Marion Edmunds
AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS members of Parliament have threatened a parliamentary inquiry into the party’s appointment of consultants if Deloittes and Touche win a R1-million contract for the transformation of the Correctional Services Department.
This contract, should it go to Deloittes and Touche, may be the last straw on the camel’s back for many MPs who are dissatisfied that high-flying consultants have moved into ministries, eclipsing the party’s traditional advisers: non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academics and the Shell House policy unit.
ANC MP Melanie Verwoerd said Parliament’s Constitutional Development Portfolio Committee had openly berated the department for spending millions on consultancy firms, and had instructed them to employ NGOs to do the work.
The Parliamentary Committee on Defence has probed the awarding of a contract for the transformation of the South African National Defence Force to Deloittes and Touche, and while the company still holds the R1-million contract, the mutterings and probing continue.
The Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee is to hold public hearings into “government by consultants” on October 9, when MPs will grill senior public service officials on the use of consultants. The hearings arise from an auditor general’s report, released last month, which indicated government had no mechanism to monitor or gauge the use, cost or output of consultants.
Ironically, ANC ministers brought in consultants, initially, to compensate for the ineptitude of old-guard public servants. Newspaper reports have set the annual figure on government consultancy at a R100-million, although this figure is not official.
While some of the ill-feeling in the ANC might arise from jealousy of consultants’ salaries and their slice of the budget, much resentment stems from concern about their influence on government policy. The accusation made in Parliament’s corridors is that the executive, supported by its consultants, is ignoring party resources.
One ANC MP complained that the transformation process had become government-driven, rather than party-driven. “But it’s not a sinister drive from a narrow elite in government who happen to have a strong position in the NEC [national executive council], it’s also because the ANC’s structures and Shell House have been weakened,” he said.
Other ANC members said they were frustrated that there was no tangible ANC policy, and that the ANC’s policy unit, based in Shell House and headed by acting secretary general Cheryl Carolus had been marginalised. Neither Carolus nor government ministers commented on the issue. However, Tebogo Phadu, a policy-maker in Shell House, confirmed that there were tensions between government ministries and his unit.
“We have a parallel process of research going but our impact is uneven as is our capacity to engage in government issues. The government processes are very rapid and people are pushing ahead fast and sometimes we cannot keep up with developments. But the ANC is trying to restructure itself properly so that it can take a coherent position on issues,” Phadu said.
The announcement of the macro-economic plan, which was done initially over the heads of the ANC’s alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party (SACP), burnt the alliance’s intellectuals and provoked calls for ministers to return to their traditional policy base in Shell House. This was confirmed by SACP executive member Jeremy Cronin.
“Yes, there is a problem … since April 1994, the ANC’s capacity has been weakening and this has been the consequence of a shift of ANC cadres into the government and into the private sector. … We need to get people back into coherent structures for policy-making,” Cronin said.
The question of the relationship between the ANC in government and the ANC as a party will become more important as the 1999 elections approach and the ministers turn to the party to mobilise support for their re- election. Cronin is optimistic that ANC ministers are realising consultants are driving a wedge between them and the party, and will mend their ways.
But there are others who take a more pessimistic view. These are ANC advisers who now find their places in decision-making taken by bureaucrats or professional consultants.
For example, a number of people who worked on the ANC’s health policy before and during the elections have been dismayed that Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma has rejected ANC policy and ignored the research done in its making.
A health expert who was involved in advising the ANC before the elections said this week: “Many of us are dismayed that the minister is using consultants from overseas who do not have knowledge of local conditions and there is a danger of an imposition of inappropriate strategies that worked elsewhere but would not be right here. … We are also dismayed at the extent of duplication of the research we did prior to the elections, and in many cases it is not properly done. There is a depth of health expertise in the country which is being ignored, and for my part I have retreated to my ivory tower.”
There are objections, too, that expertise from the Development Bank and from the South African office of the World Bank are being leaned on more and more, to the exclusion of home-grown policy-makers.
Ron Greenstein, a senior researcher in the Education Policy Unit, believes that many traditional ANC members and advisers who have been absorbed into government have lost touch with the masses, as they wrestle with the state’s unwieldy structures.
“The main policy-making players are new bureaucrats who have reached an accord with old bureaucrats and implemented an internal compromise on policy. … There is no channel for the popular feeling on policy.