“Mr President”, Prof Stan Sangweni said as he looked directly at a seated Cyril Ramaphosa, who was barely two months into his job, “I am afraid to tell you, those directors-general are not leaders.
“Not because they are a bunch of people who do not know what they are doing, [but] because they do not have the environment. These are CEOs of a big establishment — government. A big enterprise holding trillions of rand. The DGs are CEOs but they have not been treated as CEOs. They are messengers …
“In your previous life as a trade unionist, Mr President, you’d remember the term baas-boy, spanner-boy. That’s what our DGs are.”
The remarks were followed by deafening applause from the audience, which included current and former DGs, as well as heads of other public institutions.
It was April 2018, and the occasion was the funeral of Zola Skweyiya, the first public service & administration minister of the democratic era. Skweyiya and Sangweni, who had been close friends since exile days in 1970s Zambia, are regarded as the chief architects of the post-apartheid civil service because they were at the centre of its integration — one as minister and the other as head of the Public Service Commission.
With the new president among the mourners, Sangweni was not going to pass on the opportunity to sharply raise the issue that had deeply pained him and his friend in their retirement — seeing the upper echelons of the civil service being hollowed out by cabinet ministers who seemed only interested in working with pliant DGs.
After all, this was the age of Ramaphoria — an extremely brief period in which many believed the country was about to have a complete break with the era of misgovernance and corruption that was the hallmark of Ramaphosa’s predecessor, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma.
Sangweni saw it as an opportunity to fix a civil service that had been crippled by the state capture years.
Ramaphosa’s reaction was positive, telling Sangweni that he agreed with him and that the two of them would have a meeting where the issues would be discussed in detail. Whether the meeting ever took place is not clear.
What is apparent, however, is that the issues raised by Sangweni, who died in 2021, are yet to be resolved.
Mavuso Msimang, Sangweni’s nephew and an ANC veteran, recently summed up what he believes became of that impassionate plea by his uncle to Ramaphosa as "dololo", which is township slang for nada, zilch, nothing.
Torrid Time
The often fraught relationship between cabinet ministers and their departments’ DGs came under the spotlight again this week during national police commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola’s testimony before the Madlanga commission of inquiry.
Masemola had a torrid time trying to explain to judge Mbuyiseli Madlanga and his commissioners why he seemed willing to obey what he deemed an illegal instruction by police minister Senzo Mchunu to disband the political killings task team when, earlier in his testimony, he had told the judge that — as a matter of principle — he would disobey any unlawful instruction by the minister.
“Now why is it that once confronted by what you say was an unlawful instruction from the minister you relented? ... Effectively you are relenting to an unlawful instruction and you had told us at the beginning that you’ll never do that, you’ll disobey and unlawful instruction. Can you please explain yourself,” Madlanga said.
As Masemola tried to justify his approach of agreeing to “wind down” the task team without agreeing to the minister’s instruction that it be disbanded immediately, Madlanga cut in: “General, if it is unlawful it is unlawful.”
“I agree, commissioner,” responded Masemola, with a sheepish smile. At some point in the exchange, Madlanga said that maybe Masemola should have qualified his earlier response to say, “I would not obey an unlawful instruction unless the minister breathes down my neck.”
“OK, I hear [you] commissioner,” responded Masemola. “The position that we find ourselves as government officials … We go through things.”
That last remark caused many current and former senior civil servants to express their sympathies with the national commissioner, some sharing their own traumatic experiences with political heads — be they ministers, MECs or mayors — who victimised them after they refused to carry out what they deemed to be illegal instructions.
Prince Mokotedi, the former head of the Hawks in Gauteng, told of how he was suddenly removed from his post just as his team was about to crack a case involving a highly connected Nigerian-born drug lord. He has since written to the commission expressing his willingness to testify.
A week earlier, during his own appearance before the commission, KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi related a 2011 incident in which the late Faith Radebe — then the inspector-general of intelligence — told him that she had apparently put her career at risk by finding that then crime intelligence boss Richard Mdluli should be criminally charged.
According to Mkhwanazi, who acted as national police commissioner in 2011, Radebe was pressured by then police minister Nathi Mthethwa to withdraw the charges.
Power relations between political executives and heads of departments are heavily skewed in favour of the politicians, say current and former civil servants.
Skewed
Power relations between political executives and heads of departments are heavily skewed in favour of the politicians, say current and former civil servants.
One DG, who prefers not to be named, says much of the problem has to do with employment contracts. DGs are appointed by cabinet for a fixed five-year term. Six months before the end of such a contract, the minister responsible for the department is supposed to inform the DG whether the contract will be renewed or not.
“So, since a minister has no obligation to base the decision on performance and is not obliged to give reasons for extending or not, this gives ministers tremendous power over DGs. A DG may decide to keep quiet even when she sees something going wrong, out of the knowledge that her continued occupation of the job beyond the contract period is entirely dependent on the minister,” the senior civil servant said.
Prior to 2018 the situation was worse, as ministers also had the power to suspend DGs. This resulted in a high attrition rate, with many DGs being suspended in the middle of their contract period. According to reports at the time, the average DG during the Zuma years stayed a maximum of two years in office, a cause of much instability in departments.
However, this changed in 2018 after former home affairs DG Mkuseli Apleni successfully challenged his suspension by then minister Hlengiwe Mkhize on the grounds that only the president had the power to suspend him.
But even without the power to suspend, argues a former civil servant, the fact that the minister decides whether the contract will be extended or not may affect a DG's behaviour. “A minister can give a hint, they don’t have to be explicit. ‘Okay, DG, you don’t want to do this, we will see,’ and at that time you know your contract is coming up for renewal. You get the message.”
Heads of departments, says the civil servant, should have a tenure of 10 to 15 years. “But ministers do not want that. Many other countries have permanent secretaries, and that leads to stability in the civil service. But here the average DG is in office for only five years, and many leave the system in their early 50s or late 40s, hence the state is facing serious challenges in terms of service delivery. Ideally, DGs should leave the system at 60.”
Since the Apleni ruling, the practice is that if disciplinary action needs to be taken against a DG, the president appoints a minister from a different portfolio to handle the matter. This, it is argued, is supposed to result in impartiality. However, critics of this practice say a cabinet minister may not want to act against the wishes of a colleague knowing that they too may need a colleague to help them remove their own DG.
Yoliswa Makhasi, the former DG at the public service & administration department who now heads the public service reform programme at the New South Institute, says in many instances the tensions between ministers and the administration are caused by “the ambiguity in roles and responsibilities”.
“This arises due to the fact that the Public Service Act of 1996 gives administrative powers that should be with DGs and HODs [heads of department] to ministers or executive authority. These include powers to recruit employees, decide on organisational establishment and other roles.”
The act predates the final constitution and, Makhasi believes, it was crafted that way at a time of transition when the new political leadership did not fully trust the administration, which was at the time dominated by seniors from the old apartheid order.
Separate roles
In the police, however, the case is different, as legislation governing the SAPS “attempts to separate the roles and responsibilities of the minister and the national commissioner”.
“The difficulty, and source of ambiguity, lies in how far the minister’s ‘oversight’ and ‘policy’ extend before they become operational interference,” Makhasi said.
Among other issues, this is what the Madlanga commission would have to pronounce on.
Makhasi disagrees with those who say DGs often find themselves with no other option but to comply with ministerial instructions even when they deem these to be illegal. She attributes it to ubugwala — cowardice.
“People want to secure their jobs, they don’t want to rock the boat," she said. "People choose to do unlawful things because they are afraid of upsetting the minister and bringing stress to their lives.”
Among the mechanisms currently available to DGs in their capacities as accounting officers is to first advise the concerned minister in writing on the unlawful instruction “in order to create a paper trail”.
“If the minister insists [on the unlawful instruction], report to the relevant oversight bodies such as the Public Service Commission and the auditor-general,” Makhasi said.
The aggrieved DG, she added, must also get legal advice on the matter and share it with the minister, before escalating it to the presidency in writing.
Makhasi pointed out that several reforms are already in the pipeline to improve the functioning of the civil service and its "interface” with the executive.
These include amendments to the 1996 act to clarify the roles and responsibilities of ministers and DGs, prohibit senior civil servants from holding office in political parties and make the DG in the Presidency head of the public administration.
But Makhasi and the other senior civil servants interviewed stressed that no amount of legislation and changing of the rules would improve relations if there was no political will to adhere to professional and ethical conduct on both sides. Only then could Sangweni’s dream of seeing DGs accorded the status of “CEOs” and not “baas-boys” be realised.
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