At a juncture when public trust in government institutions is tattered and pessimism is perverse, Public Service and Administration Minister Inkosi Mzamo Buthelezi, has the unenviable task of reversing the tide.
It is one that he does not consider insurmountable, mammoth as it is.
This much was apparent during an interview with Public Sector Manager (PSM) magazine at his Batho Pele House office in Pretoria.
September, celebrated as Public Service Month in South Africa, was a focal point of the discussion.
During the interview the Minister outlined his vision for the revitalisation of the Public Service, emphasising the need for the restoration of professionalism and ethical standards that have deteriorated in recent years.
With that said, he is adamant that the 30 days of September should not be used to admonish public servants, but rather to celebrate their efforts.
“We are not going to use Public Service Month to highlight the wrongs that are happening within departments, it is not about that... We must not create a perception ourselves that suggests that everything is rotten in the Public Service,” said the Minister.
He stated that the annual event will instead be dedicated to honour those who have taken a conscious decision to serve in the public sector even when more lucrative opportunities were in the offering in the private sector.
“They chose not to go that route... they chose a route that is serving their people. That is what we are going to do,” he said, adding that the period will also be used to ignite enthusiasm among public servants and revive commitment to service.
“Most of us when we take office, [whether] as a police [officer] or a nurse, there is an oath that you take which commits you to whatever work you are going to do. So, as we go, all those seem to fade into the background because of a number of challenges,” he reiterated.
He said that Public Service Month should serve as a reminder of the valuable contributions public servants make to the country and encourage them to persist in their efforts, even when faced with challenging circumstances.
Not shying away from endemic challenges that continue to plague the sector, the Minister said it was important to address these issues if meaningful progress was to be made.
Professionalising the Public Service
In February 2024, the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) released Volume 1 of the Directive on Human Resources Management and Development for Public Service Professionalisation. The initiative is designed to enhance the efficacy, integrity and accountability of the Public Service.
This is in line with the government's efforts to combat corruption in the country, including within the Public Service.
For Minister Buthelezi, the conversation starts with a question that has weighed heavily on many South Africans: “How did the country’s public service, once lauded for its professionalism and integrity, lose its way?”
For him, the answer is rooted in a gradual yet troubling shift in the relationship between politicians and public servants.
“The Public Service was professional,” the Minister recalls, with a mixture of pride and concern. “But somewhere along the way, we, as politicians, started to politicise public servants. Now, there is this call for professionalisation, as if the Public Service was never professional. I dispute that notion.”
For him, the decline in standards is not a reflection of a systemic failure, but rather the result of external pressures that have distracted public servants.
“Public servants were professional, they were ethical and had a keen interest to serve. That is why most of us when we were growing up, we aspired to be public servants,” he asserted.
His responsibility and that of the DPSA, he added, is to try and depoliticise the Public Service.
“That means we are not introducing something new but we are removing something that I consider alien, we are asking public servants to go back to their core values,” he said.
Rebuilding public trust
The Minister believes that the effective utilisation of the Public Service Commission (PSC) and the National School of Government (NSG) will go a long way in restoring the diminished trust in the Public Service.
While the PSC coordinates government’s efforts to eradicate corruption and maladministration in the State and develops and improves policy on ethics for the Public Service, the latter is tasked with ensuring that all public servants participate and complete education, training and development initiatives.
“The NSG comes to play a particular role when it comes to training public servants in a number of things, which includes ethics, among others. That is one initiative that the department has undertaken to make make sure that we professionalise the Public Service and bring back the public trust. If people are led by leaders who are unethical, who are not committed to the cause and leaders who neglect their duty and do not take serving people as a calling, that is a problem,” he said.
Lifestyle audits
Turning his attention to accomplishing an ethical public service, he is adamant that lifestyle audits are not the holy grail.
“All that I want to see happening is that, as we try to deal with corruption through lifestyle audits, people should be encouraged to do the right thing without there being someone following them. We must also try to develop a culture within the public service that repels such elements and only attract people who are interested in serving.”
Innovation
The Minister said in his first two months in the role, he has been impressed by the innovation demonstrated by public servants.
“Public servants are coming up with new ways of how government can do things better and become efficient.”
However, he stressed that innovation should not leave behind the majority of the population.
Wage bill
In recent years, the general public has raised concerns on the country’s perceived “ballooning” public service wage bill. The Minister is , however, not convinced that this perception is accurate.
“I do not believe that the wage bill is ‘ballooning’. We must be very honest in analysing the status quo. You have almost 1.3 million public servants serving a population of over 60 million. You go to the police, and they will tell you [that] they should have one police officer serving a certain number of people, but that is not happening,” explained the Minister.
The genesis of the problem, for him, is the country’s stunted economic growth of recent years. However, he acknowledged that there are challenges within the system that need to be addressed.
“That (slow economic growth) should not be equated to the problem of the wage bill, because it is not. If the economy was growing as much as it should have, and if our population increase was not increasing in a manner that is not aligned with our economic growth, we would not be where we are,” he explained.
He noted that the public sector is not bursting at the seams with excess staff, instead the limited human resources are mostly being overstretched.
Suspensions
Another challenge within the Public Service is the issue of long-standing unresolved suspensions. This problem is widespread, yet there are no specific statistics available on the exact number of cases.
These include the number of staff members spending excessive time on suspension as well as deadwood in some departments.
“We are told that some of them are not even in the country; some have been on suspension for over a thousand days; some have gone on to study and obtain degrees; some are owning businesses elsewhere. There is a serious problem in relation to that.”
He mentioned that the DPSA is working on a report to determine the exact number of suspended staff members in an effort to finalise the investigations.
The Minister stated that he aimed to leave a legacy of public servants returning to basics, where the principles of Batho Pele are not merely displayed on the walls of government departments but are actively practiced.
“You will know that there is Batho Pele because of your personal experience with every public servant. I would like to leave behind public servants that keep keeping on, no matter what.”
This article first appeared in Public Sector Manager (PSM) Magazine
