South African history stands as a testament to the unwavering resilience of its constitutional democracy, whether inclusive or otherwise. This resilience, a constant force, has shaped the country’s political realignments and transitions. The will of those with the franchise at any given time, under the prevailing government arrangements, has led to significant moments of political consensus. The government of national unity (GNU) era, characterised by unity, is another chapter in this remarkable journey.
The seventh administration, in the first term of the second 30 years of a nonracial and nonsexist democracy, is committing to drive inclusive growth and job creation, poverty reduction and tackling the high cost of living, and build a capable, ethical and developmental state.
The president’s three outlined priorities have underscored the crucial role of an enabling capable public service. This service, equipped with the requisite skills, knowledge, and attributes, is not just important, but essential to meet the developmental obligations of the constitutional and democratic order, instilling a sense of the audience’s significance and urgency for the country’s future.
What defines the GNU is not so much economic transformation as a battle to be won as a challenge than to be weathered. The disintegration of public infrastructure, dysfunctions in municipal government as the primary locus of the state, and the hanging cloud of the possible collapse of the GNU coalition at the altar of in-ANC and tripartite alliance discontents are real risks. The inequality, unemployment, and poverty realities that devastate the wellbeing of citizens render the GNU woefully underprepared to navigate the populism charges toward the political environment.
What the country needs is an economy, a vibrant civil society movement, a democratic culture, and a competent public sector or service that can play a crucial role in preventing the slide toward the edge of the governance precipice
What the country needs is an economy, a vibrant civil society movement, a democratic culture, and a competent public sector or service that can play a crucial role in preventing the slide toward the edge of the governance precipice.
Ideologically, the GNU’s central focus is to sustain the consensus to preserve and defend South Africa’s constitutional order while enabling South Africans to prosper regardless of what the templates of economic dominance have set up as the destiny of the excluded. It is in how the inequality gap is reduced, economic justice is institutionalised, and social justice reigns that the resilience of the democratic and constitutional order is securable.
The extent to which a democracy impacts the food basket of those it belongs to, in South Africa, “we the people”, builds sufficient belief in the state. The decline in the number of registered people and those who voted, juxtaposed against those eligible to vote in a developing economy, where politics shape societal coexistence, is a dangerous indicator of democracy becoming less important to those who matter. If the GNU can become a saving grace for South Africa, it is that of public service reform, dealing with the touchpoints through which society experiences the existence or absence of government.
The GNU should, among others, focus on supporting all efforts to:
• Promote the discipline and practice of public administration and management in its traditional sense, back to basics;
• Provide practical training to the public service and deconcentrate the middle management strata in favour of where the tyre hits the road public servants;
• Recommission profession-specific training colleges linked to the government’s recruitment strategic framework. These include but are not limited to teachers, agricultural colleges, nurses, medical practitioners and clinical technicians attached to hospitals;
• Promote ethical conduct and accountability within the public service;
• Build a professional public service network that integrates occupation-specific career paths with the public service ethos; the professionalisation framework is a courageous starting point; and
• Return the legislated professionalisation of the municipal government C-suite level. This should focus on the traditional local government big five functions of the erstwhile town clerk, town treasurer, town secretary, town planner, and town engineer.
The GNU has a responsibility to restore the political leadership of South Africa to its role as leader of society. The social consensus that the government is the nest or manufacturer of corruption should be debunked by introducing a new class, cohort, or coterie of competent and committed public servants. As the mind of the state, and by design calibrated to outlive freely elected representatives as the substructure holding the democratic state together, they should be seen as a national leader of society brigade.
What defines this brigade should be the chapter 10 basic values and principles governing principles. Acutely, this brigade must be measured on how far they “loyally execute the lawful policies of the government of the day”. The essence of this criteria, which is in the constitution, is that “no employee of the public service may be favoured or prejudiced only because that person supports a particular party or cause”.
Public servants should be commissioned in the public service operating on the mantra of without fear or favour. In this context, the department of public service & administration budget vote should be the foremost national unity through a national public service practicalisation statement of the GNU. Without a capable, professional, merit-based, non-partisan, developmental public service that puts people first, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s opening of parliament speech will amount to one of the most publicised monologues or soliloquies.
• Mathebula is a public policy analyst, founder of The Thinc Foundation, and a research associate at Tshwane University of Technology
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