In tackling service delivery, skills challenges, skin tone matters ... not

Skills wise, what have you really given to your country lately? Are you the serving or the grabbing kind? How would you know? What is the little voice inside telling you?

Next time you turn on a light, a water tap, flush the toilet and take out the trash, remember this: you are part of a fraction of the privileged few on this planet, let alone in this great country of great disparities and contrasts. South Africa faces massive infrastructure backlogs and poor operation and maintenance of existing infrastructure. This scenario has, for a while now, resulted in inadequate delivery of basic services, especially to sections of the population in more desperate situations. Skills flights and growing shortages do not help the situation.

Communities in low capacity municipalities in remote rural areas have bigger and more urgent service delivery challenges than the richer metros, yet some of the densely populated urban centres have become the major hubs for poverty and economic desperation. There are thousands of young people with some level of education living in our urban centres. They roam the streets and cannot find jobs because they have no experience and no skills to land any jobs.

Matriculants need to gain usable skills for them to be employable. Where do they get these from after finishing matric or a tertiary qualification? Internships and apprenticeship training are possible alternatives. Somehow we have to move beyond the lingering sense of entitlement from among black and white matriculants and graduates who expect someone, somewhere, to create employment for them so they can just slot in as soon as school is up. This new thinking is here already, but success stories are too few and far between.

I am not sure I want to agree with the national secretary of the Young Communist League, Buti Manamela, who recently called for military service targeting young people. Yet a part of me feels that an army of well-drilled young people can help revamp the rotting infrastructure in most small and low capacity municipalities that cannot afford the costs of operation and maintenance (O&M). This can help train or re-train often over-extended and frustrated municipal officials, while providing skills to our youth.

With the global financial crisis, the message must be loud and clear that some of these so-called reliable macro-economic policies do not serve us all well in the long-run. It could be better not to expect to find a job, but to build a skill and a trade that one can sell anywhere … and that goes for all our youth, regardless of skin tone. Spread this message to the youth out there: get off your butt and make something of your life on your own. Start somewhere. Where? Right where you are! Else you’ll soon find yourself doing “left-right” marches as Private Joe in the army.

The fact that in some municipalities with limited revenue generation capacity, over 40% of their water is lost in the distribution network before it gets to the (paying) consumer smacks of criminal negligence. Armies of young apprentices, all mixed, backed up by the military in terms of training, discipline and delivery can go a long way here. Manamela might have a good point after all, especially in helping take some of the youth off the streets, and reduce the risks associated with their idling (drug and alcohol abuse, STIs, unplanned pregnancies, sense of entitlement, etc).

The formation of a body called Global South Africans by a group of prominent South African business people living and working abroad is a fascinating development. The group’s main objective is to promote South Africa. It seems to be in same vein as other brand-SA promotional material that we so badly need. But this is quite a different story from the notorious issue of mainly white emigration discussed in Khaya Dlanga’s blog. It is not the self-righteous blame game played by some campaigners competing for the imagined moral high ground.

This is real substance about standing up and making a difference as a South African regardless of the reasons for emigration, and in spite of the colour of the skin one is wrapped-in. I think this is incredibly valuable use of one’s business influence, skill and expertise aimed at making a tangible, lasting and positive difference.

The formation of Global South Africans by this 300-strong elite club of expatriates is a powerful demonstration of the healthy dose of patriotism among many of our highly skilled citizens who have elected to move abroad mainly for career advancement. And this comes at a time when there have been increasing reports of massive skills flights from our shores.

I am not at all surprised that there are a lot of influential South Africans putting their personal professional necks out in defence of not only the incredible potential, but the live magic of living in this country. It is what normal nationals do.

And the first prize to me on the skills front and delivering services in poor municipalities goes to Venete Klein, President of the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut (AHI). Venete and the AHI are busy wrapping up a collaborative relationship with the Presidency and other stakeholders to bring back skilled professionals from retirement to bolster current skills support to municipalities around the country.

Now this is what I call hands-on support with less talk and more action on the ground. Yes, there are similar programmes already in operation in the country. One of them is the flagship capacity building programme funded by national Treasury and run by the Development Bank of Southern Africa’s development fund, aptly named Siyenza Manje, literally “We are doing it now”. This programme recruits skilled and experienced engineers, finance experts and planners from around the country and on the continent, and deployes them in low capacity municipalities anywhere in all our nine provinces. The team of deployees’ main task is to support municipal officials, and not to take over municipal officials’ jobs.

The AHI concept of bringing white Afrikaner males out of retirement is important for more than just technical skills provision. It is a unique opportunity for all of us to test how far down the reconciliation road we have really come.

Throwing these retired skilled people into the highly volatile municipal environments would need careful management. For starters, are the skills still relevant? Sure, the engineering formulae for mixing concrete and putting together a bridge couldn’t have changed much. The municipal environment, however, is one that demands a fresh and higher level of people management and relationship management, and of ubuntu intelligence.

The old guard would have to come in with a new mind-set of serving differently, and not with what passes for professional arrogance, the kinds of attitudes that say “I know what you need and I am here to fix you and your mess.” It would have to be a meeting of the minds, halfway along the way. Technical skills are great and provide a great platform to build from, but alone, technical expertise just will not do.

This, to me, is a massive national test that we would do well to prepare carefully for and pass, together. No one I know disagrees with the fact that our current skills shortages and related capacity challenges bring into question our well-meaning affirmative action principles. Only a combination of solutions and compromises on the skills front can take us where we really want to go.