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PROFESSIONAL PUBLIC SERVICE

The South African state consistently fails to deliver on its development goals and provide citizens with reliable and quality basic services. Government’s poor performance, combined with bureaucratic red-tape, impedes economic growth and undermines our efforts to address our unjust past.

We must act as one to build a capable state by addressing two key constraints:

  • The civil service: South Africa’s government spends 35.4% of its budget on public sector wages, and South Africa’s civil servants are some of the highest-paid in the world. Yet, the public no longer trusts the government’s ability to govern, and the civil service has become associated with inefficiency.
  • An incapable state: the South African state increasingly serves as a deterrent, rather than a custodian, of inclusive growth. Irregular and wasteful expenditure, impunity and underperformance is the order of the day.

What We Believe

  • We must professionalise the public sector. Appointments should be based on merit, competence and a commitment to ethical service.
  • Government must create an environment for job creation and not to be an employer of millions.
  • We need to streamline the public sector while simultaneously ensuring that it remains dynamic, professional and service orientated.
  • Cadre-deployment and state capture has deteriorated the integrity of the state and its ability to perform basic delivery functions.
  • The state should limit itself to providing essential functions at high efficiency.
  • We are in support of further devolution of government powers by delegating more powers to local governments, assisted by a national government working towards shared national prosperity.

Our Solutions Blueprint

  • Reduce the size of the state by merging departments with complementary functions, reducing the number of parastatal institutions through responsible privatisation, and identifying redundant staff and projects through independent audits.
  • Reduce the public sector wage bill by breaking the stranglehold unions have over the public service and allow professional civil servants to have more control over their careers.
  • Amend labour laws to make it easier to remove underperforming senior public executives.
  • Modernise performance and evaluation mechanisms of departments and employees to ensure that organisational goals are achieved.
  • Adopt strict vetting systems to ensure that individuals involved with financial crimes or corruption cannot be employed by any state institution.
  • Partner with educational institutions to provide specialised governance education to improve the skills of civil service, especially at the level of local government.
  • Enable local government, as the level of government closest to the people, to perform more service delivery functions independently.
  • Adopt a cohesive national strategy aimed at identifying the comparative advantages and economic opportunities in each province and delegate authority to provincial and local governments to develop tailored economic opportunities.
  • Allow local governments to manage their own mandates to address the specific needs of their communities by delegating authorities related to environmental management, skills training, safety and security, criminal justice and housing.
  • Address the inefficiencies in public procurement by resolving over-pricing, under- and non-delivery, corruption, poor quality bid specifications and accountability measures.
  • Mandate that all procurement professionals participate in continuous professional development and training to ensure that bid specifications, evaluations and adjudications are pertinent and of the highest quality.
  • Increase the transparency of public procurement by implementing a public online platform that provides all details of all phases of the tender process.
  • Introduce price benchmarking mechanisms that ensure that the government does not pay inflated prices for procured goods and services.
  • Facilitate procurement flexibility by adopting an innovative and transparent payments system that allows government officials to directly procure basic goods (under the value of R50,000) from pre-approved wholesalers.
  • Blacklist any individuals, family members of such individuals and companies that abuse public procurement systems for personal gain.
  • Oppose continued state bail-outs of failing SOEs.
  • Only support SOEs that perform essential government services or where management of public good is required and privatise the rest.
  • Ensure privatisation happens in a responsible manner that allows SOE to act in the public interest, without political interference.
  • Break up Eskom into separate generation, transmission and distribution entities and open the electricity-market to independent power producers.
  • Increase transparency by reducing ministerial authority over SOEs and shifting authority to relevant Parliamentary Portfolio Committees.
  • Progressively work towards creating a more professional, lean and high-performing civil service.
  • Offer competitive remuneration and career development to attract talented professionals to the public service.
  • Conduct comprehensive skills audits to ensure that all senior government officials have the necessary skills and experience to fulfil their duties.
  • Implement progressive human resource management practices in the civil service to ensure that public servants work in positive environments where they can pursue their career development goals.
  • Modernise state functions by adopting and implementing ICT practices that allow citizens to interact with the national, provincial and local government digitally and in-person.
  • Institute a comprehensive paid internship programme within the public service to attract graduates to the public service.
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Act as One to build a prosperous, non-racial and secure future for all South Africans.