In October 2022, the cabinet approved a “National Framework Towards the Professionalisation of the Public Sector” to guide efforts in building a capable developmental state as envisaged in the National Development Plan (NDP).
The NDP is South Africa’s lodestar for socio-economic transformation. The framework came 10 years after the NDP was accepted by all political parties in parliament in 2012. It acknowledges that building state capacity is a cornerstone of any development endeavour. However, efforts to professionalise the public sector were, in the past, marked by delays, lapses and contradictions. Consequently, they could not reach their logical conclusion, and a vexing question arises: will the current professionalisation pursuits fare differently?
A mainspring for professionalising the public sector can be traced to the foundation of the country’s democracy in the early 1990s, where this promise was made: “There shall be an efficient, non-partisan, career-oriented public service broadly representative of the South African community based on fairness, and which shall serve all members of the public in an unbiased and impartial manner, and shall in the exercise of its power and in compliance with its duties, loyally execute the lawful policies of the government of the day in the performance of its administrative functions.”
This was, of course, one of the 34 principles on which the political parties that negotiated the transition from apartheid to democracy had forged a consensus to shape the constitution. As this was finalised, consummating the country’s democratisation process, Nelson Mandela established the Presidential Review Committee on the Transformation and Reform of the Public Service, chaired by the well-known South African thought leader Dr Vincent Maphai, to advise on the type of public service required to drive the democratic system of government. The committee recommended a career public service system for administering the post-apartheid state.
Compared to various African, European and North American countries, our constitution is more emphatic about professionalising the public sector. Multiple pieces of legislation and policy directives have been issued to implement its provisions, with the Batho Pele (People First) approach to governance being a critically vital intervention to optimise the state’s provision of the public good.
One of the public administration’s fundamental values confirms the principle of merit in staffing practices, which had been included in the advice of the Maphai committee. However, the ANC put this on the back burner because of the tension between merit and transformation, where the latter trumped the former with deployment practices. This was a tactical response to the threat that the democratic project could be sabotaged by officials inherited from the apartheid bureaucracy as part of the political compromises to facilitate the transition.
The ANC developed a cadre deployment policy after a resolution at its 1997 Mahikeng conference whereby they could appoint their preferred members in the public sector. However, this practice was never meant to be a permanent feature of recruitment in the public sector, instead, it was meant to be an interim intervention to shore up transformation.
Attempts were made to ditch deployment practices in 2007, 10 years after the Maphai committee recommended a career public service system. However, this was reversed with a change of administration in 2008. Cadre deployment was maintained, though the context that necessitated this practice had changed over the years to make it obsolete. Consequently, instances where competence was overlooked for political and personal loyalties in staffing practices became commonplace. This weakened rather than built state capacity.
The professionalisation of the public sector is as much about competence as it is about character formation. Hence, the framework also proposes integrity testing as part of the selection process
More than two decades after adopting the constitution the NDP emphatically reiterated the need to professionalise the public service. Significantly, Maphai was part of the National Planning Commission, which produced the NDP. However, it took a further 10 years to substantially act on the NDP’s commitment to build a capable and developmental state by professionalising the public sector.
A fundamental principle is that meritocracy should be a guiding norm in staffing practices for the public sector. Many past efforts to professionalise the public sector have not been pursued consistently. Each time a policy initiative about this created a fad, a hush fell and, ultimately, faded.
How can these be avoided so contemporary efforts to professionalise the public sector unfold successfully?
A series of small achievements in applying the professionalisation framework needs to be concentrated. Using these as a basis, we must move on to other aspects of these smaller progressions and aggregate them for a quantum leap. It is, naturally, worrying that the legislative reforms to formalise some aspects of the professionalisation framework have been in progress for almost three years. However, small strides have been made. For example, the department of public service and administration (DPSA) has proactively issued directives to compensate for the outstanding reforms for the enabling legislation, which must still be finalised urgently to maintain momentum.
One of the critically important initiatives that these reforms seek to achieve is stabilising the political-administrative interface. This refers to the relationship between senior public servants such as the directors-general (DGs) and their ministers. These have been a challenge for a long time, mainly stemming from deployment practices that often spawned frosty relations resulting in high employment turnovers, particularly among the DGs.
Ironically, some parties that have been the arch-critics of deployment practices, such as the DA, displayed similar tendencies when preparing to participate in theGNU. The party’s demand that DGs’ contracts of the departments they were vying for be terminated to appoint the candidates of its own choice, came as a surprise. This not only spurned the professionalisation project but also went against the constitution.
However, undue interference in staffing practices is not limited to positions at the pinnacle of bureaucracy. These are also commonplace at the lower levels, as became evident when the professionalisation framework was developed. I chaired this process, including when different stakeholders, such as members of the public, made submissions to this effect. Most of these — especially from the provinces and various municipalities — shared gory details of how human resource processes are captured by influential political barons in the workplaces, who, often in the name of the unions, dictate who must be appointed and promoted.
This does not align with the NDP, which says purely administrative approaches be used for lower-level appointments, and that senior officials be given the “full authority to appoint staff in their departments”. The professionalisation framework says deployment practices must be ditched for a merit-based staffing approach.
The professionalisation of the public sector is therefore as much about competence as it is about character formation. Hence, the framework also proposes integrity testing as part of the selection process. However, merit-based staffing and belonging to professional associations are not the only ways to professionalise the public sector. The framework conceptualises professionalisation broadly as an intervention to institutionalise state capacity and institutional capability to optimise public value.
In other words, professionalisation targets not only individuals but the entire system. It is therefore not oblivious to the working environment and the appropriate tools of trade required to discharge public functions professionally. All these are integral parts of professionalisation as a continuous process of recalibrating statecraft. As the English economist Alfred Marshall aptly put it: “The state is the most precious of human possessions, and no care can be too great to be spent on enabling it to do its work in the best way.”
Professionalising the public sector is about all this.
• Prof Maserumule is the executive dean of the faculty of humanities at Tshwane University of Technology. He chaired the ministerial panel on the professionalisation of the public sector, but writes in his personal capacity
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