DANIËL ELOFF: Bureaucratic Vogons — why SA needs a Doge

If SA were a Douglas Adams novel, our government would be run by Vogons. Those drab, lumbering bureaucrats from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who delighted in paperwork, thrived on inefficiency and recited the most excruciating poetry known to man (or alien). Much like the Vogons, our state is addicted to process over purpose, regulation over results, and endless forms, plans, workshops and commissions that lead nowhere. 

For too long South Africans have accepted this absurd state of affairs. Our bureaucracy expands like the universe — infinitely and inexorably — while our service delivery implodes. Every year budgets swell, taxes increase and departments multiply, and yet somehow fixing potholes remains an insurmountable challenge. Unlike what Marxist parties such as the EFF call for, it is time for SA to do something really radical — introduce a Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) to bring order to this cosmic mess.

Infamously, the Trump presidency has recently created a Doge under the leadership of Elon Musk as a radical and much-chastised experiment in bureaucratic reform. Armed with sweeping, albeit self-granted, powers to audit, streamline and even dissolve redundant agencies, it has forced federal departments in the US to justify their existence based on measurable performance. While critics argue that its aggressive approach risks undermining democratic oversight, supporters credit Doge with slashing bureaucracy, reducing costs and injecting a much-needed culture of innovation into the government.

In just a few weeks Doge has identified almost $40bn in wasteful spending linked to government-issued credit cards, leading to significant cost-saving measures. However, this aggressive approach also resulted in the ill-considered termination of 300-400 National Nuclear Safety Administration staff who were responsible for designing, building and overseeing the US nuclear weapons stockpile. 

SA could take inspiration from this model — though ideally with fewer tweets and more foresight and wisdom. SA’s own version of slash-and-burn efficiency, but with the guarantees of transparency, democratic oversight and reform, ensuring that essential services are strengthened, not undermined, while wasteful bureaucracy is eliminated.

The Vogon syndrome

The Vogons in Adams’ fictional universe were a grotesquely bureaucratic species whose idea of problem-solving involved more paperwork, never less. Similarly, our government suffers from Vogon syndrome — a compulsion to expand bureaucracy through an ever-increasing number of plans, instead of streamlining it. 

Want to start a business and give work to some of the 25-million unemployed? Need a basic service? Expect Kafkaesque loops of the “system is offline”, documents being misplaced and “come back tomorrow”, an administrative gauntlet so painful one wonders if it was designed to discourage participation in the economy entirely.

By 2023 the public sector employed about 3-million people, making it one of the world’s largest relative to population size. This enormous payroll accounts for a significant portion of government expenditure, yet actual service delivery remains dismal. Hospitals are short on beds but not on managers; police stations lack vehicles but not officers who can file reports on why vehicles are lacking. The result? A state that is both overstaffed and underperforming — an impressive but tragic paradox. 

This bloated bureaucracy not only drains resources but creates the perfect environment for large-scale corruption. The sprawling web of state entities, duplicated functions and unchecked administrative power has provided the ideal infrastructure for state capture. Under the guise of “transformation” and “development”, bureaucracy has run amok.

If you think the US government is wasteful, wait until you see SA. The state spends 6% of GDP on education — one of the highest proportions globally — yet our school system ranks among the worst. In the 2019 Trends in International Mathematics & Science Study, 80% of grade 4 pupils couldn’t read for meaning, while our grade 5s came  last in maths and science among 58 countries and our grade 9s ranked fifth from the bottom in maths and second-last in science. Despite billions spent, the system continues to deliver dismal results. 

SA spends almost 9% of GDP on healthcare — comparable to wealthier nations — yet public hospitals suffer from understaffing, poor hygiene and equipment shortages, with patients sleeping on floors and in corridors. Corruption is rampant; in Gauteng alone more than R2bn has been lost to fraudulent contracts, while funds go to overpriced supplies and vanishing personal protective equipment instead of essential medical resources. 

Not just a meme

Enter our own Doge with the singular mission to streamline governance, eliminate inefficiencies and enforce accountability across all public departments. Many successful economies other than the US such as Singapore and Denmark have specialised government units dedicated to efficiency. These bodies audit, assess and, crucially, intervene when departments become too unwieldy. Singapore’s Public Service Division actively ensures that public institutions remain lean and effective. SA, by contrast, has spent decades layering new agencies on top of dysfunctional ones. 

SA has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. A Doge could cut wasteful expenditure and redirect funds to essential services instead of ministerial pet projects. This isn’t about blind outsourcing but partnering with the private sector if it offers better, cheaper and more reliable solutions — without ideological resistance. 

A Doge’s very existence should be self-terminating — its success would make its own survival unnecessary. Once government efficiency reaches a sustainable level, the Doge should be dissolved. 

Real-world impact

The US Doge is already proving that technology can make government smaller, faster and smarter. AI is replacing unnecessary middlemen, cutting paperwork and making public services more accessible. Meanwhile, SA remains stuck with slow, outdated bureaucratic systems that frustrate citizens and drain billions of rand from the fiscus. 

In his 2025 state of the nation address President Cyril Ramaphosa acknowledged the need for digital transformation, promising a revamped gov.za platform and efforts to reduce red tape. However, SA has a long history of empty digital promises with little to show for it. Home affairs, the SA Revenue Service and municipal service offices remain siloed, inefficient and unco-ordinated, forcing citizens to submit the same information multiple times across different departments.

SA continues to waste billions on failed IT projects that overpromise and underdeliver. Instead of streamlining services, these projects become bloated, corrupt and ineffective. A few glaring examples include the eNatis Traffic System, which has proved a R1bn disaster, plagued by crashes and inefficiencies, often forcing drivers to wait months for basic licensing services; and GovChat, which was marketed as a tool for citizen-government interaction but collapsed with millions in wasted funds, leaving no functioning system. 

SA’s issue is not a lack of plans or funding for the plans — it is gross mismanagement. But imagine an SA in which basic services are delivered without the current bureaucratic nightmare. A country where running a business is smooth sailing. A nation where home affairs operates like a modern institution rather than a time-travel experiment back to the ’90s. 

By cutting unnecessary red tape an SA Doge would boost economic growth, reduce corruption and rebuild public trust in the state. Consider the cost of inefficiency — foreign investors avoid SA not just because of crime but because navigating our bureaucracy is akin to escaping from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe — confusing, endless and punctuated by absurd rules. 

When a company such as Tesla sets up a gigafactory in Berlin in two years but SA can’t build a power station in 15, the problem is not capability — it’s governance. A Doge should ensure efficiency becomes the standard, not the exception. 

SA can continue to pour billions into a bloated system that produces worse results than some low-income countries, or we can demand a government that actually serves the people.

And if the Vogons don’t like it? Well, they can always file a complaint in triplicate and wait for a response. 

• Eloff is a legal adviser, writer and nonprofit executive.