IVOR CHIPKIN: Holding the bureaucratic line

In 1994, the ANC inherited a highly fragmented government administration and a politicised public service. Recruitment had never been conducted on the basis of merit, so the senior echelons of the civil service were overwhelmingly dominated by white men, many of them drawn from or trusted by the military and intelligence communities. 

Distrustful of these officials’ willingness to implement ANC policies, and unable to fire them because of “sunset clauses” in the negotiated settlement, successive ANC governments brought in their own people as a check on incumbents. This happened both informally, through “deployment committees”, and formally, in the design of the public service itself.

Critically, public servants didn’t have to pass an entrance exam, and their selection was not vetted by any independent agency. Instead, recruitment was done through departmental interviews, with the selection panel largely the product of ministerial choice.

In effect, instead of professionalising the public service, the ANC further politicised it. 

The results were uneven. Where suitable candidates were deployed, departments and agencies performed adequately, sometimes excellently. Take the National Treasury: senior leaders had ties to the ANC, but were very often also outstanding professionals. Something similar happened in the then newly created SA Revenue Service.

Elsewhere, things didn’t turn out as well. The talent in ANC networks was simply not wide or deep enough to restaff the state properly. In municipalities, for example, highly politicised recruitment practices and political control over operational matters brought under- or unqualified people into key roles — even for specialised positions.

Predictably, these organisations struggled to perform their most basic functions: roads deteriorated, infrastructure collapsed and water works came to a halt. This, in combination  with the crisis at Eskom, turned many towns and cities into dark and dilapidated spaces. They are also chronically unsafe, after the politicisation of the police made that organisation’s focus shift from fighting crime and dealing with social emergencies to managing contestation in the ruling party. 

If there were tendencies towards the professionalisation of the state, these largely dissipated after the election of Jacob Zuma as president. He used his political discretion to bring friends and allies into senior positions in the government and state-owned entities (SOEs). Individually and collectively, they repurposed organisations to serve private interests and, more importantly, to channel huge resources to party-political purposes.

In broader context

In her research, academic and China expert Yuen Yuen Ang “unbundles” corruption into four types: petty theft, grand theft, speed money and access money. She shows that in China the dominant type is access money — “rewards offered by elite capitalists to powerful officials in exchange for exclusive, lucrative privileges”. 

It’s very close, in definition, to what we call state capture.

However, where other kinds of corruption have debilitating effects on government performance, Ang argues that access money has been highly conducive to growth and the building of infrastructure in China. In SA, in contrast, it’s done nothing of the sort.

Why is this? An answer lies in the failure of the post-apartheid state to bureaucratise properly. Even if infrastructure projects are awarded corruptly, China can still rely on autonomous and professional administrations to bring them to fruition. This is not the case in SA, where executive interference has destabilised departments, agencies and SOEs, and burdened them with unsuitable and frequently incompetent senior managers. The result is that corruptly awarded contracts are poorly implemented or not implemented at all.

There are many startling examples, though some of the most glaring are in the energy and transport sectors. Consider, for example, the delays and failures at Medupi power station, or the procurement by the Passenger Rail Agency of SA of stock that was too tall for SA’s rail network.  

Factional divides in the ANC have also taken their toll. As long as the  party was able to maintain unity and enforce internal discipline, decisions about who to deploy could be made with operational considerations in mind. But as the ANC split — at first into groups aligned either to then president Thabo Mbeki or to Zuma — internal discipline collapsed. Access money then served not to facilitate development but to generate the rents to fund factional battles. 

One of the insidious effects of state capture is the way it destroys administrations from the inside. In SA, this process — coupled with the politicisation of the civil service — has transformed parochial disputes inside the ruling party into a national emergency.

It is clear that it’s not enough to wait for the ANC to renew itself; reforming the architecture of the government should be the top priority for the country. Until SA properly develops a professional and autonomous public administration, the transition from apartheid will be incomplete. 

* Chipkin is founder of Government & Public Policy. From July 5-7, the think-tank will host an international event to bolster government reform, considering the experiences of other countries in the global and new south, as well as options to help SA complete its democratic revolution