Public Service Commission’s expanded role crucial to state professionalisation
By Sarah Meny-Gibert and Ryan Brunette
[First published in Business Day]
Public service legislation doesn’t usually make headlines, but the recent passing of amendments to the Public Service Act has garnered a lot of attention.
For good reason: the act makes some significant changes. Officials in the top tier of the public service can no longer hold office in a political party (as chairperson or secretary, for example).
More significantly, heads of department (national directors-general and provincial heads of department) are now responsible for recruitment and other human resource matters in their departments. This authority was previously vested in the executive (ministers and MECs).
These amendments aren’t the “end to cadre deployment” they’ve been touted as, but they are important reforms.
Tensions between heads of department and their executive leaders have been a persistent challenge to the administrative stability and effectiveness of the state. Often these tensions take the form of strained personal relations between, for example, a minister and a director-general about how to interpret a policy or manage a department.
However, the phrase “tensions in the political-administrative interface” has also referred, in euphemistic terms, to the inappropriate interference of politicians in operational matters, especially public procurement.
The amendment act moves to (partly) break this pattern by creating a clearer distinction between the roles of politicians and senior administrators. It matches the heavy weight of responsibility given to heads of department as “accounting officers” under the Public Finance Management Act with the administrative powers needed to perform those responsibilities effectively.
However, these reforms fall short of fixing the problem of patronage appointments. There is still plenty of room for political corruption to enter into decisions about who is appointed as a director-general or department head, and for appointees to then promote those interests down the administrative hierarchy (and in public procurement decisions).
Even though the constitution limits politically orientated appointments to a small group (mainly ministerial advisers), selection committees for directors-general and heads of department are composed mainly of politicians or their representatives. It is the president, not ministers, who formally appoints directors-general and terminates their contracts, though in practice it is the latter who have held sway.
The next big step in this reform movement — if it proves to be one — is to strengthen appointment and dismissal processes for directors-general and provincial department heads: checks and balances on political control, and mechanisms to support better selection for sectoral and managerial experience and performance.
Counterproposals to the current model were floated internally in the ANC early on, but they did not enjoy majority support. By 2012, the National Development Plan (NDP) proposed strengthening appointment processes for the most senior ranks of the civil service. This somewhat resurrected the Public Service Commission’s (PSC) predemocracy role in managing recruitment and promotions, though the NDP envisioned the PSC would share this function with a new proposed “head of the public administration” (and equivalent offices at the provincial level).
But Jacob Zuma was re-elected as head of the ANC in the same year, and these proposals were stillborn. A decade later, in the window of opportunity created by the Zondo state capture commission, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet adopted the National Framework Towards the Professionalisation of the Public Sector. This picked up on the NDP proposals for a role for the PSC, but in watered-down form.
It proposed that the PSC should simply recommend two technical experts to sit on selection committees for heads of department, which would leave political executives still in the majority, as per the current regulations. The Public Affairs Research Institute’s (PARI) concern is that this offers no real institutional check against political patronage.
PARI has proposed a model that would allow the state to introduce a proper administrative check for senior appointment processes, while mindful of the major vested interests against such reform. These proposals are laid out in a short policy brief.
First, PARI argues government should not try to introduce change to appointment and dismissal processes for senior public servants all at once and across the public service. This across-the-board approach would generate overwhelming political backlash, which is the primary reason any such approach has and will remain stuck. Instead, the president could slowly apply reform across sections of the public service in an approach we’ve termed “strategic incrementalism”.
Second, we suggest that an expanded role for the PSC is the right approach. Given its mandate and constitutional stature, it is well placed to be developed into the independent body providing the necessary controls against political patronage. The PSC Bill, currently before parliament, bolsters the independence of the PSC. PARI has proposed that the PSC should lead in developing job specifications, tests, qualifications and experience requirements for the appointment of directors-general and heads of department. It should also shortlist on the basis of minimum requirements and manage the appointment of selection committees.
The Office of the PSC (secretariat) should be required to manage these processes in close consultation with political authorities and relevant departments to ensure decisions remain politically palatable and technically appropriate, with the PSC commissioners themselves at arm’s length given their important role in providing oversight of wider public service standards.
Third, the selection committee for directors-general and provincial heads of department should comprise a minimum number of politicians (ministers at national, MECs at provincial level), with subject matter experts and senior administrators in the majority. The committee should ideally also include the NDP’s proposed head of public administration. The political executive should retain the power to make final appointments from the committee’s recommendations and should still be able to make political appointments under section 12A of the Public Service Act (ministers’ advisers, for example).
South Africa has come late to this reform moment, just as the complexity of coalition politics is upon us. New entrants to government are arguably no more incentivised to insulate appointment processes from patronage than ANC incumbents, grappling as they are with how to lead an administration they don’t necessarily trust. There are echoes here of the ANC’s own concerns in the early years of our democracy. The next step will need a supportive and broad-based public campaign for reform.
