/ 1 November 2007

Good, but room for improvement

There is a healthy pattern evolving in government, if you read last year’s ­inaugural DG report card in tandem with today’s.

The state is decidedly less patient with under-performers — five failed DGs have recently lost their jobs. In the past year Itumeleng Mosala (arts and culture), Linda Mti (correctional services), Glen Thomas (land affairs), Jeff Makutula (home affairs) and Jabu Sindane (water affairs and forestry) have been sent packing.

While South Africa’s euphemistic political culture will claim that the parting of ways was by mutual consent, it appears that the South African public might finally be witnessing the application of performance management in the top ranks of the civil service.

There are other success stories. Home affairs DG Mavuso Msimang was sent in to troubleshoot in a department that has been a major brake on development and economic growth; in just more than 100 days he has stamped his authority by firing incompetents and clamping down on corruption.

Indirectly, this reflects on the executive: without a political mandate he could not have acted so decisively.

In addition, the appointment of trade and industry’s Tshediso Matona and science and technology’s Phil Mjwara signals the coming to office of a generation of experienced technocrats. The signs are that a professional civil service is starting to emerge, where technical nous outweighs political pedigree. This is the best possible news.

The ANC’s practice of deploying cadres to the top ranks of the civil service was justified in the immediate post-1994 period when it needed to put new hands on the levers of state. Fourteen years on the party is secure in power and the country needs administrative rather than political skills in government.

Of course, the new ethos has yet to reach certain key departments. Police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi, the archetypal deployee, still thinks his green, black and gold stripes are more important than his blue uniform.

At the National Intelligence Agency, the Mail & Guardian has revealed that Manala Manzini continues in his job despite allegations — taken up by the ANC Women’s League — that he roughed up his wife.

And, in the health department, Thami Mseleku appears more preoccupied with advancing a political agenda as an ANC repairman than with the wellbeing of South Africans, which should be his sole focus.

The development challenge in the next five years will be to see that a much larger fiscal dividend reaches the grassroots. The government must ensure that social grants reach more beneficiaries, that its retirement and health funding plans move into top gear and that the extension of power, electricity, water and sanitation services to all South Africans continues apace.

Given that 43% of the population lives in poverty and that just under 40% of adults who want to work cannot find employment, the country can ill afford maladministration and the squandering of scarce state resources.

On the whole our second report card’s rating of the state’s performance is good — with room for improvement.

White mischief

So our World Cup-winning coach Jake White is lost to South African rugby.

Did he want to stay? Who knows? What we do know is that the South African Rugby Union (Saru) and SA Rugby have treated White with such disrespect and disdain that remaining in the job as Springbok coach was no longer an option.

Saru’s press statement this week that White would not be considered as having tenure in the job because he did not reapply for his position was the last straw in a titanic struggle between the coach and his employer over the past four years.

Saru issued the statement knowing full well that White’s contract with SA Rugby stipulates that he need not reapply for the job.

White’s professional approach to rugby, his stubborn loyalty to his game plan and squad of players and his insistence on resting players to allow for proper conditioning obviously infuriated the game’s administrators. So he had to go.

He made it clear in a statement this week that he had asked for time to consider his options “as I was mindful of making a wrong decision based on emotion. This time was not afforded me and that is particularly disappointing.”

Saru wanted him out and it was going to get rid of him no matter what.

All this would have a familiar ring for another hugely successful Bok coach, Nick Mallet. He, too, was perceived as a threat to South Africa’s rugby administrators and he was cut down to size for daring to suggest that match tickets were too expensive in South Africa.

White, with President Thabo Mbeki and almost every South African rugby follower in his fan club, was becoming too big for his boots and needed to be cut down to size.

The upshot is that a host of nations are queuing up to recruit our successful coach to take control of their national rugby teams. White’s experience and expertise is a tremendous loss to South African rugby.

Saru and SA Rugby should be ashamed of themselves.