Those following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s development narrative will know that the goal of improving the capabilities of the state is high on his reform agenda. As one of the seven priorities of the sixth administration as per his 2019 state of the nation address (Sona), Ramaphosa reiterated in this year’s speech that fighting corruption and strengthening the state will be one of the overriding priorities for the year.
These objectives also speak to the National Development Plan (NDP): “To address the twin challenges of poverty and inequality, the state needs to play a transformative and developmental role. This requires well-run and effectively co-ordinated state institutions with skilled public servants who are committed to the public good and capable of delivering consistently high-quality services, while prioritising the nation’s developmental objectives. This will enable people from all sections of society to have confidence in the state, which in turn will reinforce the state’s effectiveness.”
As a development objective, having a capable state makes good sense. It doesn’t help to have sound policies if the institution responsible for laying the foundation of a growing economy is not up to the task. Failure to capacitate the state risks that other NDP objectives will not be realised. Load-shedding is perhaps the example we feel most directly, in which past failures have now caught up with us. Dismal audit outcomes and growing irregular and unauthorised expenditure at the coalface of service delivery, that is local government, can also be included in the list. Fixing these challenges will require skilled public servants appointed through a system of meritocracy.
We experience the impact of these issues in our daily lives, but it is often difficult to quantify and measure how the state is performing from a holistic perspective, or as a whole. We suffer from availability and recency biases, which means we give more weight to yesterday’s newspaper headlines than those of last year. More objective measures are available, but few citizens make the effort to peruse the reports of the auditor-general, or to delve into performance agreements of ministers. We tend to focus on the big-ticket items that the media bring to light. Even if small, incremental improvements in processes and capabilities are achieved, the public often remains unaware until these changes translate into visible, better outcomes.
A capable communications regulator, even if unable itself to come up with the right auction design, would have followed a process that could withstand attacks from private players
It’s perhaps easier to judge the performance of local government. Things such as access to clean water and sanitation, formal housing and the quality of roads determine if we think our municipalities are up to the task. Trends in major service delivery protests are a proxy for whether constituents are satisfied with the services they receive from government. The year 2018 saw the highest number of protests since Municipal IQ started reporting on this in 2004. With 218 protests, 2019 had the second-highest number on record but showed an 8% decline relative to 2018 — would it be wishful thinking to hope that this might be the start of a downward trend?
We have to dig deeper, though, if we want to measure the government’s capabilities beyond media reports or service delivery. The SA Reconciliation Barometer (SARB) survey of the institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) is a valuable resource. It reflects, among other interesting results, on the share of survey respondents who have confidence in different institutions. South Africans seem to suffer from a general lack of confidence in both public and private institutions. In 2019 only 42% of respondents had “quite a lot” or “a great deal” of confidence in national government — up by 12 percentage points from 30% in 2017. In comparison, only 34% of respondents had a similar level of confidence in local government in 2019 — yet also up slightly from 2017. Interestingly, only 35% of respondents had confidence in large corporations.
In addition to the different levels of government, the capabilities of SA’s regulatory authorities are crucial to the functioning of the economy. The World Governance Indicators report on perceptions about “regulatory quality”, and SA has been on a downward trend since 2013. One example of the high economic cost of a lack of regulatory capabilities is the difficulty the Independent Communications Authority of SA has had in auctioning high-demand spectrum. A capable communications regulator, even if unable itself to come up with the right auction design, would have followed a process that could withstand attacks from private players.
A capable, ethical and developmental state also requires that corruption in the public and private sector is identified and sanctioned. Corruption per definition takes place below the radar, so its prevalence is difficult to measure. The number of whistle-blower reports submitted to entities such as Corruption Watch could be a proxy, but a downward trend might indicate either a decrease in corruption or less detection. If one wants to look for green shoots, it could be that SA climbed three places on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index between 2018 and 2019. We ranked 70th out of 198 countries, one spot below where we were when the NDP was published in 2012.
Creating a capable state out of institutions that were decimated over the past 10 years is crucial for SA to get back on the path to economic development. It’s up to the government to get its house in order, and up to us to measure their progress and hold them accountable.
• Fourie is a senior economist and Moloi a junior economist at the Bureau for Economic Research (BER), Stellenbosch University. In collaboration with partners from academic and civil society organisations, the BER recently published the first National Development Plan (NDP) assessment report. This is the first of a series of articles that will reflect on key findings as they relate to the priorities of the sixth administration.
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