The Tito Khalo I knew: The Professional

    I met Tito Khalo as a colleague and friend in 1993 when he recruited me to come and join them as a part-time lecturer at Setlogelo Technikon, now part of a Kader Asmal Policy merged Tshwane University of Technology. I knew him as a student at the South African Institute of Public Administration, headquartered at PREMOS in Pretoria West. He was the coordinator of the evening classes and a taskmaster with pedantic prowess that made all of us focus on the little things that matter when you are a lecturer. 

I went on into the public service under Dan Mashitisho Gauteng, director of Local Government, where I was appointed Deputy Director of Local Government Research. At a conference to develop a Gauteng Local Government Research Agenda, organised with the HSRC's Democracy and Governance Program under Bertus de Villiers and Jabu Sindane, he came as one of the leaders in the Public Administration discipline. He introduced me to other qualified persons like Mr. Malete and Thomas Mkaza. The latter was one of the two Bantu Black Institute of Town Clerks members in terms of the Act and its demanding professional requirements. The other member was Veleleni Mashumi, a classmate at Vista and later a colleague of Tito at TUT. 

 

The research agenda was compiled, and intergovernmental relations were identified as the anchoring process to undergird the new democratic order when voter maturity creates diverse political mandates. The need for professional associations to drive the ideation of public service reform and public administration transformation was also identified. We also discussed the importance of keeping the old regional services councils, which later became District Municipalities, as development facilitation nodal points with which bulk service delivery planning could be managed. I left the local government space and later returned to the discipline as a functionary of SAFPUM at the University of Pretoria under Professor Sibusiso Vil-Nkomo. Under Vil-Nkomo, the late Dr Zola Skweyiya, Professor Sangweni, and Professor Chris Thornhill, we embarked on a process to reimagine SAIPA and repackage it into post-apartheid relevance. We met at UNISA as practitioners from all over South Africa, and Professor Tito Khalo was in the first interim structures, where I chaired the task team and the birth of today's SAAPAM began. 

 

At the launch of SAAPAM, Tito Khalo, Herbert Maserumule, John Mafunisa, and many others became the new hope of the discipline beyond a sea of then committed to changing the discipline cohort of Professors, with Vil-Nkomo and Thakathi, as our art of the possible models that indeed there will be Professors of Public Administration and Management that are black. 

 

Together with Prof Tito and many other leaders in the discipline, including the late Professors Mphehle and Hanyane, the mission was to keep the Public Administration discipline, which we later agreed with a thesis by now Professor Herbert Maserumule, dean at TUT, that we should ideationally start speaking of Public Affairs, we targeted the following for transformation of the discipline,

1.   Be in control of the discipline's identity and keep it South African without vitiating its obligations to be globally competitive and rated

2.   Manage the process of peer legitimation by ensuring that the leadership of the journal reflects the meritorious demographics of South Africa

3.   Refuse to be a state-controlled and politician-driven professional association. This virtue informed us why we refused to be a full member of AAPAM unless it changed into a federal structure constituted of sovereign associations. 

4.   We also refused to have the Journal of Public Administration state-funded and subjected all and sundry to a rigorous peer review process, which defines the journal's prowess to date.

5.   We instituted a succession plan for the editorship of the journal. This, we insisted, would assist in the throughput of historically marginalised scholars in the discipline, thus impacting the discipline's capability to create a credible cohort of professors for the country, region, and continent.

6.   We created new platforms for textbook authors, some of whom could be prescribed, cited in our journal, and masters and PhD supervisions. This has resulted in the output of PhDs in the field of Public Administration and Management

7.   We agreed to build SAAPAM as an institution of leadership grounded on the many great case studies of success in South Africa. 

8.   We affirmed through the award system that, as a Nation, we have greats in Public Management and Administration who are revered in the World. We became nationalist with the discipline and internationalist with how we benchmarked the field.

 

Together with Tito, we attempted to establish a Journal of Local Government per a mandate we received from the Institute of Local Government. Two issues were produced under the leadership of Prof David Mello when he was still TUT head of the Department. The governing ANC would later recognise Tito's contributions to the local government sector. Tito became a high-impact councillor with SALGA and Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality in particular. 

 

Prof Tito advanced to being the President and later the Executive Director of SAAPAM, a post he held until he ably transferred to Dr. John Molepo. The latter was one of his students and the TUT collective under Maserumule. Having been a SAIPA student member, Tito's tenure saw a growth in student members, with many graduating as PhDs. In his tenure as Executive Director, Tito grew in stature even within the governing African National Congress. Tito became the Professor of TSHWANE, the Professor of the ANC, The Professor of Pheli, the Professor of the Progressive Forum of Professionals, and our Professor.

 

The current President of SAAPAM, Professor Shai, sums it up as follows: he "is leaving us at the time when the fraternity and country need to up the game towards the production of the next generation of public servants and academics. We will miss him. But draw from his writings and lived experience to enrich our academic offerings".

 

Humble, unassuming, always ready to take any task, loyal to the pecking order set, and respectful of the process. He will be missed. May his Soul Rest in Peace. This story continues.