The Mail & Guardian recently wrote to cabinet ministers asking an innocuous question. The replies, or lack of them, were rather enlightening …
Minister of Public Enterprises Stella Sigcau is the winner of the Mail & Guardian’s first Cabinet Efficiency Test (CET).
The CET was conducted to measure the speed and competence with which cabinet ministers deal with public inquiries. We wanted to find out how long it takes them to reply to a letter from Jabu Citizen and whether they would give a credible answer.
Our overall findings are:
* Just under fifty percent of the cabinet failed the efficiency test by not replying within the cut-off date of four weeks.
* Of those who did reply, 80 percent failed the credibility test by not answering the question.
On June 26 we sent a letter to every cabinet minister (28 of them) and the two deputy presidents, asking about their departments’ affirmative action policies.
We used a private name and address, so there would be no connection to this newspaper.
The fastest response came from Agriculture Minister Kraai van Niekerk, whose assistant administrative secretary, Mrs L Crawford Brunt, managed to churn out a standard reply within four days of our letter being
By Thursday, four weeks later, we had received replies from only 16 of the 30 ministers written to.
Those who failed the efficiency test are:
Thabo Mbeki (Deputy President)
Derek Hanekom (Land)
Ben Ngubane (Arts and Culture, Science and Technology)
Joe Modise (Defence)
Alfred Nzo (Foreign Affairs)
Tito Mboweni (Labour)
Pik Botha (Energy)
Jay Naidoo (RDP)
Pallo Jordan (Posts and Telecommunications)
Zola Skweyiya (Public Admin)
Jeff Radebe (Public Works)
Kader Asmal (Water Affairs and Forestry)
Abe Williams (Welfare)
Sibusiso Bengu (Education)
The vast majority of responses we did receive were couched in pure bureaucratese. Only four out of the 14 actually attempted to answer our question — the office of FW de Klerk, Stella Sigcau’s Ministry for Public Enterprises and Trevor Manuel’s Ministry of Trade and
Sicgau’s office gave a succint and cogent answer. FW’s office, speedy as its reply was, tried to score National Party political points by including extracts from a recent speech he made on the NP’s attitude towards affirmative action, which was not what we
Manuel’s office just confused us with the following statement: “The Government of National Unity is bound by the Constitution to pursue racially blind policies.” Trade and Industry, it seems, is committed to staying outside the affirmative action process.
The others — in different ways — thanked us for our letter. Most said it was either being referred to the director-general or the minister, and we should expect a reply in the near future.
But the secretaries of Correctional Services Minister Sipo Mzimela and Finance Minister Chris Liebenberg simply slammed the postbox in our faces. They thanked us for our letter without indicating they would ever answer our question.
The survey results may well have been affected by the vagaries of the postal system — so we will continue to monitor replies over the next few weeks and report on
* As we went to press yesterday, The Ministry of Transport’s two-page explanation of its affirmative action policy arrived, the most detailed response received to date.