PETER BRUCE: The spine that can strengthen a state
'What Ramaphosa has done now is the beginning of what we should all hope becomes a much more professional, experienced and focused bureaucracy'
Lost in the swirl of the demented South African political news cycle last week was an absolutely critical announcement: from now on, directors-general in the government will report to the president. In other words, we may have seen the end of new ministers strolling into ministries or departments and almost instantly suspending or firing the sitting director-general. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was a serial DG abuser when she was a minister, but almost all of Jacob Zuma's many cabinet reshuffles meant that some blameless DG would be accused of a breach of the Public Finance Management Act and be suspended on full pay while some toady audit firm carried out a long and expensive "forensic" investigation that never seemed to include an interview with the suspended figure themselves.One of the central tenets of the National Development Plan, drawn up by Cyril Ramaphosa and Trevor Manuel, adopted as official ANC policy in Mangaung in 2012 and completely ignored by Zuma, is the notion of a "ca...
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