LUCKY MATHEBULA | Keep politics out of it: the promise of professionalisation in local government 

As South Africa prepares for the local government elections, few, if any, questions about the bureaucracy supporting the politics of the local state loom large. It is not only a country’s elected officials that make it competitive and capable, but also the technical capacity and capabilities of its appointed officials or bureaucrats that make the difference. Focusing on politically term-limited officials as the basis of state capability is insufficient for a complex democratic order like South Africa.

It is the bureaucrats, in their various professional occupations, that ensure taps have running water, electric switches release light and energy, roads are surfaced and maintained, and human settlements are ideal for the next wave of the unfolding human civilisation.

Human life primarily occurs at the household level, and households are found within local government jurisdictions, or rather, municipalities. Local government links the lived experience of citizens with the effectiveness or otherwise of statewide efforts.

Citizens trust the government or leaders exercising political mandates to the extent that it affects their day-to-day lives. This trust capacity resides in the performance of the local government system.

Without vitiating the significance of politicians, the brute truth is that their world is that of managing interests, which are the currency of their vocation, politics. What is professional for politicians might include managing instability and, in some instances, managing unlawfulness to the extent that it advances the interests being pursued. This explains the paradox of why most decisions about genocide, xenophobia, racism, corruption, wars of dispossession and similar issues were mainly political.

This is more a matter of consciousness and conscience for public servants than a politics-and-administration dichotomy.

The default preoccupation of politicians about who gets what, when and how will make sense if it is underwritten by professionals who are preoccupied with why things are the way they are and whether things can be different. Societal politics is always about who creates them, and the administration’s is about ensuring that what is lawful is institutionalised. Arguably, a professionalised bureaucracy is expected to be profoundly efficient and technical, whereas professional politicians are, by fiat, ideological and political.

It is the extent to which those appointed or commissioned into the public service are prepared to execute the unlawful policies of politicians that draws the line between politics and administration. The professionalisation mandate of the public service across all spheres, tiers and levels of government has always been caught up in the question of how to reconcile the lawfulness of political decisions with the exigencies of the political interests that propel them. This is more a matter of consciousness and conscience for public servants than a politics-and-administration dichotomy.

The (overall) objective of professionalising the state’s bureaucracy, the appointed or commissioned members of the public service, is to “have sure-footed bureaucrats commissioned purely on the basis of merit, rigorously trained, and constitution or rule of law-respecting, and integrity-vetted officials or public servants. Arguably, only these should be allowed to implement and execute lawful policies and instructions, free from harassment by meddlesome public representatives.

In local government this will lead to the extraordinary marshalling of resources to create world-class institutions, infrastructure and service delivery rising from the current social and economic rubble of current municipal government performance. There are usually several conflicting truths on any given subject, but in the era of multiparty democracy, political rhetoric, often bordering on illegality, nailed things down, whether or not they turned out to be lawful.

Many state institutions risk losing what matters most about public service and the state’s role in society. Trapped in the whirlpool of politics, a necessary part of state matters, the valuable, civic, pounding-the-streets, asking-challenging-questions hard graft of dealing with social justice matters that the dominant and powerful do not want known and solved, only a professional and meritocratic public service or bureaucracy can shift the proverbial needle.

South Africa is about to convene 10,000 freely elected representatives; the question is how they will relate to, interact with and transact with those appointed and qualified to implement. Herein lies the true value of professionalisation of the bureaucracy.

Professionalisation is not only about the qualifications of appointed officials, but also about the skills and attributes required to serve the public. It is about discerning what is right or wrong in an otherwise ethically compromised community of practitioners.

The auditor-general’s reports, backed by the lived experience of local communities in most municipalities, point to dysfunctions that border on the failure of local states. From the municipal debt crisis to the shrunken revenue-raising capacity, several municipalities are strictly speaking no longer going concerns. Yet these have suitably accredited men and women in the post establishment.

These accreditation-wielding and possessing individuals might not have availed themselves of the professional requirements of the positions they occupy. It is the auxiliary functions of the public administration system that distinguish a professional public service from what South Africa has experienced in recent history.

It would be prudent for the upcoming local government election process to require that those making themselves available explain how they will allow professionals to do their work free of unlawful interference. The public service challenge of South Africa, clearly, is not in figuring out what to do. Rather, the problem is how those commissioned into the public service find the strength and courage to do what they know to be right and lawful. Democracies stand on the quality of how their administrators are allowed to execute the lawful directives of those who politically govern.

If at all the vocation of politics can be professionalised, the first point of call is for it to be competent in allowing those who are qualified to do their work unhindered. It is a tall order for politicians, as an occupational group that often believes and trades in the incorrectness of their correctness as a criterion to ascend the ladder of vocation-specific success.