Stable democracies are products of the quality of administrations that undergird them. It is the follow through that comes out of bureaucratic efficiency which makes policies of competitive nations to stay ahead of the rest. In fact, even dictatorships depend on their bureaucracies to stay afloat. South Africa as a democracy, or a political construct with agreed upon arrangements on how to govern itself, otherwise also referred to as a constitutional democracy, has thus far depended on the efficiency of its bureaucracy, notwithstanding current quality doubts.
At the turn of its third constitutional change as a democracy in 1994, South African P/public A/administration institutional framework had matured to a level where it could carry whatever policy trajectory its politics would direct it. It had a P/public S/service whose inherent competencies required leadership in respect of what 'new order' its 'elites' instructed it to produce. It possessed bureaucratic power with which anyone with (legitimate or otherwise) executive authority could literally manage the interests of dominant coalitions, or establishments in society. The rhythmic sequences established to sustain apartheid colonial dominance over South Africa's political economy could only be sustained by a P/public A/administration system whose corporate cadence facilitated its smooth transition to present day South Africa.
Unlike other post-colonial democracies, South Africa went through P/public S/service ecdyses out of which it shed the ideological grip of its 'parent colonial' state on its ideation prowess. The apartheid state's imagination of South Africa as a sovereign 'whites only' state in Africa, created a state in the image of what was in the national interest. To this effect an ideational cadence of its Public Administration system was institutionalised into an identifiable academic discipline with which its bureaucracy could be trained and developed. The 'six generic administrative processes' as captured in the inaugural JJN Cloete work, 'an introduction to (South African) P/public A/administration', marked a decisive departure point to the ideational reliance of the South African state on the British modelling of its civil service. The departure of South Africa from the British Commonwealth of Nations also meant an ideational departure from the 'how to's' and 'what is' of P/public A/administration.
One of the seminal outcomes of this ideational 'sovereignty' in P/public A/administration was the departure from a Public Service Commission construct into a Commission for Administration one. It is interesting, and yet not coincidental, that this departure had its origins in the definition of the national as the substrate of the sovereign by then thinkers in the cognitive elite of the then state. This departure institutionalised the merit based development of the P/public A/administration system and 'somewhat' dislodged it as a practice from the grip that politics had as it would have been in the Public Service Commission construct. Whilst South Africa was at the time a 'rule by law' 'democracy form', this ideational departure would prepare it to navigate the 'rule of law' context that came with the post 1994 'democracy form'. The Commission for Administration became the custodian of public service norming and standardisation, senior public servants appointments, macro-organisation of the state to undergird public policy choices of government, and the general monitoring and evaluation of the national P/public A/administration system. In this task it supported the ideational development of Public Administration as a distinct discipline or field of study from politics.
The decisions that followed the 1993 Interim Constitution, as a build up to the 1996 Constitution, to establish an executive authority centre in the form of the Department of Public Service and Administration to facilitate 'P/public S/service' 'transformation' in a 'new South Africa', remains one of the 'less interrogated' decisions in the 'ideational spaces' constitutive of the South African 'academic-media-complexes'. A casual search of research outputs on the ideational safaris South African P/public A/administration as a 'distinct' 'discipline' went through, reflects instead a 'quest' to 'calibrate' it into a P/public A/administration for South Africa and not of South Africa. The DPSA route created a pathway that dislodged the 'Commission for Administration' created templates of building the P/public S/service as an institution of leadership that could have anchored a 'capable state'. The 'lost-in-political-transition' impact of systems that were the 'exclusive' reserve of the 'Commission for Administration' created a vacuum that was, and I submit, erroneously filled by the gradual handing over of the 'corporate cadence' of the state to the 'prerogative' dictates of political executives.
This loss of 'corporate cadence' of the State by South Africa to politics has created a duality of a prerogative bureaucracy, otherwise also referred to as 'political deployees into the bureaucracy, and a normative bureaucracy composed of competent and capable bureaucrats that have become a reliable 'mind of the state'. The duality has on the one hand lowered barriers to entry into the Public Service, and lifted the bar of ineptitude for entry through the prerogative bureaucracy requirements route. The need to arrest and turn the tide of this duality has in the recent past been choked inside the corruption and state capture revelations at the judicial commission of inquiry into state capture. The evidence at the inquiry has lifted the veil for all to see how South Africa's bureaucracy as the 'mind of the state' or 'organ of state' has been normatively compromised at the hands of a normatively naive prerogative elite whose cognition is etched on personal gain and interests as a leadership breed identity.
The decision by the sixth administration to appoint a National Head of Administration in the office of the President has again raised the debate on where should the 'administrative authority' of the Republic vest. There is no doubt where the 'fiscal authority' and other authorities of the Republic vest, but a very great to dark area on the administrative authority. The nomenclature chosen to describe the National Head of Administration sharpens the question of the role of the DPSA, the Public Service Commission, the Monitoring and Evaluation department, and to an extent the supportive role of the National School of Government and Centre for Public Service Innovation complex. Without vitiating the incumbency realities instructional to the context, the discords in South Africa's P/public S/service reform as manifest in the many false starts in its competence (skills, knowledge and attributes) development, and by extension professionalisation, are a manifestation of deeper systemic issues of the P/public A/administration system.
The office of the Head of National Administration, as part of the 'New Dawn' should commission the 'Second' Presidential Review Commission on the Public Service to produce an integrated report on how to consolidate the 'bureaucracy' as 'the mind of the state' to undergird Government as the dominant 'agency' of the State. Such a Commission should include how the P/public S/service should be progressively built. It should not only decisively deal with the Single Public Service issue but also start a process of creating a Public Service of South Africa and not for South Africa. In its design the Commission should be able to release-in-flight what could be immediately processed into policy even before the final report is presented.
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela mina
🤷🏽♂️Be ngisho nje
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