Indications are that the RDP is more entangled in financial wrangles than in development and reconstruction, argues Nicoli Nattrass
The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) has two public faces. In its general, and more rhetorical manifestation, it refers to South Africa’s supposedly integrated developmental vision.
More practically, however, it boils down to the activities of the RDP Ministry, and in particular to the R2,5-billion RDP Fund.
While the fine objectives and goals of the RDP as “vision” are beyond reproach, the same cannot be said for the RDP Ministry — or for the rationale and operation of the RDP Fund.
The RDP Fund is supposedly an instrument of public sector reform. It was set up primarily to “give maximum impetus to the re-direction of government spending towards new priorities”, to reform the budget process and to facilitate the restructuring of the civil service.
The RDP Fund is spent in two main ways:
* on the Presidential Lead Projects (including sanitation projects, urban renewal projects, targeted free health services, school feeding schemes); and
* on programmes which meet the approval of the RDP Ministry.
The responsibility for implementing the projects and programmes lies with the various government departments which receive allocations from the RDP Fund.
In other words, the Minister of Finance cuts funding which would otherwise go to the various government departments, and then allocates it to the RDP Fund. The RDP Ministry then allocates it back to the government departments for approved projects.
This is a costly, and ultimately unnecessary, piece of bureaucratic musical chairs.
If the entire cabinet supports the RDP (which it appears to do — at least on a rhetorical level), then why this circuitous funding process?
Why shouldn’t the allocation of funds be left up to the Minister of Finance and the various departmental ministers, as it is in normal democratic countries? Why do we need to have Jay Naidoo and his colleagues involved at all?
And considering the fact that only 55 percent of the 1994/5 RDP Fund was allocated (of which only a small fraction was actually spent), indications are that the RDP Fund process has become snarled up in red tape.
Some analysts are even suggesting that the net effect of the RDP has been to slow down social spending.
The standard rationale for this complex inter-department channelling of funds was necessary — the strategic intervention by the RDP Office was needed to ensure that the government departments actually re-prioritised expenditure.
The assumption was that government departments would either resist change (the “conservative old-South African official” type of argument) or not be in a position to make the soundest judgment.
The RDP Fund would thus function as some kind of a guiding catalyst of change.
This argument is shot through with problems. If it is actually the case that some government departments are more progressive (read “RDP-oriented”), then one would expect those departments to be applying to the RDP Fund for activities they would have anyway initiated off their own bat.
They would also, presumably, be in a better position to evaluate and prioritise projects in their sphere of expertise than the RDP Ministry.
But what about the less progressive departments –the ones not particularly concerned with RDP principles?
Those departments are indeed a problem, but exactly what power does the RDP Ministry have over them anyway?
If their activities are so counter to RDP principles, then would they even bother applying to the RDP Fund?
Under these circumstances, the existence of the RDP Fund and Ministry would have no catalytic effect on their behaviour. Jay Naidoo, after all, had absolutely no impact on the Ministry of Defence’s decision to spend more money on corvettes than was allocated in total to the RDP Fund.
In short, the major re-allocation questions need to be addressed in Cabinet committees and in the Ministry of Finance. The potential for re-allocation to take place through the subsidiary activities of the RDP Fund is profoundly limited — and should be recognised as such.
Interestingly enough, the justification for the RDP Ministry seems to be switching from “catalyst of change” to “co-ordinating role”. This is a better argument, but still problematic.
When, for example, does “co-ordination” simply become code for “control” — and unnecessary and undesirable control at that?
The recent ill-advised attempt by the RDP to control donor funding to non- government organisations (NGOs) is a case in point.
The policy lead to such widespread financial hardship and collapse in the NGO sector that it had to be reversed — by which time it had become too late for many.
There is, of course, a general case for ensuring that South Africa’s development effort is co-ordinated in certain basic ways.
However, if the “co-ordination” role that the RDP Ministry intends playing is along the lines of large-scale economic and development planning, then it will have to be given a great deal more power and responsibility.
But is the RDP Ministry a suitable vehicle for such a role? Why should Minister Naidoo co-ordinate and guide development planning rather than a committee of key Ministers?
If this new economic policy committee of Ministers under Thabo Mbeki succeeds in placing a more coherent economic growth strategy on the table, then perhaps that committee should play such a co-ordinating role.
Until greater clarity is gained about the nature of the RDP and the role of the RDP Ministry, South Africa’s development effort is likely to remain hamstrung by confusion, red tape and political manoeuvring.
The whole concept of the RDP Fund should be re-examined critically – along with any proposals to increase the power and influence of the RDP Ministry.
Nicoli Nattrass is an economist at the School of Economics, UCT.