A year after President Thabo Mbeki announced the creation of a new “public service echelon of multi-skilled community development workers” to act as the government’s direct link to communities, training of the first intake of 180 started this week.
But the delay, since Mbeki sketched his vision of the government being “in direct contact with people where these masses live” in his last State of the Nation address, was not unexpected, said Professor Adam Habib, head of the democracy and governance programme of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).
Government bureaucracy can move very slowly, like any other big bureaucracy. And in addition it has to implement accountability measures, unlike much of the private sector.
But, that still doesn’t mean that it is right that these things take so long. “If these things are priorities, then they should be marked as such,” said Habib.
Between now and mid-March, 840 people will be enrolled in the one-year learnerships — a mix of theoretical and practical training — hosted by the Local Government Sectoral Education and Training Authority.
Once qualified, the trainees will be employed by the provinces to work in local governments. They will be linked to government offices via laptops and the state’s e-governance system, and must step in to solve problems such as accessing grants or obtaining IDs, said Melanie Bernard-Fryer, Deputy Director General in the Department of Public Service and Administration and coordinator of the national task team.
“The new cadre as envisaged by the president should be in possession of certain competencies such as project management and financial skills,” she said. “You don’t want people to just float around. If people go back into the community and they don’t bring change, then you’ll have wasted money.”
This new tier of public servants is being established after a long and, at times, acrimonious public service restructuring process. But the learnerships funded through the National Skills Fund — the pool of levies collected from companies and administered by the Department of Labour — are open to those public servants declared excess. Many of them did not have the opportunity to improve their skills, said Bernard-Fryer, adding that key requirements for applications are community roots and a track record of volunteer work.
The majority are to be sent to the 18 urban and rural “nodes” the president identified as development priorities in 2001.
Meanwhile, the national youth service, first identified by Mbeki in his 2002 State of the Nation address, now also looks set to happen. The National Youth Commission (NYC) expects the first 7 000 candidates to start their national youth service in March — just more than two years after Mbeki first announced such a service.
Now each government department is expected to integrate a national youth service component.
“We are very optimistic. There’s a lot of groundwork that has been done by the NYC and its partners,” said the commission’s spokesperson Monde Mkalipi. “When people exit they are in a position to be absorbed into the mainstream of the economy.”