“Do you not think our No 1 problem in South Africa is institutions?” a colleague once asked. Saying yes or no was difficult, because his conclusion was embodied in his question. He was forcing me to confront a truth we both understand but seldom say openly: our most significant weakness is institutions, their diminished value to society, their lifeless performance and turbulent governance.
Not only are our key institutions failing to function efficiently, but many also fail to have an impact because they lack imagination, integrity and public purpose. We have forgotten that the public sector exists to create value for society.
How do they not work? What do they not do? How are they misgoverned, misused and underutilised? Many recognise that their rules are outdated and their mandates are rigid. We pretend to reform them by establishing investigations, hiring external consultants and creating more bureaucracy, while their core remains unchanged. Yet few seriously engage the question of what these institutions are meant to achieve, what public value they serve, and how they can help rebuild the country.
For many senior officials, the survival rule is simple: secure a clean audit, keep the board and the political boss happy, and avoid scandal. That has become the measure of success. In this narrow culture, the public purpose of an institution is reduced to procedural correctness. It is about avoiding wrongdoing rather than pursuing national development and transformation.
We speak of corruption as if it were the only cause of failure. But even when corruption is absent, institutions still fail to deliver public value. They are often hollow, obsessed with compliance, and paralysed by politics, with seniors who act like infantile executives. The anti-state capture conversation, although important, deals only with the lowest level of performance. It does not touch the higher question of how institutions (all forms and types of organs of state) transform society. That is, their substantive public value and worth for society.
We speak of corruption as if it were the only cause of failure. But even when corruption is absent, institutions still fail to deliver public value. They are often hollow, obsessed with compliance, and paralysed by politics, with seniors who act like infantile executives.
We do not study or celebrate the craft of institution-building. We do not learn from those who have done it well. We seldom ask leaders of successful public institutions, such as the outgoing South African Revenue Service (Sars) commissioner, Edward Kieswetter, what it really takes to run a public institution well. We overlook the balance they have struck between accountability, autonomy and impact. We have normalised dysfunction and rhetoric.
This is not unique to South Africa. Many countries have faced similar decline and later rediscovered the importance of capable and imaginative institutions. In Asia and Latin America, several states redefined their institutions to meet new economic and social goals, which Eddie Maloka, the former head of the African Peer Review Mechanism secretariat, in a newspaper article, called the Second Republic, where democratic institutions are completely reimagined. Other countries, such as Pakistan, still struggle to break out of cycles of institutional rigidity. India, Rwanda and Malaysia are breaking the mould. Lee Kuan Yew once remarked that the state needs effective people because they make or destroy institutions through their vision and delivery. That’s what he delivered in Singapore.
To move forward, we need to frame institutional reform through the idea of public value. Public value can be measured through four domains identified by scholars. These include outcome achievement; trust and legitimacy; service delivery quality; and efficiency.
These four pillars provide a clear and balanced framework for reimagining the role of institutions in South Africa. By outcome achievement, they mean institutions exist to achieve results that matter to citizens and to future generations. These can be social, economic, environmental or cultural. It means departments should move beyond reporting on activities and expenditure towards impact. Outcome achievement also demands collaboration. No single institution can solve unemployment or energy poverty on its own. We need a network of institutions working together towards shared outcomes rather than competing for visibility.
Trust is the foundation of any public institution. Without it, even the most efficient organisation loses its authority. Legitimacy arises when citizens believe that an institution acts fairly, transparently and in the public interest. Our institutions suffer from a deep trust deficit. Scandals, service failures and elite impunity have weakened public faith. Rebuilding trust means establishing a moral relationship between institutions and citizens. It requires honesty, consistency and fairness. Public servants must act as custodians of the collective good, not as managers of compliance. Trust grows when citizens see fairness in action. Leadership becomes a moral act, not a technical one.
By service delivery quality, we are referring to the point at which citizens encounter the state. It is the daily test of public value. Quality involves more than technical delivery; it reflects empathy, responsiveness and respect for the user. In South Africa, many institutions treat citizens as burdens rather than as partners. People applying for housing, grants or business permits often face indifference and delay. Public service becomes a maze rather than a bridge. This is not because officials are lazy but because systems are designed for control, not for service. Improving service quality means redesigning processes around the citizen’s experience. Technology can help, but culture matters more. Institutions must empower their staff to solve problems, not merely to follow rules. Every interaction with the public should affirm dignity and competence.
Efficiency is the ability to achieve the most significant benefit with the least waste. It is not the same as austerity. Actual efficiency comes when resources are used intelligently to create more value. In practice, our institutions confuse efficiency with the avoidance of risk. A clean audit is praised even if the institution delivers nothing. Real efficiency means cutting unnecessary red tape, aligning budgets with outcomes, and using innovation to lower costs while raising impact. Efficiency without purpose is sterile. But efficiency combined with imagination can transform a system.
Rebuilding institutions through the lens of public value means returning to purpose. It requires a shift from rule-following to value creation, from compliance to contribution. Reform is not only about cleaning up corruption but also about designing systems that can produce social meaning.
• Ngcaweni is director for public policy and African studies at the University of Johannesburg
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