When a tap runs dry, a clinic has medicine stockouts or a police station cannot service the community it must protect, these may appear to be operational issues.
But very often the failure started much earlier with who was appointed to run a public institution, whether that person was capable of doing the job and whether professional officials were subsequently allowed to exercise their responsibilities without improper political pressure or interference.
This is why the two presentations by the Public Service Commission (PSC) to the portfolio committee on public service and administration this week are so important.
One was about the recruitment of senior public servants while the other dealt with the participation of public servants in political party study groups and related informal activities.
These might look like separate issues but they are not. Together they speak to the heart of how we build the professional, capable and impartial public administration that our Constitution envisages.
Safeguarding the public servant
But we also need to be equally clear about what this does not mean.
The PSC’s advisory note on the participation of public servants in political party study groups and related informal engagements provides guidance to departments, executive authorities, directors-general, heads of department and public servants regarding participation in study groups and similar political engagements.
The committee requested the document and a briefing on it in June this year. The note seeks to clarify
the legal, ethical and governance implications that may arise when public servants participate in unauthorised structures that fall outside formal governmental and parliamentary processes.
It clearly states public servants “must not participate” in engagements that are not formally authorised, take place outside official parliamentary or executive processes, are not transparent or institutionally accountable, provide selective political access to official information, compromise or reasonably appear to compromise impartiality or involve political strategy or caucus coordination.
The note recognises that officials may participate in formal parliamentary committee processes, lawfully authorised executive briefings, intergovernmental forums and officially sanctioned institutional engagements.
This distinction is grounded in section 195 of the Constitution, which prescribes certain values that a public administration must espouse, including maintaining a high standard of professional ethics and impartiality.
There is nothing wrong with political parties having study groups but the real question is whether professional public servants should participate in partisan political engagements. The PSC’s position is clear that they should not where those engagements cross the boundaries set out in the advisory note.
In the course of their duties, public servants have to deal with ministers, MPs and other political office-bearers. That is the way government works. Officials give technical advice, implement policy, brief parliamentary committees and account for the work of government departments.
The point is not to prevent that interaction but to ensure that it takes place through authorised and transparent structures, including parliamentary committees, authorised executive briefings, intergovernmental forums and officially sanctioned institutional engagements. The structures safeguard democratic accountability and the professional public servant.
Holding the line
Serving the government duly elected by the people is not the same as serving the political party.
This nuance is especially important when considering the potential for the abuse of power in informal settings within a partisan meeting.
The official may find himself or herself among political figures who have the power to make decisions about their employment or even dismissal.
No explicit threat is required for the environment to create pressure but it can affect the advice an official feels able to give and undermine confidence in the administration’s impartiality.
Furthermore, it creates a competitive advantage for that political party, which other parties will not have access to.
Other risks that the PSC identified besides unequal political opportunities to access information include reduced parliamentary oversight, unauthorised disclosure of information and, importantly, a loss of public confidence in the neutrality of the public administration.
The erosion of administrative neutrality damages democratic governance.
But drawing a line around partisan political spaces deals with only half the equation.
The PSC’s Good Practice Guide on Executive Recruitment is an important reminder that manipulated recruitment processes have an impact beyond a department’s organogram. It is a price tag that is ultimately paid by South Africans in the form of poor public services, wasted public money and dilapidated infrastructure.
Professionalisation of the public service is therefore not just an internal human-resources exercise but a service-delivery imperative with real-world implications.
That is why appointments of public servants must be based on merit.
It is why selection processes must be fair and why technical expertise must play a key role in enabling recruitment panels to identify candidates best fit to drive government’s mandate.
It is here that the PSC’s proposed pool of technical experts could make an important contribution, along with electronic recruitment and improved audit trails.
Translating guidance into institutional rules
But parliament must also pose the difficult questions, such as who selects the supposedly independent technical expert and what prevents a department from choosing someone who is likely to favour a particular candidate?
What happens when the recommended candidate is not appointed and why should vetting be done only after an appointment?
These are critical questions, because professionalisation cannot mean only creating more bureaucratic procedures. The value thereof lies in when these procedures close the loopholes for patronage.
We must safeguard merit, not only in appointments but also later in the exercise of professional judgement by those who are appointed.
The same applies to the PSC’s advisory note on study groups.
While guidance on political study groups is a good start, the real test lies in its implementation and whether ministers and directors-general translate the principles into clear institutional rules, manage external engagements properly and protect officials from inappropriate partisan pressure.
Parliament, in turn, must monitor whether that is happening.
Ultimately, this is not about protecting bureaucrats from politicians, or politicians from bureaucrats. It is about protecting the public. The people of South Africa have the right to expect a state in which democratically elected leaders take decisions and are answerable for them and politically independent civil servants deliver on those decisions.
This requires professional people in public office who can give honest advice to political leaders without fear or favour.
It requires a firewall between the machinery of the state and the machinery of political parties. Getting this wrong means the people of South Africa experience the failure in the water they do not receive or the clinics where their medicine is out of stock.
When we get this right, however, professionalisation becomes something citizens experience in the excellence of the state that serves them.
Jan de Villiers is the chairperson of parliament’s portfolio committee on public service and administration.