Gustav Thiel
The Director General of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Rusty Evans, leaves the department he has served for 30 years at the end of the month with a retirement package rumoured to be worth R10-million.
He would not disclose how many millions he would get in his golden handshake, except to say it was “very satisfactory”. He says he is leaving the department transformed and “almost perfect”.
Evans “volunteered” to retire in March this year. The department officially insists that his race had nothing to do with his retirement, but Evans believes his departure will complete the transformation process that he helped initiate.
A retired foreign affairs official told the Mail & Guardian this week that the position of director general was “very high-profile and needed a person of colour”.
Evans’s five-year contract as head of his department – the standard length of an appointment of any government department head – officially expired at the end of September. Evans and department representative Pieter Swanepoel say he was asked to stay on because of administrative difficulties in the process of finding a replacement.
Foreign affairs sources described this assertion as “absolute rubbish”, saying the problem was the political manoeuvring of possible candidates and “backstabbing” by them.
Swanepoel says a ministerial panel has now been appointed to compile a shortlist of candidates from a list of applicants for the position. Applications closed at the end of November. Evans says he has no preferred replacement and Swanepoel says the department is bound to keep the names of candidates confidential.
A senior official working at the European directorate said this week Evans’s replacement would come from among four candidates – Jackie Selebi, South Africa’s consul general at the United Nations in Geneva; Tutu Mazibuko, the deputy director general for Asia; Tebogo Mafole, the deputy director general for America and Europe; and Barbara Masekela, South Africa’s ambassador to France.
Evans said this week that the exact nature of his retirement package was “not for public consumption” and was determined by a standard formula used by the Public Service Commission, which also said it was not at liberty to disclose Evans’s package. Swanepoel said foreign affairs would also not be releasing information about Evans’s package.
Several sources at foreign affairs say that Evans could be in line for a pay-off worth “at least R10-million”. This amount was confirmed by a retired official who left the department under similar circumstances to Evans. Evans did say that he was satisfied with his package, but that it was not excessive. He denied having negotiated his package.
Both Evans and Swanepoel did admit, however, that the commission had a certain amount of flexibility in awarding retirement packages, which were based on the level of experience of the person involved.
Niel van Heerden, the last director general before Evans, said that when he left, he was awarded nothing more than a standard pension, but “that position might have changed”.
Evans insisted that there was nothing untoward in either his leaving the department or the money that he would be getting for doing so. “I leave a happy man, content that I can use my experience and networks to my own advantage, but I do not know exactly what I will be doing now”. He added that he would be willing to work as a consultant in any government department in future, but Swanepoel said his services would not be required by foreign affairs.
Evans said he leaves behind the “best transformed department in the country. We have met all our targets and I am proud of what we have achieved”. Other foreign affairs officials insist that the transformation process has not gone so smoothly and that the cracks will only start showing when Evans leaves.
One insisted that “the incorporation of officials of the old homelands have brought people into the system who do not have a clue about the diplomatic service.
“It has also led to a lot of backstabbing that projects a very negative image overseas. It is all very well to transform, but not at the cost of efficiency. If Evans says otherwise, it is because he is just unbelievably glad to get out with his money and run.”