Barry Streek
The Minister of Education, Kader Asmal, has lodged a formal complaint with the Public Protector, Selby Baqwa, about endemic inertia in the government and suggested “massive tutoring” of state officials to make them more efficient.
“Generally, my feeling is that there is a pervasive culture of delay in the government, largely inherited from the past era but overlaid by attitudes and practices that have unfortunately developed in the new era,” Asmal writes in a letter to Baqwa. “The combination is, frankly, disastrous – welding together, as it does, two sets of bad habits.”
Asmal catalogues the inefficiency he has encountered in the government, and proposes several ways of improving how officials operate.
The minister also says state employees are often not e-mail literate and fail to inform different branches of the government of essential information, such as changes of contact details. “This leads to the situation where each and every attempt to contact another department – and God help the member of the public trying to do this – becomes a major intelligence operation.”
After Asmal first complained about general government inefficiency last year, Baqwa wrote back, saying: “I cannot but agree with your comments in your letter concerning delays within government departments.
“While it is true that such delays are justifiable in certain cases, generally speaking, they are not. This matter has indeed been a source of ongoing concern to my office.”
In his reply, Asmal writes: “When one considers, apart from technical incapacities and inadequacies, the legacy of decades of Bantu education which has afflicted blacks and which has instilled a fear of dealing with incompetence, there is an obvious need for massive tutoring, teaching and mentoring, which – largely because of cost and time factors – is simply not being done on anything like the scale that is necessary.
“Once it is established that it is perfectly acceptable to attend to matters lying in `in’ baskets over a period of months, then this relaxed norm takes over totally and things are seldom attended to with alacrity. The culture is nurtured.”
Asmal concedes there are occasions when officials need time to research matters fully. “But then the reasons for the expected delay should be promptly and fully explained … so that routine proactive checks are made on the progress of the investigation.”
Asmal also calls for the introduction of an “unbreakable, iron rule” that receipt of every written communication to a public office be acknowledged in writing within a day.
All phone calls to public offices should be logged in duplicate, he says, citing how the Rand Merchant Bank board discusses detailed printouts showing the precise number of rings before phones are picked up so that action can be taken in instances of routine tardiness. “The sound of phones ringing incessantly in government offices is well known to me and no doubt to you. The mere fact that a known check is made and reported to higher authority will help curb this.”
Asmal suggests that there should be computer compatibility through all sectors of the government with the requisite trainers and maintenance people. “We need computer and e-mail capacity as a prerequisite for the appointment or confirmation of all key staff who are involved in dealing directly with public or interdepartmental queries.”
Asmal says South Africa can only win domestically and internationally if procedures are in place to deal efficiently and accurately with all approaches to the government at all levels.
“It is not unrealistic to aim for this. It is simply necessary. It is a matter of changing more than one culture, and emerging from a shockingly inefficient past,” he concludes.
Baqwa’s office said this week it was pursuing the complaint, having appointed one of its top investigators, advocate Stoffel Fourie, to the task. Senior officials in the national and provincial governments had been asked to “make inputs”, after which Baqwa would decide on what course of action was most appropriate. – Additional reporting by Nalisha Kalideen