The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Tuesday, Workers’ Day, dismissed the government’s call for a single public service and told ministers to stop blaming apartheid for problems.
”Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi’s repeated calls for the ‘establishment of a single public service’ must be seen for what it truly is, namely, the ANC’s [African National Congress] insatiable lust for power,” said DA MP Isaac Julies, the party’s spokesperson on that sector.
Fraser-Moleketi told the South African Local Government Association (Salga) conference in Midrand last week that the establishment of a single public service would improve service delivery, and Salga later resolved to support this.
”But the minister is simply misleading the South African public. The ANC’s ultimate goal is nothing more than the centralisation of power,” said Julies.
”In effect, the Department of Public Service and Administration is proposing to create a uniform public service under its own authority. The [department] will control all appointments to every municipality, as well as to every provincial and national government department.”
Julies said a single service would be ”an unwieldy mega-bureaucracy” and would cripple local government’s ability to deliver basic services. ”The real problem is that there is a lack of skills and poor work ethics.”
DA MP Willem Doman, the party’s spokesperson on provincial and local government, said ministers should stop blaming apartheid for problems.
”Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi should take a leaf out of Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s book and publicly acknowledge that attributing all the ills besetting some of South Africa’s municipalities to apartheid, to use Minister Manuel’s own words, ‘holds substantially less water 13 years into democracy’,” said Doman.
He said Manuel told the Salga conference that improving local government capacity meant cutting the senior management vacancy rate of 30% to 70%, appointing competent and committed administrators, and improving financial management.
”Manuel’s speech was in stark contrast to Mufamadi’s tendency to paint a rosy picture of the progress made regarding the transformation of local government. His much-vaunted Project Consolidate is a case in point,” said Doman.
”Pretending that all is well, while — in effect — the opposite is true, or a perpetual reference to apartheid, only retards progress.” — Sapa