We had this discussion on the RS podcast a few weeks ago, and I must say that it’s a truly complicated issue when it comes to the hard questions.
I doubt anyone, at least in theory, disagrees that a professional and technically competent civil service is a necessary component of any state that is capable of discharging its responsibilities effectively to the people.
Where it becomes contentious is on the question of politics. I’ve heard some people add “non-political” or “apolitical” to the mix, but I’m not fully sold on this. I don’t think anyone can be truly non-political. We all have biases, leanings and political inclinations, whether consciously or unconsciously, and they do influence how we think and make sense of things.
To be fair to the ANC, I’d like to think that they understood that the only way they could effectively implement their policy agenda after 1994 was to “transform” the state and appoint politically aligned professionals. Here, I’d like to add that, for me, technical competence and political alignment are not mutually exclusive. You can have a highly competent state bureaucrat who clearly leans towards a particular way of thinking.
What better example than the apartheid state itself? It had some highly competent people who aligned with the state’s ideology and worked within its institutions to carry it out.
So I’m saying that the ANC’s reasoning was not wrong. One of my more controversial views is that any and every party has to, to some extent, practise strategic deployment, or whatever you want to call it, so that it can have aligned actors within the state. Otherwise, even if you have power at the executive level, your agenda can be resisted from within the state.
Unfortunately, and as you’ve correctly pointed out, they threw the baby out with the bathwater. But they also went beyond that and filled key state institutions with cadres who could distribute tenders and other such resources to their patronage networks. To be clear, this is not the model I’m advocating for.
But I think we have to have a more serious discussion about the ideological aspect of this, and the reasoning behind it.
I can’t disagree with you, Ayanda. As usual, you make sound arguments that surely need deeper study and contemplation.
My own disillusionment is obviously reflected in my article. However, I would not have joined the ANC state administration if I did not also believe that they had the right intentions. After all, they employed me as a mlungu while desperately (and very over-hastily) pushing out other capable people, often on the basis of skin colour. It hurt me tremendously, since I (and the country!) lost very good skills — skills in people with the “wrong” skin colour who did not oppose the new dispensation, even though they did not like it. Those of “my kind” whom I discovered working against the new dispensation, I fired myself! But I followed due process and did not use tactics of belittling people in order to get rid of them. I also did not fire or push out people in degrading ways because they were unwilling to bend the rules or help comrades raid the people’s money.
You are right about the non-political / apolitical remarks as well. That is why I prefer to refer to professionalism, since that helps tremendously not to carry one’s biased and personal preferences into serious working environments. It is not foolproof, but like “democracy” — which is the better of a range of alternatives — professionalism in a work environment is better than anything else I saw in my long career. And mind you, even civil servants in very junior positions can be professional. I met many of them in my day, even when I worked with or had to deal with them from outside the old government. And I am happy to say that I also ran into several of them (of all races) who, years after I left the new government, still remembered and tried to practise the professionalism I taught them. (Sad to say, few if any of them were promoted by the Comrades, in spite of the fact — or rather because of the fact — that they remained professionally honest and refused to play the looting game. How terribly sad…)
Ayanda, perhaps I will write another article about my much later experience of many years as a Director of one of the ANC municipalities’ local economic development agencies. That was during a period when the ANC had many years of governance behind them and was supposed to have “matured”. In some respects they did, but sadly in other respects they were at a stage beyond redemption, full-speed rushing ahead on the gravy train…
We had this discussion on the RS podcast a few weeks ago, and I must say that it’s a truly complicated issue when it comes to the hard questions.
I doubt anyone, at least in theory, disagrees that a professional and technically competent civil service is a necessary component of any state that is capable of discharging its responsibilities effectively to the people.
Where it becomes contentious is on the question of politics. I’ve heard some people add “non-political” or “apolitical” to the mix, but I’m not fully sold on this. I don’t think anyone can be truly non-political. We all have biases, leanings and political inclinations, whether consciously or unconsciously, and they do influence how we think and make sense of things.
To be fair to the ANC, I’d like to think that they understood that the only way they could effectively implement their policy agenda after 1994 was to “transform” the state and appoint politically aligned professionals. Here, I’d like to add that, for me, technical competence and political alignment are not mutually exclusive. You can have a highly competent state bureaucrat who clearly leans towards a particular way of thinking.
What better example than the apartheid state itself? It had some highly competent people who aligned with the state’s ideology and worked within its institutions to carry it out.
So I’m saying that the ANC’s reasoning was not wrong. One of my more controversial views is that any and every party has to, to some extent, practise strategic deployment, or whatever you want to call it, so that it can have aligned actors within the state. Otherwise, even if you have power at the executive level, your agenda can be resisted from within the state.
Unfortunately, and as you’ve correctly pointed out, they threw the baby out with the bathwater. But they also went beyond that and filled key state institutions with cadres who could distribute tenders and other such resources to their patronage networks. To be clear, this is not the model I’m advocating for.
But I think we have to have a more serious discussion about the ideological aspect of this, and the reasoning behind it.
I can’t disagree with you, Ayanda. As usual, you make sound arguments that surely need deeper study and contemplation.
My own disillusionment is obviously reflected in my article. However, I would not have joined the ANC state administration if I did not also believe that they had the right intentions. After all, they employed me as a mlungu while desperately (and very over-hastily) pushing out other capable people, often on the basis of skin colour. It hurt me tremendously, since I (and the country!) lost very good skills — skills in people with the “wrong” skin colour who did not oppose the new dispensation, even though they did not like it. Those of “my kind” whom I discovered working against the new dispensation, I fired myself! But I followed due process and did not use tactics of belittling people in order to get rid of them. I also did not fire or push out people in degrading ways because they were unwilling to bend the rules or help comrades raid the people’s money.
You are right about the non-political / apolitical remarks as well. That is why I prefer to refer to professionalism, since that helps tremendously not to carry one’s biased and personal preferences into serious working environments. It is not foolproof, but like “democracy” — which is the better of a range of alternatives — professionalism in a work environment is better than anything else I saw in my long career. And mind you, even civil servants in very junior positions can be professional. I met many of them in my day, even when I worked with or had to deal with them from outside the old government. And I am happy to say that I also ran into several of them (of all races) who, years after I left the new government, still remembered and tried to practise the professionalism I taught them. (Sad to say, few if any of them were promoted by the Comrades, in spite of the fact — or rather because of the fact — that they remained professionally honest and refused to play the looting game. How terribly sad…)
Ayanda, perhaps I will write another article about my much later experience of many years as a Director of one of the ANC municipalities’ local economic development agencies. That was during a period when the ANC had many years of governance behind them and was supposed to have “matured”. In some respects they did, but sadly in other respects they were at a stage beyond redemption, full-speed rushing ahead on the gravy train…