On 12 July, the Mayor of uMngeni, the Democratic Alliance (DA)’s Chris Pappas, took to Facebook to argue that given how “public service leadership is not financially competitive,” it should not be surprising that South African municipalities do not attract high-calibre individuals.
Better pay, a performance-based incentive structure, clear career trajectories, and better recognition of excellence are needed, he says.
Pappas is not the first person to have made this argument. But there is something especially problematic for senior representatives of liberal parties – that should emphasise fiscal responsibility – to accept the broken and perverse logic of modern-day statism.
“Professionalising local government”
In the first paragraphs of Pappas’s post, he perfectly sets the problem out:
It used to be – until quite recently, in fact – that being a municipal councillor was regarded as “a voluntary act of public service” that yielded only a stipend for travel and other work-related costs. Occupying this office was “about civic duty” rather than a profession. Pappas explains that today, however, local government has become “far more complex” with the “responsibilities placed on councillors, especially mayors, [growing] exponentially.”
Whereas municipalities used to be “simple administrative bodies,” they are now “intricate, highly regulated statutory entities that must navigate legal, financial, and political challenges daily.” This includes “delivering essential services to increasingly diverse and demanding communities.”
Pappas writes:
“As a mayor, one is not just a figurehead or community representative, one is essentially the CEO of a public institution that manages hundreds of employees, oversees assets worth billions of rands, and is accountable for budgets running into the hundreds of millions. And all of this is done under constant public and media scrutiny.”
Up to here, he had me.
This is a major problem – an extremely damaging pathology that has gripped the West, including South Africa. It has led to out-of-control spending of money that does not even exist yet. But more than that, it is led to a dangerous infantilisation of individuals, families, and communities.
It has always been – and ultimately, will always be – the iron law of reality that people are responsible for their own lots, though they should assist one another where appropriate. With the explosion of rent-seeking in the West, however, the state has increasingly taken on the role of a permanent parental figure seeing to the welfare of its incompetent and incapacitated children.
Make no mistake: this is a new phenomenon, and it is a peculiarly Western phenomenon. Head into the cities and towns of Nigeria or Oman and you will find that natural law governs, and politicians only arrive on the scene when there is a compelling reason of political self-interest for them to do so.
Pappas’s problem statement is spot on.
But then he proceeds – bizarrely, for a representative of the political philosophy of responsibility over rent-seeking – to endorse this state of affairs.
Rather than noting that the “enormous responsibility” that local governments in South Africa carry should be reduced, he advocates for remuneration for mayors to be increased.
Far from encouraging a return to sanity, Pappas seems to normatively buy into the notion that the state is not a civil servant that exists to safeguard people and property from force and fraud but is the father figure meant to govern everything important.
And we, as rate- and taxpayers, must help the state be exactly that.
The R1.5 million that mayors bank annually, Pappas says, “may seem like a substantial figure in isolation,” but not when compared to the private sector.
It is unsurprising, Pappas rightly notes, that the private sector would attract the best and brightest, when we should want these people to work for state institutions. He writes that part of “professionalising local government” – by which he evidently does not mean local government must conduct itself in a professional manner, but rather that local government must be a profession – means that it must “reward excellence, retain talent, and respect the scale of the responsibilities involved.”
What are liberals supposed to do in politics?
The singular purpose of liberals in politics in the current statist paradigm must be – and is – to make the government as irrelevant as possible to society.
Only once the state has been restored to its role under the social contract – exclusively, the protection of person and property against coercion – can other considerations take centre-stage.
While there seems to always be a latent desire to characterise this position as “academic” or “theoretical,” such a characterisation is dangerous. If the social contract is only of academic interest and removed from real-world, practical considerations – something DA politicians at the local level have been fond of arguing – the legitimacy of the state, and our conscientious duty to obey its dictates, evaporates.
This is what all first-year law, public administration, and political science students are taught. If this is completely false, then the foundations of modern governance are lies, and we find ourselves in quite the public-order quagmire. It means, in practice, that seeking ways to circumvent the law is not only allowable, but in fact morally commendable.
But put liberal social contract theory aside for a moment.
The South African Constitution does not require local government to be anywhere near as complex as Pappas accurately describes it as being. Complex local government is a result, in equal measure, of legislation from the national level, and voluntary mandate expansion from the local level.
There is little that stops a municipality from contracting virtually all of its many so-called “responsibilities” out to the private sector, where it not only naturally belongs, but where it can be done more affordably and efficiently.
This is, in other words, yet more statist logic that many so-called liberals accept – that government must do virtually everything important in society directly. And on a more partisan note, it is the socialistic African National Congress (ANC) logic that the DA does not think to question.
Just because this is how the ANC has governed nationally under the Constitution for so long does not mean that is how everyone, forevermore, must govern under the Constitution.
A supposedly liberal party like the DA should not encourage further wealth extraction from their core constituency: primarily productive citizens in the private sector who feel abused in contemporary South African politics.
The only thing, in a context like this, that DA local officials should concern themselves with is how they can possibly cut the rates burden carried by hardworking producers in their jurisdiction.
Lower rates and lower taxes might rob government and municipalities of the ability to continue doing the terribly poor job they have hitherto been doing. But it would enable ordinary families and communities to save and invest in their own futures and probably appoint people who can actually do the job well on a voluntary basis.
Say it with me: “no!”
While it might be true that centuries of (specifically politico-cultural) development have capacitated various foreign governments in Europe, North America, and East Asia – in select circumstances only – to outperform the private sector, this is wholly inapplicable to South Africa and has been for a very long time.
There is nothing within the mandatory purview of the three spheres of government that South Africa’s private sector and civil society would not be able to better achieve. In this I would venture to include even the basic functions of state: courts, police, and military.
So utterly has the state decapacitated not only its institutional self, but its civic tradition – one could say, sense of patriotism – that needs to sustain it. There was a time in the 1920s, 1960s, 1990s, and even the early 2000s, when a civil servant might have seen themselves as answering the call of a higher duty.
Today, these people are so few that – with all due respect and sympathy – they might as well put their talents to better use in the private sector or abroad instead.
And while robbing itself of capacity and patriotism, the state has also wreaked havoc in the economy with bad policy, extractive corruption, and a virtually non-existent law enforcement apparatus.
With this in mind, here is the uncomfortable reality that most political operators would be reluctant to accept: our society would probably be significantly better off if most if not all of them resigned, and the vacancies they left behind were not filled.
South Africa is an upper-middle income country, with all politicians and state bureaucrats “earning” significantly more than what might be regarded as the average South African. And while politicians routinely vote to increase their own salaries, the lot of ordinary South Africans worsens under the overbearing desire of all spheres of government to constrict economic activity.
Amidst this downward spiral, for politicians to insist vociferously on better pay – despite being responsible for the downward spiral and earning more than most – is significantly more offensive than simply a slap in the face. It is a kick in the groin of a taxpayer already writhing in pain.
There is no guarantee that better pay will yield better politicians.
It is far more likely that better pay will simply reward the legions of underworked, already-overpaid officials for a job poorly done, and attract many of their rent-seeking comrades to compete desperately for state jobs. Expect political assassinations at the local level to go into overdrive, as contests for chief of staff and municipal manager positions are settled violently.
“Better pay to get better politicians” is a notion is far removed from South Africa’s politico-cultural reality that it will do more harm than good.
Of course, good governments are at liberty to decide on their own remuneration packages, but this should not come at the expense of the rate- or taxpayer. For every good, well-meaning civil servant, there are many more intending simply be to a leech on the fiscus. By firing the latter, more resources are made available to pay the former.
Being fiscally responsible creates many opportunities like this. But any desire to put the cart before the horse – better pay before more prudent financial and governance decisions become manifest – must be rejected with prejudice. The only answer to this request is “no.”
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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