are able to manipulate the State to be off their case in how the manage their bottom line objective. In fact apartheid architecture has its origins in the structure of the political economy that undergirded it. Some industries, and industrialists that emerged there from, could not have been, had it not been the interplay of politics and economics that obtained therein.
The change in how the State would treat its citizens required-therefore a public service whose mindset should have been about maintaining what worked, under the circumstances, and innovated with a maintenance plan what would institutionalise change. The question is therefore, 'is it to late to close the deficit', 'can we create a surplus'?
It is the gains that came with having a democracy that need to be defended with a maintenance plan. The independence of institutions established to defend the democracy should be as sacrosanct as the need to defend the right of society to have its most dangerous liabilities, politicians. The building of a public service should be values based and be devoid of wanting to be the politics but more about making the outcomes of politics work for society. A public service should be more about regularising what is good out of politics into enforceable policies with a maintenance plan.
Political parties, whom, until otherwise redetermined, our public administration system, also relies upon in respect of the men and women they 'deploy' into the 'executive authority' realms of our public policy architecture, need to have member maintenance mechanisms that are not compromising our democracy. The integrity management mechanisms they innovate should as a rule be about the maintenance of our democracy.
The subject of maintaining the democracy requires attention.
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela
🤷🏽♂️Be ngisho nje
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