STEVEN FRIEDMAN: Down with service delivery and up with serving the people
Sitting around waiting for the government to deliver services is a deeply undemocratic idea
Is Tito Mboweni the first cabinet minister to say that the people need a direct say in decisions that affect them? Or merely the latest to want citizens to do the government’s job for it? Mboweni’s first medium-term budget speech may not have broken any new ground. But a comment he made at the media conference before the speech did exactly that: he challenged an object of workshop in the public debate by arguing that we don’t need "service delivery". "Service delivery," he said, "is like sitting at home and waiting for the baker to deliver the bread … instead of participating in the development of the bread, which is development. I prefer the development approach, not the delivery approach." This is a vital point. Most people are so used to praising "service delivery" that they give no thought to the message the words send. If the job of the government is to "deliver" services, the citizen’s role is reduced to waiting around for whatever is "delivered". People have no say in decidin...
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