Imperfectly timed
GARETH VAN ONSELEN: How can we expect national administration to function normally?
A recipe for chaos. And it shows
The average duration of the working relationship between directors-general and ministers has been so short that long-term planning and short-term delivery have been at risk.
Under Zuma the average national department will be reshuffled every nine months and a new director-general appointed every 22 months.
This week the SA Institute of Race Relations (IRR) releases a report titled "Political Musical Chairs" that details the turnover among ministers and directors-general in national government under President Jacob Zuma. (Disclosure: I was the author.) It shows that the average period ministers and their directors-general have spent together since May 2009, when Zuma first came to office, is just 14 months. That is a remarkably short time, and it goes some considerable way towards explaining one of the primary constraints on service delivery: instability and a lack of continuity. The result is administrative turmoil and an environment defined by uncertainty and perpetual upheaval.To see the trends, the study looked at 32 departments from May 2009 through July 2017. It found there had been 215 different relationships between ministers and directors-general in those departments. That means that in the average department there has to date been 6.7 different relationships, at an average of...
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