YOLISA PIKIE: It’s up to civil society to restore integrity in administration

In its proceedings and initial reports, the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture has laid bare the anatomy of a colossal crime against the state and people of SA.

Regrettably, shocking as the details are, no-one is surprised. Many an intrepid journalist, conscientious civil society organisation and courageous public servant and whistle-blower has over the years exposed and attempted to stop the rot in the government. Some of the corrupt transactions and administrative decisions were subjects of court disputes.

If reports of the auditor-general had been taken seriously over the years, it would have been clear that maladministration and corruption were becoming endemic in the public administration. Intermittently, parliament has also held inquiries, notably into Eskom and the SABC.

What numbs the public and makes people feel helpless is simply that evidence has not spurred official action. The government has been inert and seemingly unable to act, while law enforcement and prosecutorial authorities seem overwhelmed.

Civil society, including business, demobilised under the illusion that the 2019 national election reset SA’s path towards a cleaner, more efficient and capable government. The only people who seem to be organised, determined and loud are those who are implicated in the rot. A cursory observer of political events over the past three years would be disabused of any such illusion.

We will, of course, hear more from judge Raymond Zondo over the next few months. The mountain of known malfeasance will grow. Yet, overwhelming as it may be, it’s not the sheer scale of theft and corruption that should rouse us into determined action. It is what lies behind it — the enduring weaknesses in our governmental systems.

It is the evidence that now lies before us showing how state institutions were perverted into instruments for private wealth. It is how it has been revealed that institutions and procedures within them were denuded of their content to serve the arbitrary whims of those who were placed at their head.

Determined onslaught

We can now see clearly that those institutions that could not be fully captured were simply collapsed. Institutions charged with administering governance came under a determined onslaught. Primary among these were the SA Revenue Service (Sars), National Treasury and the Reserve Bank.

It is to the long-standing weaknesses in public administration that most of the attention must turn. It is a task so sheared of glamour that it’s likely to be neglected. Yet it the most important. The conceit that lies behind systems of public administration is that they should be predictable, repetitive, unremarkable and simple. Yet that is the opposite of our government. Take the most obvious example: procurement.

Procurement in the state is governed by a set of financial directives defined  in the Public Finance Management Act. It is not defined by a procurement system with its own prerogatives. As a result, even repetitive and predictable purchases are treated as discrete events that need to be activated at the discretion of a director-general. So where the government could have saved money as the largest purchaser of most goods and services, the purpose of the purchases is open to manipulation by those who are in control of the process.

For perspective, economists estimate that the government’s annual procurement usually amounts to 10% of GDP. That easily translates to more than R400bn of spend every year. It’s enough to keep a whole political party and its fellow travellers busy at the trough yearlong. And of course, this amount excludes procurement by state-owned enterprises.

Syndicates

Take the example of rail locomotives procurement over the past few years. Based on publicly available information, between the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa), Transnet and Gautrain, SA has procured trains valued at more than R100bn. Yet there were no government directives over the standardisation of common locomotives, spares and maintenance, as well as training. Instead, industry-changing purchases were treated as discrete events, allowing enormous inflation of prices, unsuitable locomotives in the case of Prasa, and indeterminate maintenance costs into the future. 

With this amount of discretion built into the system, is it any wonder that Transnet and Prasa attracted determined criminal syndicates that manipulated every transaction? Trains are supposed to be bought over a 30-year cycle. Yet amid the procurement of billions of rand worth of trains, sudden extraordinarily urgent purchases were made. To add salt to the wound, the lack of a systematic approach to maintenance means whatever locomotives are purchased have their life-cycles reduced by dilapidated rail infrastructure. Accidents are common because signalling systems have been neglected, subject to corrupt procurement or vandalised.

Another example in which regular order has broken down is in the recruitment, training, promotion and disciplining of public servants. Reading the constitution, South Africans would be forgiven if they thought the Public Service Commission (PSC) is singly responsible for those functions. Yet the commission has delegated this authority to various government institutions. But it’s not clear how these powers have been delegated or how the commission ensures its mandate is adhered to. Senior public servants have become subject to the whims of political masters, ministers and the president.

Competence eroded

Once a minister is appointed there usually follows a cascade of changes to departmental personnel. Naturally, any minister would look to appoint amenable people, thus making loyalty a defining quality, elevated above competence. To sustain the loyalty senior public servants repeat this among those layers they control, until incompetence is compounded throughout the system.

Much has been said about political deployments, but few notice that the erosion of competence in the public service is embedded in its instability. As Americans would say, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. No reform of the public service would be durable or to good effect unless there was a sustained focus on the role of the PSC.

The work of government should be boring. All exceptions must be subdued to predictable procedure. That’s easy enough to say, but it’s difficult to persuade people that making it so is overwhelmingly important, and that it is a difficult task.

As for the tasks that face us now, we must realise that restoring integrity to public administration cannot be left in the hands of politicians but must be an all-consuming societal effort. All partisan contests for power must be tested against this objective. Citizens must monitor the performance of the government in detail and take it to task when it fails, in the courts, on the streets, in workplaces, in classrooms and at the ballot box.

We must return to the tactical tasks that will arise from the Zondo commission. Across the government there must be a deliberate effort to restore confidence in public administration. It will greatly assist if the government focuses its efforts on achievable goals such as recovering losses, disciplining the culprits and achieving prosecutions.

Civil society has an important role to play in this. We must prod the government to act, and when it fails to do so compel it through the courts. And, where we can, take action ourselves. Our future is in our hands.

• Pikie, a former Sars employee, was an adviser to former finance minister Pravin Gordhan during the state capture era.