The growing trend of sacking directors-general and other public servants at odds with their political principals raises questions about whether the government remains true to its stated intention of building a stable and professional senior management as envisioned in the National Development Plan (NDP).
Themba Godi, the chairman of Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), says the changes in leadership at departments create instability and undermine the fight against corruption.
"How will leaders of departments apply themselves when they know their tenure is not guaranteed?" he asks. "We need continuity … this affects service delivery and the effective utilisation of economic resources. We need political maturity."
Frequent changes of directors-general and other managers makes it difficult for MPs to have meaningful engagements with officials. Some are removed or appointed on the eve of a department’s appearance before a parliamentary committee, says Godi. "We cannot have a situation where, because a director-general has a disagreement with the political principal, they are just dismissed. It cannot be right."
The NDP — which articulates the government’s vision to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by 2030, and to build a capable state — highlights the need to stabilise the interface between political and administrative functions. It says a focus on skills and professionalism will be ineffective unless there is a clearer separation between the roles of political principals (cabinet ministers) and administrative heads (directors-general).
The uneven performance of the public service, says the NDP, results from complex factors including tensions in the political-administrative interface, instability of the administrative leadership and a skills deficit.
Therefore, the NDP proposes, the emphasis on political deployment must be replaced by a focus on building a professional public service that serves the government but is sufficiently autonomous to be insulated from political patronage.
Significantly, the NDP says many of the best-performing state institutions have a stable leadership and policy approach. However, the lack of clarity about the division of roles and responsibilities between ministers and administrative heads often undermines this stability.
Several government departments have recently been destabilised by the sudden removal or suspension of directors-general, in most instances for reasons unlikely to stand up in court.
Directors-general are crucial cogs in the government system as they lead departments and ensure their work is done.
Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane suspended her director-general, Gorbachev Mashitisho, earlier in July, accusing him of, among other things, failing to appear before the water and sanitation portfolio committee, besmirching her integrity at a Scopa meeting and failing to conclude the terms of reference for a probe into tenders.
The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries also suspended its director-general, Mike Mlengana, in July without spelling out the reasons. However, Mlengana told Farmers Weekly the reasons included that he was not prepared to sign off on something he did not believe was above board.
"An increasing number of directors-general are being dismissed before they serve out their contracts. The evidence suggests that it is naïve to dismiss the possibility that the growing trend is linked to more and more revelations of corruption and state capture," says Chris Tapscott, the director of the School of Government at the University of the Western Cape.
Directors-general and [their deputies] need more protection from inappropriate dismissals and constructive dismissal. Better procedures need to be introduced to manage their relationship [with] their principals
— Alan Hirsch
Director of the Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice at the University of Cape Town
As a result, he says, good senior officials are being forced out of the public sector with golden handshakes that amount to "hush money", and are presumably being replaced with more compliant officials. Those still in office have little security of tenure and are hesitant to speak their minds or initiate programmes without their minister’s explicit endorsement.
The NDP notes that although public servants work for elected leaders, they should be non-partisan. Cadre appointments blur the lines of accountability.
With the Cabinet approving the choice of department heads, it is unclear whether directors-general are accountable to the Cabinet, their ministers, the governing party or citizens.
According to the NDP, the lines of accountability must be simplified and clarified to ensure directors-general are accountable to their ministers on policy matters, and that departmental staff are accountable to their directors-general. This includes responsibilities for human resource functions, which currently reside with ministers.
Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini has presided over the departure of three CEOs of the South African Social Security Agency in a year as she bulldozes through her plans to distribute social grants. Virginia Petersen, Zane Dangor and Thokozani Magwaza have all left the agency, which has been plagued by irregular expenditure.
In many other democracies, a clearer distinction is drawn between the responsibilities and powers of political principals and administrative heads.
The NDP says this demarcation needs to be clarified in SA through a designated head of the public service or an independent public service commission or a combination of the two.
Tapscott says there are signs of partisan appointments in the US’s "spoils system" as well.
"The ‘spoils system’ in the US has been criticised for [promoting] patronage, nepotism and often incompetence — and never more so than under the Trump administration — but heads of state agencies have generally been appointed on the grounds of both their demonstrated leadership abilities and their political affiliations," says Tapscott
In SA the decision to appoint directors-general through a political process was shaped by two influences, he adds.
The first was the desire to ensure that managers were committed to transforming the public sector in the aftermath of apartheid, but this important objective is not prescribed by the constitution, Tapscott says.
The second influence is that the ANC bought into new public management thinking, in vogue in the 1990s in the UK, that the state should be run more on the lines of the private sector.
"Reflective of this, directors-general were (and continue to be) appointed by the president on recommendation from a selection panel on the basis of five-year contracts and are subject to annual reviews and bonus rewards," Tapscott says.
Alan Hirsch, the director of the Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice at the University of Cape Town, says it is too easy to fire a senior manager in SA, even without strong reasons. New cabinet ministers have made a tradition of "getting their own people in".
"Directors-general and [their deputies] need more protection from inappropriate dismissals and constructive dismissal. Better procedures need to be introduced to manage their relationship [with] their principals."
It is becoming imperative in SA to delink directors-general from political positions.
Johan Burger, the director of the School of Public Leadership at the University of Stellenbosch, says the "spoils" system has definitely put many accounting officers — not just directors-general — in a very difficult position.
They are appointed or contracted by the executive but are held accountable by mechanisms of the constitution, other legislation and regulations.
"The executive appoint their accounting officers for their loyalty. This has a ripple effect. Even though other appointments are made in adherence to legislation and regulations, a loyalty cascade is put in place.
"So, if the accounting officer stands against bad governance and corruption, they are suspended or fired. And executives get away with it because they have created a dysfunctional but predictable form of stability that informs behaviour."
A culture of irreproachable ethical behaviour is crucial to creating effective government institutions, says Burger.
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