The apartheid years have laden South Africa’s public service with civil servants who are unable to reform local government departments, writes Lynda Loxton
NEARLY two years after South Africa’s April elections, many government departments are still struggling to rid themselves of the detritus of apartheid and emerge as sleek and efficient operations.
The process, unfortunately, is costing South African taxpayers millions of rands either in redundancy packages or in keeping on staff from the former homelands who have no work to do but do not want to move to other areas.
In fact, Public Service and Administration Minister Zola Skweyiya told a press conference last week that the government is sometimes hard put to say exactly how many civil servants South Africa has on its payroll.
These issues were discussed during a two-day hearing by the parliamentary public service and administration committee and highlights the testing task that awaits the newly- appointed presidential commission of inquiry into the rationalisation of the public
Home Affairs Director General Piet Colyn told the committee that it had, for example, been difficult to amalgamate officials from the former Transkei into one national home affairs
“We need 49 people in Umtata but we have nearly 300 … people come to work and are frustrated because there is no work for them and this leads to dissatisfaction and strikes,” Colyn said.
But for housing, family and other reasons, most of these employees refused to accept transfers to other parts of the country unless they were offered substantially improved salary packages, which was out of the question as far as the Public Service Commission (PSC) was concerned.
The solution was to offer redundancy packages, which were not cheap either.
Trade and Industry Director of Administration Emma Ramaema told the committee that 90 percent of the staff that had been inherited from the former homelands “we do not have much use for”, because their skills did not match those that were needed.
The committee heard similar tales from other government departments as well as bitter complaints about the Public Service Commission’s “inflexibility” about offering competitive salary packages for professionals.
As a result, they did not have professionals in key areas, which was affecting their efficiency and efforts to radically restructure their operations to meet the needs of the new South Africa.
“It has become a priority for the PSC to be transformed as an institution,” committee chairwoman Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said.
It had to be more flexible both in terms of salaries for professionals and in terms of the paper qualifications required for certain
Housing Director General Billy Cobbett was outspoken on the latter. He said the apartheid system had kept many people out of formal education, but many had notched up years of experience in areas such as housing and would be an asset to government. The PSC, however, had other ideas.
Mlambo-Ngcuka said her committee was considering the experiences of countries such as the Philippines, New Zealand and Namibia in restructuring their civil services.