REMARKS BY PREMIER TSP MAKWETLA AT THE FOSAD WORKSHOP
Centurion Lake Hotel, Thursday 02 December 2004
Programme Director
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
I feel extremely honoured to have been invited to address this exclusive forum of accomplished management practitioners that are amongst the best in our country today.
It is with great humility that I approach the topic at hand, “ The challenge of social delivery - the tasks confronting provincial and local government.”
As Directors-General of our democratic state you play a critical role both in the process of developing policy, and particularly in the process of implementing that policy. As you know, the task of leading the South African public service is shared between ourselves the elected executives and yourselves, the leadership of government administration.
As elected public representatives we are the principal custodians of the mandate given by all voting South Africans to the government of the day. This mandate you share with us public representatives who join the executive. Henceforth it becomes our collective task to ensure that such a mandate is translated from electoral manifesto to government programmes.
I say all this with a straight face, knowing fully well from observations across many government systems that relations between the executive and administration are always complex. I know many of you have been or continue to be students of public administration.
Nevertheless I think the purpose and mandate that informs us all is very clear. Whatever the complexity of our relationships, we must never let it dilute the mandate and purpose to which we should all subscribe.
Context
There is a history that has resulted in all of us being in this room tonight. First and foremost, there has been a struggle that has been fought bravely by a people who had nothing but their determination and vision. A people who understood through struggle that they had within themselves the means to make history, and that none but themselves were capable of writing that chapter in history. A people who understood that they were under the yoke of a tyranny that they soon should make disappear, and replace instead with what they defined as freedom. Willing to risk life itself, they made all the sacrifices necessary, not only to bring freedom, but also to bring freedom in the lifetime of our generation.
As we sit in this room tonight, we are all products of this sacrifice. What does this mean to us? In the small spaces we have been assigned to oversee, what is our contribution to honouring such sacrifice? In what ways are we different, not only from the past system, but also from other systems that never had the benefit of such courage behind them?
Perhaps as a consequence of the system we replaced, we have a context of grinding poverty and under-development for too many of our people. For too many of our people the essential necessities continue to elude them. Freedom continues to be incomplete. They look upon the democratic state they have put in place to make freedom complete. From a past of poverty, disease, ignorance, hopelessness, and under-development, they look to the democratic state to make life different.
This is not to say they do not bear responsibility to make their history still. But they look to the democratic state for leadership, for direction, for stimulus.
They look to the democratic state for a vision worth striving for. As we sit in this room tonight, we all bear the burden of this responsibility. What does this mean to us? In the small spaces we have been assigned to oversee, what is our contribution to making freedom complete? In what ways are we different from the systems that never had to deal with the burden of this responsibility?
The constitutional imperative
Ten years ago we put in place a constitution that not only was to make it impossible for crimes against humanity to be committed, but also to put in place a framework for governance. We wanted to make sure that our new system of government would be democratic. We wanted a system that would be accountable. We wanted public resources to be managed in a transparent and efficient manner. We wanted public services to be accessible, equitable, and developmental. Particularly because of our history, we wanted to make sure that public services are accessible, equitable, and developmental. We believed that if public services are developmental, they would assist in shaping a society in which poverty and discrimination have less and less room to survive.
We went further. Because we wanted public services to be developmental, we understood that we had an imperative that our public administration needed to be developmental. We understood that unless the institutions of public administration were themselves developmental, they would be incapable of delivering on our quest for developmental public services.
But what does it mean to have developmental public services? In what ways is a developmental public administration different from the one before, or others without this purpose? I ask this of you because I know that at the level of the constitution, legislation, policy statements, we have very clearly defined ourselves to be a developmental state. To this gathering of Directors-General I want to ask, "What does it mean practically?" In what ways is a developmental state different from those that are not?
I ask this question repeatedly because the answer should assist us in clarifying out tasks, as a collective. If we all better understand our collective tasks, we would better understand the respective tasks of each of us. If we all understood better our respective tasks, we would better understand what kinds of organisations do we need to become. If we understood what kinds of organisations we needed to be, we would better understand what kinds of programmes we need to put in place to transform ourselves. That puts us in a much better place in relation to this difficult journey of transformation! This gives not only a purpose to our transformation journeys, but also a context and content.
Different spheres of government
The constitution defined for us three distinct but inter-related spheres. This is both for purposes of policy formulation as well as policy implementation. Naturally the distribution of responsibilities is premised on who is best placed for what. Accordingly then, in support of the national development project, a lot of policy responsibility vests with national government. A lot of the policy implementation responsibilities tend to vest with provincial and local government. In a number of areas provinces are assigned to exercise coordination and oversight, within a national framework.
We have spent the past ten years operationalising this framework, and trying to understand better its implications. We have also been trying to refine this system, so it works better both for policy formulation and policy implementation.
As we have been trying to operationalise the system we encountered major challenges. Among these has been the issue of concurrent functions. In my opinion the stresses encountered in concurrent functions are very simple.
Policy gets formulated, and then implemented. In the process of implementing, we learn more both about the problem we are trying to solve, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the policy we have adopted. Sometimes we learn that the problem is simply more complex than we thought, we did not know enough at the beginning.
Sometimes we learn that the problem has significant regional or local variation. The original policy may be correct, but needs to be more flexible, to allow local or provincial officials to adapt it to local conditions. Sometimes we learn that the policy is simply too complex for the capacity of the provincial or local officials who are expected to implement it. Sometimes we learn that the policy is simply beyond the financial resources that a typical provincial or local department can reasonably mobilise, given the financial constraints that confront provinces or municipalities. Whatever the nature of the lesson we are learning, we must be capable of feeding it back to policy, so we can improve the policy for better implementation. This should be simple and straightforward!
But in reality we know it is not so simple and straightforward. Because different organisations are responsible for different parts of this process, what should have been a simple process becomes a complex system of inter-governmental relations. Communication becomes formalised, and all of us adopt defensive stances in terms of our organisation, and seek to prove that the problems that emerge are someone else's fault. Never our own! That is typical bureaucratic behaviour.
We do not care even if a serious problem occurs, so long as someone else is to blame for it. So the finger pointing begins. Where we should have had a simple constructive process of improving policy and implementation, we have a vicious dogfight in which the most brutal and loud of us tend to be seen as winners. Anyone pointing out a possible flaw in policy or implementation is a possible enemy in cahoots with everything we despise. How can public service organisations succeed if this is how we seek to behave?
When we have these dogfights, does anyone remember what problem were we trying to solve in the first place?
The challenge to leadership
Which also begs the question of whether the public service leadership of our developmental state is any different from that of systems that are not developmental. We should not immediately personalise the question, but rather deal with it objectively. Do we as a country, at national, provincial, and local levels, have the leadership to takes us where we want to be? If we do, what are we doing to reproduce that leadership so that we can sustain its initiatives? If we do not, what are we doing to build a new cadre of leaders? In a way these are rhetorical questions you should reflect on constantly. They are not intended to get a 'yes' or 'no' answer. Rather to start a conversation about leadership, including a discussion about what kind of leadership do we need?
I know some of you may wish to have me extend this question to the executive level, but I am not going there. I have to observe Rev Chikane's protocol, and terms of reference. In any case, you know already just how good the executive is!
Obviously to address the question of whether the public service leadership is adequate or not requires that you clarify what the tasks and challenges are. Organisations may need different kinds of leaders for different kinds of challenges. The trick is to match the capacity of the leadership to the tasks and the challenges. This is something we need to be much better at managing. The skills and experiences we seek are not readily in abundance. They also do not grow like mushrooms. They take a lifetime to master. When we have recognised them we should treat them as precious. When they are clearly not there we should not hope there would be an overnight miracle. We should allow people to find their calling elsewhere. However, because we are who we are, we should be adept at creating outcomes that are equitable.
A proper assessment of capacity can never result, for instance, in only men being appointed to positions. We must also allow ourselves to benefit from the national skills pool. We cannot take a view that says only people who were born, for instance, in the North West, can ever work in the North West public service. That would be 'balkanising' the public service. We also cannot take a view where only people from our home village suddenly become the best qualified to manage the organisations we have been appointed to lead. That is completely contrary to the ethos we are trying to build in society. That would be a public service that affirms the most backward values in society. It is our challenge to build the new South African nation, and to build it to all its splendour.
Ladies and gentlemen, we must also seek to have a public service that attracts and retains the best that our society has to offer. They must know that if they are good and they work hard, they will be recognised and advanced, no matter who their uncle is!
As leaders in the public service you must create a climate that people are attracted to, that makes us a preferred employer. You must do all these things that correspond to sound management of people. In the first instance the challenge we face is to have the best and the brightest talent in the country aspiring to work for the public service. If we fail in this, a lot of what we say about the developmental State will be worth very little. We will be a developmental State without teeth!
Like the dog that chases after a car, but has to run away should the car look like it is about to stop. If we want to promote accelerated economic growth at national, provincial and local levels, we must have sound economic professionals in out economic development departments, who can engage with their counterparts in the private sector and elsewhere on an equal footing.
If we want to have Provincial Growth and Development Strategies and local Integrated Development Plans that are worth their salt, we must have capacity in government to plan, to facilitate partnerships, to engage communities and interest groups effectively, to communicate effectively, to cost our strategies and policies effectively and to implement projects effectively. Otherwise the sophisticated plans we announce are just hot air.
There is a saying that 'all politics is local'. I believe that is true as well for service delivery and for development. We can rattle impressive statistics about this or that at a macro level. But ultimately people will use their local experience to decide whether they buy our story or not. We have to work together as spheres of government to make the experience of citizens at a local level better. This is not just the responsibility of the local government sphere. We all must play our respective roles to make the local experience of the citizens better. Whether we have a policy, oversight, coordination, or service delivery role, we must play our role to the full.
At the local level, a well functioning government is seen as well functioning schools, police stations, clinics, municipal offices, pension paypoints, home affairs offices, labour offices, post offices, etc. We know through Izimbizo that our citizens treat this package of services as an indivisible whole. The bureaucratic battles we undertake within government about who is to blame for this or that are meaningless to our people. To them we are one government at different levels. This means that even the challenge of making the local government sphere work effectively cannot simply be the task of the national and provincial departments of local government.
The task of making provincial and economies grow and create jobs cannot simply be left only to the departments of economic development. The task of making Batho Pele work cannot simply be left to the Premiers' Offices and the public service department. The things that make government deliver better to our citizens are our collective responsibilities. Do not let your individual performance agreement interfere with this!
Planning, budgeting and implementing effectively
One of the things that sometime make very good macro plans not have the desired impact is poor adaptation to local conditions. We sometime treat a good plan as if it were a poem, which we repeat word for word, no matter who the audience. Good plans are a framework within which we design programmes that makes the most sense to our circumstances.
One of the reasons this adaptation does not happen is that many of us have a very weak understanding of our local circumstances. We tend not to have a good enough profile of our communities to know what will make the biggest difference to this community. So we rollout a pre-determined package of service, no matter what the problem. Like a doctor who prescribes an aspirin no matter what the illness. Then we get surprised when we do not have the desired impact despite spending huge sums of money.
The poor people that we say we focus upon, who are they? What are the circumstances that most lock them into their poverty? What do they think needs to be done, for them and with them, to turn their conditions around? I also do not know the answers to this. I want to suggest we cannot be a fully-fledged developmental state, if we continue to be unable to answer these questions. It also suggests to me that it is not just about how good the Heads of Departments are.
It is also about the quality of people we deploy to be our district managers, our area police commissioners, our school principals, our hospital managers, and the like. No matter how brilliant we believe ourselves to be, we cannot do what needs to be done on the ground, unless these people are also brilliant! These are the people in day-to-day contact with the communities, who shape the quality of our interaction with communities. What kinds of leaders do we need at this level? You must help us to answer this very important question.
Our many well-meant promises will soon lose credibility if we are not capable of making things happen in our communities. If we say such and such thing will happen in two months, it must happen in two months! We are very bad in the public service in regard to this. I do not think it is just about politicians promising too much, not taking into account constraints.
I do not think it is about budget constraints and shortages of staff. I think we are just bad in the public service with getting things done. And what is worse is that most people get away with it! Usually there are no consequences to people not delivering the service they were supposed to deliver. Many of our people do not mind just taking long leave without making any arrangement for urgent work that needs to be done to continue. And we let these people get away with this.
Sometimes Heads of Departments do this! How can we be the kind of government we need to be if these practices are left to continue? Is this not what breeds the culture that the President has characterised as "bureaucrats…who come to work as late as possible, and leave as early as possible". When you move around in towns and villages, you see the kids and teachers that are loitering around during school hours, for instance. You see policemen and women moving about and using police cars for purposes they were not intended. The examples abound. You see government cars being used for what is clear private entertainment. The small things we can do in our various organisations to change this, we must do.
The things the executive can do to support this we must do. Above all, we need stricter ways to monitor how organisations are actually performing on the ground, and hold them accountable for that. Whoever is responsible for allowing those kinds of practices to continue must be identified and held accountable. Then we will improve our capacity to make things happen in communities. Of course many things are happening already. I will be the last person to undermine the excellent work done by many public servants out there, day-in and day-out! This is simply to stress the improvements that we all know must happen still!
Conclusion
I was asked to speak to the tasks of provincial and local government, especially in relation to social delivery. Some of you may feel I have ventured beyond this topic. I would hope I have done enough at least to start a conversation that must continue beyond this input, or even this forum. There will be many who will have compelling things on the same topic. But hopefully the conversation will continue, and be handled constructively. And we will be a better government for that.
I ask myself often whether we are up to the challenges before us. You know that in our struggle for democracy we asserted, despite great odds and scepticism, that we will achieve freedom in our lifetime. We were willing to do everything to achieve our goals.
Now we are squarely facing poverty, disease, ignorance, hopelessness and under-development. Are we willing to assert that we could prevail even in this struggle in our lifetime? Are we willing to risk everything, to focus all our energies, on the quest to win back the dignity and well-being of our people, this time from poverty and under-development
When the future generations look to our era, would they be able to say we did all we could to make freedom complete, for our generation and those who come after?
I thank you.