Marion Edmunds
Public Administration Minister Zola Skweyiya has had to bang heads together in the Presidential Review Commission — the body appointed by President Nelson Mandela to investigate transformation in the public service — to get it to do some work.
Before this week, the multi-million rand commission met only four times since it was inaugurated in March. And while there is evidence the commission has belatedly squared up to the enormous challenge ahead, MPs are concerned it has been fiddling while the demoralised public service burns.
The commission must, by the end of its tenure, provide a medium-term and long-term plan for restructuring the public service. This is crucial to save the African National Congress’s promises of delivery before elections in 1999.
In its defence, the commission says it has spent the past six months developing a business plan, identifying personnel and agreeing to an operating budget of R18,5-million.
One of the commissioners, Professor Fanie Cloete of the University of Stellenbosch, told MPs at a parliamentary portfolio meeting this week that progress had been held up by complicated negotiations with donors who had refused to release promised funds until its business plan had been refined.
Sources in the public service said problems with donors developed partly as a result of the unfortunate negotiating style of the commission’s chairman, Professor Bax Nomvete.
It was also pointed out that much time-wasting has been caused by infighting among commission staff. Particular acrimony developed around Nomvete, whose authoritarian manner demoralised commissioners and staff, and it was only after a meeting with Skweyiya and some “hard talking” in early August that difficulties were patched up and “everybody kissed and made up”.
Nomvete has since acquired an official adviser from the public service, Professor Patrick Fitzgerald.
This week the commission has been meeting in Pretoria, working out its strategy of investigating the public service. This includes going to every government department in the country, evaluating its performance and reporting back. An interim report will be presented to Mandela at the end of next March.
An ANC MP said sceptically: “It may well be that they do get down to work, but if their past performance is anything to go by, they need pressure on them to know they have to deliver.”