The Democratic Alliance mayor of Tshwane, Cilliers Brink, has lost his position in the capital city as a result of the ANC’s and its partners’ burning desire to take back the administration of the municipality.
To do this, ActionSA reversed its deeply-held policy never to work with the ANC in coalition after this year’s election, and left the DA-led coalition in order to support the ANC’s takeover of a municipality that the DA and its coalition partners had spent three years dragging out of the quagmire of ANC misgovernance.
Brink created the position of Deputy Mayor which was filled by the ASA’s Dr. Nasiphi Moya who is now the mayor, despite the ANC’s reneging on its ‘promise’ to ASA that it would be so rewarded for changing sides. The ANC-led alliance is, presumably, hoping to capitalise on the improvements that the DA-led coalition achieved despite all odds, and which will continue to become apparent in the run-up to the 2026 municipal elections. This article will offer guidance to the ANC, EFF, ASA et al, courtesy of the DA and its coalition partners.
In doing research for the IRR’s In service of the public: Reforming South Africa’s public administration, I conducted a number of interviews, including with members of the DA who had been involved directly in the process of taking over a public service from an ANC government in 2023.
The change in government in the City of Cape Town in 2006 was the first change since the ANC came to power in 1994, in that governance of a significant municipality fell under a different political entity.
Additionally, the new governing entity comprised a coalition of parties headed by the DA. It initially had a mere one-seat majority. The current Chairperson of the DA’s Federal Council, Helen Zille, became the mayor of Cape Town, responsible for overseeing this transition and the huge challenges it threw up.
The Cape Town coalition was, effectively, the ‘lab rat’ for the Government of National Unity.
Given the DA’s experiences in coalition, either in governance or opposition, I thought the DA’s experience could offer lessons on how new governing parties or coalitions could improve public service, irrespective of party loyalty.
Accordingly, what follows is a reflection of the experiences and opinions of DA office-bearers in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Tshwane.
Cape Town was the ‘lab rat’ experiment
Gareth Bloor was a member of the Mayoral Committee for Economic Development and Spatial Planning in the municipal government in Cape Town after the DA won with an outright majority in 2011. His observations provide a valuable counterpoint to subsequent coalition experiences.
Bloor found that in view of the novelty of new governance, he had to manage his committee with an ever-shifting mandate.
Initially, he found municipal employees generally apathetic and sceptical, because politicians come and go. They never had certainty about what they were expected to do and who would manage them.
“There were concerns about the political loyalties of the municipal workforce, given that ANC-aligned unions represented a large number of workers. But municipal employees had to be civil servants rather than politicians. He said most municipal employees were, in fact, fairly pragmatic rather than ideologically opposed to the new DA government.
The key to getting a positive response from employees was to act decisively and energetically.
Being cordial in his dealings with employees was very important. So, Bloor ensured that employees met directly with their managers, and he exercised oversight by ‘doing the rounds’ regularly – a small touch but a powerful one.
One-on-one meetings with employees revealed that employees just wanted to be heard and respected.
Bloor found that people came round quickly. One didn’t have to threaten negative consequences. Rewarding excellence, however, was crucial. At the same time, he had to restructure and reappoint, where possible.
Balance
For Bloor it was about striking a balance between providing job security and simultaneously improving the quality and productivity of staff. The workspace had to be competitive, but no one was to be undermined by any threat of retrenchment.
Political interference had to be avoided – politicians and civil servants operate in intersecting but distinct spheres – and conflict had to be dealt with as an administrative function.
Critical to success was, first, that government agencies had to have their funding tied to outcomes and, second, that leadership had to deal immediately with policy reform. To achieve both goals, the leadership did need “spies” to keep an eye on what was going on. However, Bloor was fascinated by how little opposition there was to policy change.
He admitted that dealing with civil servants in the early 2000s was probably easier than it has become in recent years. The deliberate obstructionism, often a hallmark of municipal government now, wasn’t as prevalent in his time.
Bloor recognises that a positive factor assisting the transition may have been the calibre of the employees he worked with.
Tshwane on the other hand…
The City Council of Tshwane is the third-largest municipality in the world. Although the landmark election on 29 May 2024 did not include elections to municipalities, a former member of the Mayoral Committee (who asked to remain anonymous) provided some valuable insights into an existing coalition government.
At the time of my interview with the former councillor, the governing coalition had been in power for two years from 2021.
Contrary to the Cape Town experience in the early 2000s, he found a clear bias in the administration towards the ANC, reflected in a tendency to support party politics rather than council policies.
Reports from council employees reflected principles which were not aligned with the coalition government of the day. He found that people “just do not perform”.
The DA mayor, Randall Williams, resigned in February 2023 and 10 days later Murunwa Makwarela of Cope was controversially elected mayor, with ANC backing.
At that point the ANC suddenly sprang into action to deliver services. Streetlights in ANC-held wards, for example, were suddenly fixed. According to the interviewee, whenever the ANC took over the council, it ramped up its performance. Once Makwarela resigned over allegations of fraud, however, service delivery fell.
The interviewee found it difficult to discipline middle managers for non-performance. Poor or obstructionist performers tended to be redeployed around the Council. He felt that the Council needed to be more assertive in handling poor performers, but admitted that he himself was uncertain about carrying out dismissals because of potential repercussions.
The EFF had captured the supply chains and there were allegations that the head of supply change management met regularly with Julius Malema, the leader of the EFF. The EFF drove the political agenda in its support of the ANC.
There was in this time, he said, growing deployment by Luthuli House.
…And in Joburg
David Potter had been a councillor in Randburg for 12 years. He resigned on 31 May 2023 and on the same date Daily Maverick published an op-ed by him entitled A departing Joburg councillor’s cry for his beloved broken city.
From 2016 to 2021 the DA had 103 councillors; but at the time of his resignation there were 71. Thus, 32 people encapsulating the institutional memory of the council were lost, which put a greater load on existing staff.
Most councillors know nothing about city management, governance, or politics. Proportional Representation councillors tended to be better informed, but they are only involved in oversight of the Management Accounts Committee; so, they work less than Constituency councillors.
What Potter gleaned was the real necessity for municipal governments and public services to have both institutional knowledge and young blood at the same time.
Interestingly, Potter said that EFF councillors were often impressive because they came to council meetings well-prepared. They always spoke at the council meetings, were knowledgeable and correct about the subject at hand, and rational about how it should be managed. On the other hand, he found the ANC councillors very undisciplined and fundamentally focused on matters of concern to the party.
On a practical level, in Potter’s experience, if anyone contacted the municipal CEO because of a lack of services, the CEO would send the issue down the line and then nothing would get done. This suggested compromised municipal systems.
He contrasted this with the Cape Town situation, where the infrastructure is overseen by independent engineers in a distinct department who monitor what is being done. Additionally, subsequent tranches of money for work that needed to be done would only be paid over when previously remunerated work had been completed.
In the Johannesburg City Council large capital projects are avoided by officials. When the DA asked written and oral questions, in motions and debates, the ANC just obfuscated.
It was always worse at the beginning of a political term: managers would not sign off on projects because political principals were watching them.
Randburg experienced stagnation: consultants, construction mafia, “business forums” and “chambers of business” were all involved, but it was all just a “shake down”. These people usually demanded 30% of earnings but contributed nothing.
Owing to the fact that too many incumbents were in acting positions in Johannesburg, decisiveness was lacking. They were conscious that they could be removed tomorrow and preferred to remain under the radar. The staff complement was bloated, and Potter found that the more employees there were, the less they did.
It is difficult to dismiss municipal managers because they are hired and fired by Council itself. The process needs to be streamlined.
For Potter, trade unions were a big problem – they were effectively untouchable and did not encourage delivery. One example was that if refuse was not collected on a given day, it was not necessarily a problem with the availability of trucks or workers; it was because the unions had shrugged their shoulders about their responsibilities.
The accountability (and competence) of management is crucial to success. In Potter’s experience in Johannesburg, meetings to achieve that purpose were seldom held and when they were, they were attended infrequently by officials.
Where reports were delayed – most likely on purpose – councillors were frustrated and ultimately service delivery fell.
A provincial view
Jack Bloom has not had direct experience of representing the party responsible for governance of an “ANC” civil service. Most of his knowledge of the changes in the Western Cape comes from interaction with his colleagues.
Bloom, however, is a very experienced and well-respected Shadow MEC for Health for the DA in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature. People across the political spectrum acknowledge (sometimes grudgingly) his energy and resourcefulness, and the media regards him as a reliable and detailed source of information.
He believed, at the time of the interview, that there could be a possibility that the Gauteng would change its provincial government for the first time as a result of the 2024 elections. He said that in that event, the DA together with other parties in the Multi-Party Coalition might become the government. We now know that, as opposed to the situation at national level, that has not happened. It does not mean that the public service cannot be improved and revitalised, but there is little confidence that this is likely to happen under ANC Premier Panyaza Lesufi.
Bloom says the ANC and its allies caused far fewer problems for the DA in Cape Town than they do now. Now the ANC is very combative and often offers “gratuities” to people to vote with it to bring down opposition-led political structures.
Bloom believes emphatically that the ANC’s policy of cadre deployment, above all, needs to be abandoned. The one advantage at the provincial level of government is that department heads can hire and fire staff directly, unlike at municipal level.
Bloom suggests that public service management should take advantage of the end of fixed-term contracts to get rid of poorly performing staff. Managers have to be alert to the termination dates of many contracts. Managers tend to forget about or be unaware of these details, and they offer a way to end the service of malcontents or incompetents relatively simply.
Bloom advises that the following processes need to be adopted with regard to public servants:
- Work poorly performing employees out over time;
- If stuck with a problem person, keep them employed with uncontroversial activities;
- Set very strict performance criteria and hold the employee responsible for his/her performance;
- If an incumbent is competent and trustworthy, make sure to support the employee, particularly if their loyalty to the political entity transcends their party loyalty;
- Create efficient and professional Human Resources departments;
- If a problematic employee resigns, accept it without question. Few people realise that a resignation is a unilateral act; the employer has no legal right to reject a resignation, but it must be in writing;
- If a competent person wants to resign, it may be well worth trying to persuade the employee to stay;
- If an employee wants to retire early, just be sure that the organisation doesn’t risk losing too much institutional memory before approving it; and
- At a national level, Directors-General (D-G) leave office with their ministers: this is a good opportunity to have a person in the post that the governing party/ies trusts. A good D-G can be used very effectively.
Bloom reiterates a point already made: a coalition must do everything possible to separate employees’ party loyalty from loyalty to the civil service.
Also, it must anticipate that some trade unions will try to thwart the government’s goals; strong industrial relations skills are needed.
Echoing Potter, governments need people with institutional knowledge. Governments need to be adroit and assess the environment carefully: they must neutralise incompetent people and support competent people, irrespective of their party affiliation.
A new government must create goodwill immediately by treating public sector employees on their merits, and not purging the workforce on a party-political basis. Staff will be apprehensive about a new government, so hard work has to be undertaken to convince people of a government’s good intentions.
In Bloom’s extensive experience with hospitals in Gauteng, most of the CEOs should be removed from their positions. However, they should not merely be ‘redeployed’; they must be dismissed. If necessary and affordable, pay them to leave. Poorly performing hospital CEOs should be removed from the system. CEOs need to be held to strict performance criteria, which hasn’t been the case to date in his experience.
Heads of Department are legally obliged to co-operate. They must know how to respect divisions and boundaries. They must endeavour to establish good working relationships.
Authority must be devolved appropriately in departments. Governments must decentralise administrative control, but only if the right people are in charge. If a new government can show genuine goodwill and the conditions are favourable, professionals will work in the public sector.
Controversially, but perhaps logically, Bloom says that government departments must not issue tenders; they must operate like businesses – obtain three quotes and choose the best one overall.
In Bloom’s view, it takes about two years before things settle in the public sector after a change of government, and five to ten years to make a difference. It is critical to get control of the finances and stabilise departments. Departments need to generate information that the Auditor-General can trust.
In his view, stable coalitions lead to innovation. The Western Cape can be an advice resource for the rest of the country.
Bloom’s overarching advice in 2023 was that changing the public sector is a long-term endeavour. The government must genuinely put the country first.
And coalition partners must subordinate their separate selves to the coalition agreement. There must be no scrambling for positions, and dispute mechanisms must be built into the coalition agreement.
And the last word goes to Helen
Zille was the MEC for Education in the Western Cape (1999 – 2001), the Mayor of Cape Town (2006 – 2009) and Premier for two terms of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, being a member from 2009 to 2019.
Zille is the most experienced person in South Africa in the negotiation, building, and managing of coalitions. Her role at the apex of the DA gives her unique insights into governing in coalitions, where experience is of paramount relevance.
However, it is apparent that she has developed a much more hard-bitten response to coalition politics since the relative innocence and success of the first twenty years of the 2000s.
When interviewed in the second half of 2023, she was much more cynical about the future of coalition politics and management of the public sector in general.
Zille said, when interviewed, that almost every senior appointment in government is held by a deployed cadre. Parties in municipalities have been profoundly divided as to who gets the most positions, and which ones they are. The complexity of the task has been compounded by a tiny balance of power and contentious, small parties creating fractious government.
The public sector is very difficult to manage because extortion is so easy. Huge amounts of money can be made via public administration.
It takes many months if not years to get key people in place. It’s not just the forces of politics and bureaucracy, it has been the sheer dominance of the ANC over 30 years of untrammelled power.
Zille gave as an example an EFF functionary who asked for a name to be added to a list of applicants for a position in a municipality. This occurred towards the end of the period for compilation of the list. On the day of the interviews for the position, only the EFF’s candidate remained on the list. The others had withdrawn.
She said then, and it’s no less relevant now, that a coalition government needs to be like-minded, otherwise it is easily outnumbered.
Coalitions need to establish a basic set of values and rules, as Zille presciently observed a year before the GNU was even a possibility.
From her experience,the major hurdle to overcome is managing the expectations of voters. People generally do not appreciate how long it takes to develop competence.
Conclusion
The public service can improve, but it takes will and commitment. The skills and drive of management are absolutely vital. In their absence, nothing changes: hospitals remain sites of misery, computer systems remain off-line for weeks if not months, and the South African people who are the customers of the public service remain frustrated or worse.
The worst cases of jockeying for power have most recently been seen in the process of evicting Cilliers Brink from the mayoralty of Tshwane, and Panyaza Lesufi’s machinations to ensure the DA’s exclusion from a governing coalition.
The ANC’s behaviour in the GNU has been less than ethical, but as it stands, the GNU may still show that the advice set out in this article can lead to a more capable and ready response by the public service to the people who matter most, the South African public.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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Image by Malachi Witt from Pixabay