Non-performing civil servants: Scratching the real itch

I generally choose to steer clear of issues that directly attack the persons and characters of political figures. Leadership, however, by its very nature, is inherently both political and personal. The issue of the ANC planning to force senior officials, including ministers, to sign performance contracts with the party drew me into the ring on this one. I know that we are in a serious situation where the demand for effective leadership development across all levels and spheres of government is getting critical by the day. Jipsa and other skills-enhancing measures put in place by government have not yet yielded the results we anticipated.

The call by the ANC for party-based performance contracts is reported in a piece by Mandy Rossouw and Matuma Letsoalo in the M&G of February 13-19 2009 entitled Bungling ministers’ days ‘are numbered’. What this move towards party-based performance contracts really means for the ruling party is that before anyone gets into a position where they “risk” being appointed to a ministerial role, they must have the requisite competencies, skills, experience, aptitude, and what we can call performance rigour, in order to perform. The ANC spokesperson, Jessie Duarte, in support of Godongwana’s call, said last week that the ANC leadership will be setting up an instrument to help measure the efficacy of government departments.

These qualities will help them stay in their jobs beyond the proposed annual reviews. Now, should this not have been the norm already? There are performance contracts for senior public servants right now. How many have been fired for non-performance? And how many have been forced out for other reasons other than their on-the-job performance? These contracts are not with their political parties. Aren’t civil servants supposed to be apolitical? Is there such a thing in the first place … apolitical? How will this performance measurement work out in practice and who will implement it? Will there be any political key performance indicators (KPIs)?

The management and performance challenges we face in our country are systemic. They are not individual-based. Individuals only serve to make things worse by their personal limitations. The source of the problem, the real itch, is in our systems and their lack of alignment, integration, and harmonious collaboration in business flow.

I have said it many times, and I will say it again: it is good to have highly capable ministers (read government or sector department CEO), but what is most critical is to have knowledgeable and effective “foot-soldiers” or policy-implementers on the coal-face to ensure that the policies and high-level decisions are implemented. I am referring here especially to leaders in local government, especially at local municipality level. The local municipality is the executioner and driver of service delivery (please do not take the former literally, although people have died from poor service delivery).

Local government is the one critical interface zone where government meets the electorate or constituency, and can practically be held accountable for delivery, or lack thereof. The majority of our 283 municipalities are classify-able as low-capacity, and most of them suffer from a chronic shortage of capable, competent, willing, and skilled leaders and officials to ensure sustainable delivery of basic services.

If what Enoch Godongwana is saying about ANC deployment of capable, relevant-to-the-job, and able cadres is what really lies ahead for our public service, then we are in for some very interesting times ahead. I would like to urge the new government coming in after our April ’09 elections to cascade this call for party-based performance contracts to their deployees at local municipality level. We must all work together to create a template for performance contracts to be signed between municipal officials and the local communities they serve.

I am sure that from where they stand, ministers and senior officials will be feeling the weight of a big political stick hanging over them and waiting to pounce as they go about their daily tasks. Slowly, the argument about the impact of apartheid education on the current skills levels is being challenged. I for one believe that as a growing economy we need to pay more attention than we are doing now to developing management and leadership skills alongside the effort we are putting into training artisans and other technically-oriented people to work on infrastructure backlogs and especially operations and maintenance of existing infrastructure. All our people whose work directly serves others need training in what we often wrongly refer to as “soft skills”. I am always puzzled about what it is people find soft in people-management and related skills. These so-called soft skills are really hard to learn, master and especially to practice consistently. Yes, you read right, soft is hard, very hard!

From the standpoint of every taxpaying Jo Public out there, this public servants’ performance drive should not be about “securing the ANC’s future”. It must be the general standard for every civil servant regardless of political affiliation. The emphasis and demand for this must be at local government, where both the political leadership and administrative officials often struggle to perform the most basic functions of running a local municipality, such as putting together a system to identify existing municipal assets or collect revenue from willing consumers. Many municipalities are not operating as viable business entities, but are bankrupt. Yes, there are some great examples to draw good lessons from, but these are more the exception than the rule. The stance about holding political deployees accountable as they manage public office emerges from the general lack of action against perceived non-performing ministers in the past (and present). The focus must be at local government … let’s go local with this idea, and go big!

Focusing on higher political deployees is like scratching next to a very inviting itch, and never really getting to the really itchy spot. Frustrating. We all live in a municipality. If all municipalities were functioning like well-oiled machines that they should be, especially given the annual funding allocations from various sources including the millions from the government’s municipal infrastructure grant, there would be no need to focus on either provinces (especially for functions such as education and health, for example), or national departments.

The risk of Godongwana and Duarte’s otherwise positive suggestions is that as a country we might find ourselves dealing with a revolving door of changing ministers resulting in endemic poor performance borne out of a lack of continuity and no leadership momentum. Local government leadership is the itch that needs scratching right now. And the performance of many of them demands they must be immediately ejected from positions they occupy.