Little evidence that SA politicians understand their role in service delivery

The minibus taxi industry says a lot about SA. In the recent week of frenzied looting and violence it became both the upholder and the enemy of the rule of law.

In the Western Cape, an all-too-familiar taxi war was claiming lives and grounding services. In KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, the taxi industry stepped in to stop the looting wrecking ball, with communities confident it would do the job. After all, it successfully delivers millions of people daily to wherever they need to go.

These counterpositions underscore the state of governance in SA. The seven days of unimpeded looting and violence provided a full, concentrated exposure of the state’s failure to be responsive to citizens and do what it is supposed to do. Cape Town’s taxi war, which continues to ground commuters, is one of many in a series with the same theme. But we’ve become inured to the repetitiveness and instead look to high drama to activate action. 

Therefore, we ask whether the sheer scale of the devastation that so rapidly engulfed KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng will be enough to jolt government leaders and the bureaucracy out of their lethargy. The short answer is possibly, but the probability is low.

Commentators have been saying for some time that clear, directed action, exercised with urgency and accountability, is overdue. The punch-drunk economy after Jacob Zuma’s presidency needs an effective crisis response, even more so with Covid-19 and joblessness careering out of control. But it has not been forthcoming.

Clearly, a state that cannot deliver cannot manage a crisis. So what is the president doing, or not doing, and what could he be doing, to bring capability to the state? If a clear path to a modicum of a delivery-ready government cannot be marked out, then as commentator Gareth van Onselen has written, what is the point of having a government?

Cyril Ramaphosa started his presidency on the promise of better implementation and collaboration. “Delivery” is the new speak of government, and there is a growing number of collectively agreed implementation plans. But these plans are being fed back into a bureaucracy that is largely missing in action, allowing only marginal traction.

There are several potential responses to the current violence that need to be treated with caution. One is to get caught up in high-level leadership gatherings to craft a new vision to repair the breakdown in our social compact. Another is to resort to broad turnaround strategies to fix the public sector (which is so amorphous that nothing will happen), or to do the opposite and take too narrow an approach of training officials (building a capable state needs more than fixing a skills deficit among too many ill-placed appointees).

The most productive response would be to narrow the focus to what matters most and can be delivered. This is an approach the president has started to adopt. What is important now is not to be distracted but to create clarity on what it takes to achieve a well-functioning delivery system and tackle the gaps and weaknesses.

So far the attention has been on the economic renewal programme. Specific priorities have been selected with dedicated delivery capability, centred on Operation Vulindlela. Success has been achieved rapidly in the game-changing decision to free up private generation of electricity.

But in this achievement a key weakness was exposed, and it is the one that is the golden thread to effective delivery — the political leadership and how it behaves and performs. Here there needs to be commitment, capability and coherence. Without that, the hard choices and clarity of purpose that is needed will invariably be sidestepped by vested and factional interests, or by simply being too vague and inchoate.

Renewable energy

Former finance minister Trevor Manuel picked up on that in a recent webinar of the Centre for Development and Enterprise. He spoke of the cabinet as “a confederation of Tzarism” — ministers in effect making their own mandates. He pinpointed mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe, who had sought to minimise the role of the private sector and renewable energy in resolving the escalating energy crisis.

Mantashe drew a line at 10MW of embedded generation by a private operator without a licence. The president had a very different view, and with the support of Operation Vulindlela eventually managed to extract a 100MW limit. If every priority and target must be fought for in this manner, we need to be worried.

Once past such political hurdles, the even bigger one of actual implementation looms. For the 100MW threshold, the big plus is the role of the private sector — it will deliver the power. But before getting there, the department of mineral resources & energy, the National Energy Regulator of SA, Eskom and the country’s mostly dysfunctional municipalities must deliver regulations and other enablers.

If this is simply left in their hands, business-as-usual will prevail. There is a need for interventions at this level, giving the centre of government a clear line of sight to the actual delivery and the necessary oversight to ensure it happens.

There is established global practice for this high-level executive oversight of public sector performance. It requires committed and attentive political leadership, and if done properly injects accountability, transparency and urgency into otherwise low- or nonresponsive bureaucracies.

So far, there has been little evidence of SA’s politicians understanding their integral role in ensuring better delivery outcomes. Instead, their pattern of spasmodic responses to just about everything runs counter to a delivery culture — and this has bled down into the bureaucracy.

What does all this mean for the possibility and probability of a substantive response to the latest crisis? Continuing with the example of energy, the president’s approach of prioritising and putting dedicated expertise behind delivering results provides room for possibility.

However, the probability remains low without a different leadership cohort that can make the necessary focused strategic choices, stand by them and harness capability to do what is necessary to get SA off the trajectory of crisis.

That’s the really difficult part for Ramaphosa — and, no doubt, he will have to improvise.

• Cargill is CEO of Strategy Execution Advisers and author of ‘Trick or Treat, Rethinking Black Economic Empowerment’.