At a conference to celebrate CANRAD’s 10th anniversary held at NMU in 2021, Mahmood Mamdani argued that the way in which the Bantustans and the associated systems were amalgamated into the institutions of the democratic era, has created the bind in which the government finds itself. In other words, the absorption of the Bantustan ethos permeated the new public administration which enables incompetence and corruption because those administrations were established to distribute patronage rather than serve people. Perhaps that explains why most councillors and officials at a recent SALGA provincial meeting were glued to their devices rather than listening to the expectations of local government being presented by the Premier of that province. At a conference to celebrate CANRAD’s 10th anniversary held at NMU in 2021, Mahmood Mamdani argued that the way in which the Bantustans and the associated systems were amalgamated into the institutions of the democratic era, has created the bind in which the government finds itself. In other words, the absorption of the Bantustan ethos permeated the new public administration which enables incompetence and corruption because those administrations were established to distribute patronage rather than serve people. Perhaps that explains why most councillors and officials at a recent SALGA provincial meeting were glued to their devices rather than listening to the expectations of local government being presented by the Premier of that province.
The local government elections showed that municipalities have a lot to be concerned about with respect to their performance. Yet SALGA’s latest conference programmes and proposed strategic plan for the next five years are long on analysis, short on strategy and silent on implementation – behold the new plan, same as the old plan. Perhaps this is what Mamdani was lamenting – post apartheid public administration performance is steeped in the culture of apartheid’s bureaucracies. If this continues then for the next five years, like the last five, municipalities can expect extraordinarily little support from SALGA on the core issues of municipal governance.
President Ramaphosa appointed a new National Planning Commission late in 2021. Since South Africans love the work of planning more that doing the work arising from planning, it is quite likely that this new NPC could be the same as the old NPC – lots of talk of what needs to be done, introduction of added terms to say old things and be a generally ineffective institution. It will probably establish another scenario planning process and come up with the same options – good, bad, and disastrous. After a few roadshows, all promising ideas would have come to naught because the challenges lie not in planning and consultation, but in an unwilling public service. The work of the previous NPCs, NEDLAC and SALGA have not addressed the core questions – why is the South African public service is in this state and what can be done to change it? Instead, repetitively failed ideas have been repackaged as the new way to go.
Countless studies have pointed to the importance of functional local government for effective service delivery and social-economic changes, yet no effort has been made to understand the culture of non-performance. If Mamdani is correct, then that cohort of incompetent public servants are at retirement age and their mentees are taking their places. Therefore, what should be done if we want to prevent the mentees from being the same as the mentors? Perhaps, not trying to do the same thing would be a start. In this respect, the NPC, as a government think-tank has both the opportunity and obligation to step outside of established norms and standards to identify new directions.
There are many reasons for the state of affairs, and these need to be understood as best as is possible. Being a new NPC means that it does not need to be stuck with what is desirable, but to pursue that what is possible in pursuit of the desirable. After all, there are lessons of three decades of democratic government to draw on which show that there has been nothing new coming from government and that the country seems to be on autopilot and on a treadmill at the same time. Our inability to achieve objectives set three decades ago, requires us to pause, reflect and consider that other ways of achieving the same objectives are possible.
Such reflections and considerations would explore reasons for the performance of the public service and what reform measures could be implemented. In this respect, an NPC-NEDLAC-SALGA axis which moves the discussion away from the usual to the possible would focus on the following:
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