Gwede Mantashe, spoke of the problems which had arisen from ‘deploying inexperienced ANC cadres to bureaucratic posts commanding huge and complex budgets. “It is like taking a mouse from the bush and making it run a cheese factory”,’ he said.61
Despite such admissions, the ANC’s supposed solutions to the problems of cadre deployment are to restrict it at local level and tighten up its deployment procedures elsewhere so as to make them more ‘objective and transparent’, as President Jacob Zuma has put it. At its policy and national conferences at Midrand and Mangaung (Bloemfontein) in 2012, the ANC also undertook to equip its cadres with appropriate skills by means of a new cadre development strategy to be implemented over the next ten years. According to Lindiwe Sisulu, minister of human settlements in the second Zuma administration, the ANC now wants ‘cadres who will be our soldiers against maladministration, fraud, corruption, and unethical behaviour’.62 However, similar pledges have previously been made to generate ‘new’ cadres of this calibre, but have proved ineffective in improving either cadre quality or the efficiency of the public service.
Affirmative action allowed to trump key needs
National infrastructure
The 2014 Budget Review committed the state to spending R847 billion on infrastructure over three years. In practice, however, and despite the urgent need to expand the country’s infrastructure by building new power stations and upgrading transport infrastructure, in particular, a major shortage of technical and management skills continues to limit progress.
In October 2011, in his Medium Term Budget Policy Statement, the then finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, acknowledged that the major challenge in getting the infrastructure expansion plan off the ground was ‘the absence of capacity to plan, contract, and execute infrastructure budgets’. In June 2012 Trevor Manuel, then minister in the presidency: national development commission, added that ‘the large sums allocated by the government for infrastructure each year are routinely rolled over because of a lack of capacity to get projects off the ground’.63
Group Five, a major construction company, agreed with Manuel, saying: ‘If you go back five years and read Manuel’s budget speeches, they were full of infrastructure with very big numbers, but not much of it has translated into the order books of the private sector … All that happens is that the numbers get bigger every year and they talk about the same projects, and those projects are still there and they haven’t been done.’64
This lack of capacity within the state has been made worse by a major loss of engineering skills. In 1990 about 40% of certified engineers worked in the public sector, but by 2012 this proportion had dwindled to some 15%. According to Consulting Engineers South Africa (Cesa), engineering experience is now virtually ‘non-existent’ in state procurement. This means that ‘we don’t have people in government who can make the big decisions’ on infrastructure projects, Cesa says.65
In 2013 net investment in infrastructure, by both the government and parastatals, amounted to a meagre 3.5% of GDP. But the state needs to spend ‘at least three times as much on new projects to kick-start the economy’, says Nedbank senior economist Nicky Weimar. At the core of anaemic economic growth over the past seven years, she adds, ‘lie infrastructure backlogs across the board, from power and energy supply to transport and logistics … A consequence of these infrastructure constraints is that the cost of production has been driven higher, contributing … to a loss of international competitiveness among local producers and restricting fixed investment by private companies.’66
In 2014 the National Treasury again acknowledged ‘weak planning’ as ‘one of the biggest obstacles to the successful implementation of infrastructure projects’. To overcome this, the government needed to have ‘experienced professionals in departments’. However, it faced ‘serious challenges’ in recruiting experienced engineers, architects, and quantity surveyors, while the people who did apply for such posts had ‘very limited post-qualification experience and none in the state’s infrastructure delivery management system’.67
Service delivery by local authorities
In 2008 the South African Local Government Association (Salga), a body established under the Constitution to act as the voice of local government, commissioned a study of the skills of the country’s local councillors. This study found that some 8 000 councillors (nearly 80% of the country’s roughly 10 500 councillors) had only a primary school education.68 Though these councillors were to be sent for adult education – a form of training aimed primarily at imparting basic literacy and numeracy skills – it was doubtful whether this could adequately equip them for their task of overseeing municipal service delivery.
Many local government officials and managers also lack suitable skills. This, coupled with a major exodus of engineers from many local authorities since 1994, has resulted in the virtual collapse of local government services in most small towns and villages. In many of these areas, as the president of a business association said, ‘sewerage often runs down the street, street lights don’t work, roads are disintegrating, refuse is not collected, water supply is erratic, and water from taps is unsafe’.69
In 2009 Mathews Phosa lamented that local government was ‘now in ICU’ because of the mistakes the government had made on affirmative action. In the same year, the new minister of co-operative governance and traditional affairs in the first Zuma administration, Sicelo Shiceka, said he planned to visit all 283 municipalities as soon as possible, for many of them were widely seen, even by ANC supporters, as ‘incompetent, disorganised, uninterested, and ridden with corruption and maladministration’.70
The following year Shiceka said he was pushing ahead with legislation that would prohibit office bearers in political parties (the secretary or treasurer of the local ANC branch, for instance) from becoming mayors or municipal managers. In May 2010 the Cabinet approved a bill to this effect. According to Shiceka, the main intention behind the measure was to ensure that skilled people were appointed to municipalities. Zuma added that the change would help rid the public service of ‘the lazy and incompetent’.71
Opposition parties welcomed the proposal, but the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) – a trade union federation allied to the ANC and the South African Communist Party – objected that the measure would discourage officials from participating in party politics at local level. Mcebisi Ndletyana, a senior research specialist with the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), said the proposal was a ‘thorny issue’ for the ANC because the organisation had to balance improving service delivery against rewarding party activists. ‘Party activists have been employed in government as some kind of reward. The bill will limit the source of employment because some of these office bearers do not have the qualifications and the skills to get employment in the private sector,’ he said.72
Despite such criticisms, the Municipal Systems Amendment Act was adopted by Parliament in 2011. However, it was not until 2014 that the Act finally took effect, when regulations laying down competency requirements for municipal managers and other senior staff were gazetted. According to the new rules, municipal managers must have a bachelor’s degree in public administration, law, or social sciences, or an equivalent qualification. In addition, they must have five years of ‘relevant experience at a senior management level’ and ‘an advanced knowledge and understanding of relevant policy and legislation’.73
Given the extent of the skills deficit, it will not be easy to find individuals who meet these demanding criteria. Moreover, the regulations state that senior managers appointed before the new rules became operative are to continue in their posts until their contracts lapse or expire. This suggests there will be little improvement in the proficiency of senior municipal managers for a significant time.
In addition, soon after the new regulations took effect, a poll by City Press of municipalities in six provinces found that only 40% of municipal managers and 34% of chief
