Defining what makes a state capable and competent is key to saving SA from chaos

One of the critical challenges our country has faced since its transition to democracy in 1994 is that we have not managed to translate the ethos of our globally celebrated, progressive constitution into practical and meaningful change for the majority of our people.

Put differently, after 20 years of democracy the aspirations of our constitutional democracy remain trapped in intention. It is becoming very apparent that the lofty ideals embedded in our constitution must still reflect in positive daily living experiences and a better quality of life for the millions of our citizens who remain ensnared in poverty, burdened by extreme inequality and hobbled by lack of opportunity.

For us to resolve this paradox of our constitutional democracy, we must focus on the nuts and bolts of the developmental state. In my view, the solution lies in how we define a developmental state, and how we attune and apply it to our country’s unique conditions.

A developmental state must be both capable and efficient otherwise it will be ill-equipped to achieve its developmental objectives.

It is only by confronting this question in a rigorously scientific and scholarly way that we will bridge the yawning gap between the ideals of our constitutional democracy on the one hand and the day-to-day realities of the majority of our people on the other.

The National Development Plan (NDP) frames this challenge as a call to build a “capable and developmental state”. The NDP refers to “capable” and “developmental” as two separate concepts, and herein might lie the nub of the paradox.

A developmental state must be both capable and efficient otherwise it will be ill-equipped to achieve its developmental objectives. A “developmental” state that is inefficient, wasteful and corrupt would lose its meaning and popular appeal for the citizens of SA and those who admire our constitutional democracy.

An incapable “developmental” state would reflect the characteristics of the many bureaucratic, repressive, backward and moribund countries we see across the world.

In the SA context, a state without the necessary capability, ability and efficiency will not be able to meet the unique requirements of our democracy. It would be unable to drive our profound and historic commitment to nonracialism, it would be unable to eradicate the demons of tribalism and regionalism, and it would be incapable of containing the dangerous populism that risks turning our country into a failed state.

Considering the high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality combined with the marginalisation and exclusion large parts of our population feel, it is only a capable and competent state that will be able to counter increased racial polarisation, tribalism and degenerate levels of violence and crime.

The role of the democratic state to lead and co-ordinate all forces in society to turn around the economic fortunes of our country takes on even more urgency when we consider SA’s low industrial base (compared to many developed countries).

We can no longer ignore the need to interrogate the nuts and bolts of the developmental state. We must place the following question centre stage: how should the technical functioning and day-to-day operations of the developmental state be configured to meet the legitimate needs and expectations of our people for a better quality of life? Only by resolving this question will we be able to evolve a model for a capable, efficient, active developmental state explicitly suited to our unique SA conditions.

The NDP acknowledged two examples of highly competent and efficient state organs — the SA Revenue Service (Sars) and the home affairs department. As its point of departure, our inquiry should understand the technical factors and levers that made these two models successful, while also coming to grips with what underlies their apparent collapse.

Because we have never had sufficient debate or consensus on what constitutes an effective and efficient state, we have also not been able to defend entities such as Sars against erosion, collapse and hollowing-out. Without a blueprint of what made them efficient in the first place we are also unable to replicate their successes elsewhere in government.

It is only by defining the nuts and bolts of a capable developmental state that we will come up with a replicable state efficiency model that will enable us to reconfigure state organs in such a way that we can align the aspirations of our people with the values of the constitution and reduce our high rates of poverty, unemployment and inequality.

Only through a capable developmental state will we realise the ideals of building a nonracial society that is free of tribalism, crime, violence, corruption, looting and all the other looming risks that threaten the social fabric of our globally celebrated constitutional democracy.

We must come up with a concrete model for a technically efficient, strategically capable and ethically sound developmental state as a matter of extreme urgency.

• Mamabolo is Gauteng infrastructure development MEC.