Marion Edmunds
DEPUTY PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki is considering a plan to grant so-called ” professionals” — doctors, prosecutors and accountants — better salaries and a measure of independence from the public service bargaining chamber.
The plan was put on the table this week by the Medical Association of South Africa (Masa) in a bid to bring state doctors’ salaries in line with the private sector. The association believes it is essential to improve doctors’ salaries to prevent them deserting state medicine for a more comfortable life in private practice.
A Masa delegation, led by Dr Bernard Mandell, met both Health Minister Dr Nkosasana Zuma and Mbeki at the Tuynhuys in Cape Town on Monday. The meeting was organised by Zuma, who is reportedly hoping that Mbeki will have enough influence to persuade the Cabinet to agree to some, if not all, of the plan.
Underlying the plan is the fear that doctors will abandon state medicine in increasing numbers because salaries are too low, working conditions are continuing to deteriorate, doctors are expected to work overtime without proper compensation, and hospitals are suffering cut- backs to make way for improved primary health
Mandell says the health ministery knows that its new proposed health plan will only work if there are enough state doctors to help implement it. He says doctors will only stay in the public service if they receive salaries that are in some way compatable with the salaries recieved by private doctors.
But what have doctors got to do with other “professionals” like accountants and prosecutors? Mandell says the “brain-drain” is not unique to the Health Department, and says Masa wants to make alliances with other professional groups in the public service. The Justice Department says, for example, that it is battling to keep prosecutors because they are over-worked and under-paid.
Justice Minister Dullah Omar said this week that many prosecutors had left the Justice Department and more wanted to leave. He said the department had been working on the problem for about a year and looking for ways to adjust the salaries of “professional” workers in the Justice Department.
Omar did not want to commit himself to supporting Masa’s plan, but said he was sympathetic to the principle of treating professionals in the public service as professionals so that their salaries were competitive with the private sector.
Mandell also points out that the Receiver of Revenue is desperate for efficient accountants to collect tax. The media has carried reports since 1994 that bilions of rands of taxes are not collected, because the Receiver of Revenue cannot keep its accountants.
They can get much better salaries in the private sector so there is no incentive for them to stay in the public service. The Receiver of Revenue’s office say they are powerless to offer better salaries to attract the accountants because the Public Service Commission and the relevant laws bind almost all public servants to the same salary structure, regardless of the job they do. The Finance Department has also been looking at ways to get round this problem over the last
Masa’s plan suggests that all these birds could be killed with one stone – by allowing the “professionals” in the public service to be paid according to a different salary structure to other public servants. Masa says that at the moment, doctors are a minority in the Public Service Bargaining Chamber and, because “majority rules” in the chamber, and doctors are well-paid in comparison to street-sweepers and even nurses, it’s unlikely that doctors’ salaries will be improved.
Doctors are not allowed to strike because they provide an essential service.
Masa has also suggested that health workers get their own bargaining chamber to sort out salary disputes independently of the rest of the public service. It is also asking that those who perform so-called essential services be allowed to resolve their wage disputes independently of those who provide non-essential services.
Masa has already submitted some of these proposals to the Constitutional Assembly. Mandell says the association has been trying to make their point to government authorities for the last nine years.
Mbeki will meet Zuma again next week to work out a way of dealing with the plan. The Public Service Commission has not yet commented.
What De Klerk really knew about ‘dirty tricks’
High level approval of police dirty tricks has been revealed in new documents, writes Stefaans BrUmmer
DOCUMENTS given to the Mail & Guardian this week provide fresh evidence that police dirty tricks in the run-up to the 1994 elections were sanctioned at the highest level.
This will increase pressure on former president FW de Klerk to explain what critics charge was his government’s “duplicity” in negotiations with the ANC, as revealed by the Mail & Guardian in the last fortnight.
While former security police operative Paul Erasmus gave new documentary proof that post- 1990 operations against the ANC and its alliance partners were approved at police headquarters, ex-police chief General Johan van der Merwe this week confirmed that two cabinet committees under De Klerk were briefed on covert operations during the post-1990
Van der Merwe’s assertion, and Erasmus’ evidence that operations aimed at destabilising the ANC alliance were part of a well co- ordinated strategy, cast a pall over De Klerk’s defence that rogue elements within the security forces, bent on sabotaging his reform initiatives, should bear sole responsibility for post-1990 “dirty tricks”.
Many of De Klerk’s critics accept he would not have been party to decisions to eliminate opponents and instigate violence — but doubts remain, on the one hand, about his knowledge of such matters, and on the other hand about his active or tacit approval for “soft” projects against the alliance partners.
President Nelson Mandela is known to believe that De Klerk’s government played a duplicitous role during the negotiations that followed Mandela’s release from prison in February 1990. “Mandela has always worked on the basis that (De Klerk’s government) knew … Either he was incapable of dealing with the problem, or they (the security forces) were doing what he wanted them to do,” a source close to Mandela said this
Erasmus’ documents include:
* A signal, dated July 15 1991, from Lieutenant-Colonel Alf Oosthuizen, chief of intelligence at police headquarters in Pretoria, to police Crime Intelligence Service (successor to the Security Branch) branches countrywide.
The signal, headed “Romulus: covert ad-hoc action to put pressure on the ANC/SACP”, orders an immediate campaign to “make the SACP a millstone around the neck of the ANC”. Erasmus says Operation Romulus was part of a wider “Project Wigwam” aimed at influencing political tendencies.
Issued shortly after elections for the ANC National Executive Committee, the order asks that the “SACP’s influence in the ANC” be pointed out, that the SACP and ANC be “typified as one and the same organisation”, and that “economic policy differences between the ANC and SACP be driven to a head”. It tells police to “launch the action with all capabilities at your disposal”, but suggests pamphleteering, the use of front organisations, media contact and dissemination by sources, agents and co-
* A commendation of Erasmus, dated May 20 1991, from Major-General PJ Viljoen at Crime Intelligence Service headquarters in Pretoria, for “an ad-hoc action launched to attain the aims of Operation Romulus”. It says Erasmus “has with great effort and enthusiasm launched actions which caused a great stir in Britain” and that “it had positive results for the government and will definitely add to the success of later actions which will be launched”.
Supporting documentation makes it clear the “actions” involved the discreditation in Britain of the ANC, among other means by getting at Winnie Mandela. One document refers to “the specific objective of using the Winnie Mandela “saga” to discredit the ANC as a whole”.
* A document dated October 24 1990, signed by Oosthuizen on behalf of the head of the Security Branch, about the planning under “Project Jackal” of a “covert Stratcom (strategic communication) operation aimed at radical teachers’ associations”.
The document says the ANC-aligned South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu), entailed “dangers” including “the broadening of the SACP/ANC power base”. The operation would be co-ordinated by the intelligence section of the Security Branch at Pretoria headquarters and proposed the formation of a “loose umbrella organisation front” to counter Sadtu and others.
The operation would be presented to then-Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok for approval in December 1990, the document says. Further documentation shows final implementation plans starting January 1991 for “Operation Tutor”, under “Project Jackal”, which includes plans for the establishment of a teacher body that would be a police front, the infiltration of other teacher organisations and “continuous discreditation actions against Sadtu”. Erasmus says the project was implemented.
* A document setting out the implementation from January 1991 of “Operation Gordian” to influence and “minimalise the effect” of the ANC Youth League and the ANC-aligned South African Youth Congress. It proposes donors be “influenced” to stop or decrease funding “administrative sabotage”, the creation of division within the organisations and the “neutralising and discreditation” of leaders.
* An information note from Oosthuizen to the head of the Security Branch, dated November 8 1990 and bearing what appears to be the signatures of Vlok and General van der Merwe, on a media conference where two Returned Exile Co-ordinating Committee (Recoc) members would “reveal the ANC’s undemocratic policy, ethnic divisions in the organisation and the existence of conditions in the Mbarara detention camp in Uganda”.
The note says that “Recoc as an organisation acts wholly independently, although this office co-ordinates its actions”, and that “the South African Police involvement will in no way be
De Klerk acknowledged on Sunday that his former ministers Gerrit Viljoen, Kobie Coetzee and Barend du Plessis had served on a cabinet committee dealing with Stratcom after 1990. “The terms of reference of the committee were not to approve of specific Stratcom projects. It was a mechanism which I created to phase out specific projects which were decided upon in a previous era.”
Van der Merwe confirmed the existence of the committee, chaired by Du Plessis. “The committee was supposed to report fully to the former state president, Mr De Klerk.”
He said another cabinet body, the Security Information Committee, was headed by Coetzee. It co-ordinated “all security matters” and “especially a person like Mr Kobie Coetzee … was completely informed of what was happening on ground level”.
Van der Merwe said De Klerk “had the view that no Stratcom project should be to the detriment of a political party. It should, however, be kept in mind that we were dealing with an extremely complicated political and security situation.” The ANC’s own Operation Vula showed the ANC had “not been honest” in its actions after 1990 “and that there were forces at work which clashed with the spirit of the
A noted public figure who had contact with De Klerk after 1990 this week said his impression was that De Klerk had had little grip on covert security structures when he inherited them from PW Botha. “Later I got the impression he knew what was going on, but that he was not really doing anything about it. Watergate-type destabilisation he did not really think was a problem… FW, as things moved along, realised more, but did less.”