When the Party Took Over the State

The ANC made a farce of the separation of powers, which for all practical purposes meant the end of an independent and professional public service.

Professor Koos Malan’s article in The Common Sense of 2 September 2026 brought back many memories of how I experienced the ANC’s workings in the inner circle of their state administration. I “served” them for four years in a senior position as a professional public servant without ANC cadre membership. In other words, I was never appointed because I was an ANC member with contacts that could secure me a senior post. I was simply appointed on the basis of my professional knowledge and experience in a specialised development field of which cadres had little knowledge.

I deliberately refrain from being more specific about the exact position and development field, because my aim is not to “expose” or embarrass specific cadres. That would be unprofessional of me, when I obtained my position precisely on professional grounds.

I was deliberate in my decision at the time to apply for a public service post and in my willingness to move from an environment of great comfort and personal security of living conditions to something far more uncertain, because I had almost an obsession with trying to help build the New South Africa at the forefront of development in the spirit of Madiba.

I am therefore in a position, in connection with Prof. Koos Malan, to share practical experiences from the inner circle of ANC state administration with readers.

Initially my experience was that the officials of the new ANC administration were willing to learn from expertise. There were still a few experts remaining from the old order before 1994, and they were of great help in acting as mentors for new appointments that were almost always ANC cadre deployments.

There were also, during the first Government of National Unity from 1994 to 1999, which most people have already forgotten, old officials with particular knowledge who served alongside certain senior new officials, such as directors-general, to facilitate the transition. This was part of the Codesa negotiations / interim constitution’s conditions to make the transition as smooth as possible through shared responsibilities at many senior levels.

I do not think many people are still, or ever were, aware of that arrangement. It certainly helped to transfer experience, but it also brought great tension. I observed at first hand fierce differences of opinion where the new director-general, for example, wanted to deviate from policy, but where the senior official from the old order seriously objected.

The eventual outcome could certainly be predicted: the new administrative officials increasingly asserted themselves and simply ignored the advice of the official from the old order. As an observer it appeared to me that the new administrative leadership was increasingly placed under pressure by their political masters, behind the scenes, to loosen the handcuffs of policy in order to give the politicians more power to manipulate the administration and even, for all practical purposes, to take it over.

Unfortunately the new senior officials were cadre deployments and, with their little or no experience of state administration, they yielded to political pressure. This was fatal, as any professional public servant will be able to testify, because once policy is no longer respected, the administration inevitably falls apart.

Many of us still remember the old British Yes Minister television series. It comes from the days when state administration and the distinction between administration and political interference were still understood.

In that excellent British TV series it was depicted in a satirical manner how the dividing line is maintained with the aim of ensuring effective and consistent state administration: in the series the highly competent officials simply say “yes minister” in a very polite way to everything the minister insists on, and then simply continue to implement state policy “by the book”.

This at the same time made the politician feel good, while state administration and management were applied within approved rules: it afforded protection on both sides. Even more important: it kept the politicians humble, as is proper. Politicians must exercise their powers where applicable, such as establishing policy through legislation which must then be applied by the officials for as long as that policy has not been amended by the correct process.

Later all seconded officials from the old order either voluntarily left or, with the expiry of their secondment periods, bid farewell to the new dispensation.

I myself of course remained because I held a permanent appointment under the new dispensation. But it was not easy. My superior public servants to whom I had to report were cadre deployments. They were not necessarily all incompetent, but clearly preferred to yield to the politician’s pressure rather than to adhere to development policy; they even allowed themselves to be convinced by politicians that they could break laws.

It was then quite possible to get away with it, because everyone protected everyone else’s back, since almost everyone owed their posts to the ANC. A few old hands from the old order who stiffened their backs were quickly worked out of the system. The easiest was with packages for early retirement.

For others who did not want to take the easy way out, their professional lives were simply made hell. They were falsely accused, especially of their so-called “unwillingness to transform”. Read that as their unwillingness to become involved in corruption and the violation of policy provisions.

Another popular method was to question everything they had done and refer it back with comments and remarks, whether it made sense or not. This broke those officials’ backs, because they were then referred to as incompetent, in front of colleagues and subordinates in meetings, because they were not making progress in their work, which of course had been made impossible for them. They were then branded as incompetent and usually resigned voluntarily.

Yet another “torture method” to get rid of unwanted officials who would not cooperate, read: would not steal together, was to overwhelm them with impossible instructions, often of a nature that did not even relate to their area of responsibility.

The outcome was predictable: reference was then also made in meetings in front of colleagues and subordinates to their failures and it was then announced that another official, naturally a cadre, mostly incompetent, would take over that unwanted official’s obligations. This was extremely humiliating and succeeded in making the targeted official decide soon to seek a livelihood elsewhere.

Senior management meetings were initially limited to the participation of officials only and not politicians, as is proper. The most senior official was the invisible link between the administration and the politician. Proper management meetings were then held, to all appearances, with decisions taken and minuted.

It was not long, however, before it became apparent that this was merely so much window-dressing. More and more management decisions were simply amended between management meetings. Of course this was sometimes questioned by some managers, especially by the non-cadres, but the answer time and again was that the responsible politician had not liked the management’s decision.

Soon this created the precedent that legislative / policy-making functions were no longer separate and mutually independent. The worst was that it emerged that so-called ANC caucuses took place over weekends at the home of the responsible politician, where the administrative management’s decisions were then reconsidered.

This of course made a farce of the separation of powers, which for all practical purposes meant the end of an independent and professional public service. Later politicians simply summoned the senior public servants and issued instructions. No room was left for objections.

It reached the point where senior officials such as myself were held responsible for budgets of millions of rands, but with minimal control over those budgets. It was randomly announced in management meetings that your budget had now been reduced by millions because funds were needed elsewhere. No opportunity for input or insight: it had simply, usually, been decided by the politicians and you simply had to fall in line.

Another practice that increasingly began to rear its head concerned the employment of new officials. Initially posts were advertised and applications were then evaluated against the post requirements and a shortlist of suitable candidates was drawn up.

Thereafter a panel was constituted consisting of a human resources expert, a trade union member and the head of the section within which the new appointment would function. Identical questionnaires with a scoring list that had to be completed by all members of the panel during the interview were then made available.

After the interview the human resources expert then totalled the scores and informed all panel members of the outcome, with a recommendation of the most suitable candidate in terms of the panel’s joint scoring. In other words, a very objective and fair procedure for staff appointments.

With time, however, something strange began to happen. One day your personal assistant informed you that so-and-so wanted to meet you as a newly appointed staff member. You meet the person, but have never in your life heard his or her name, even though you were part of the panel that was supposed to make the appointment on the basis of a very thorough and fair employment practice.

You hide your surprise and ignorance and turn to Human Resources for clarification. No, they say, an instruction had been given by the responsible politician that the stranger you had met for the first time was to be appointed in your department.

As if that were not bad enough, you discover that the appointed person who has to evaluate multi-million-rand new projects for viability had made evaluations of schoolchildren’s progress at primary school and is well known to the responsible politician and has thus been blessed with a job opportunity for which he was not even nearly suitable.

The consequences for the spending of millions of rands of the taxpayer’s money on projects regarding which the official has not the slightest understanding on which to make recommendations do not bother the politician for a moment. On the contrary, it gives the same politician more room for favouritism further down the chain to project implementation; and of course to decisions about who and on what conditions will be designated as beneficiaries of the project.

I sincerely hope that my account of personal experiences of how the ANC succeeded in hollowing out the South African public service will open eyes to the enormous damage the ANC has done to decent and competent state administration.

Little has changed since my own voluntary departure from the public service under the ANC. On the contrary, it has become bigger and clumsier and more corrupt, with few exceptions. It is mostly now what is referred to as a “job shop”: employment of large numbers of “workers” to let taxpayers’ money and service benefits end up in cadres’ pockets in order to buy their loyalty and ensure their cooperation to make corruption on a massive scale possible.

I conclude with a quotation from Prof. Koos Malan’s article to which I referred and which prompted me to share what I experienced at first hand of the South African tragedy of public service collapse. In an attempt to sound more positive about how the collapse can be reversed, if it is indeed possible, I give the professor the last word:

“… once the culture of voluntary compliance with the norms (in this case the norms of public office) has largely disappeared, the structures of law and a Constitution, including courts and commissions of inquiry, can no longer correct it.

Only a replacement by a constitutional order or orders with new ruling elites and accompanying new values, including a corrected sense for public office, can do this.”

Piet du Plessis is a retiree with a long history of applied socio-economic development. A liberated Afrikaner who has moved beyond self-flagellation and believes that he has been freed to live out his cultural pride and values, and to proclaim them openly when appropriate.