appears to be developing, as Zuma is an interesting frame of reference to understand this.
Zuma’s presidency is unfolding into an era that is identifiable and worthy of deep analysis. In some ways, justice has not been done to the man, because we are becoming a nation that perpetually seeks a scapegoat. Instead of confronting the evils of our society, we look for a way to normalise them, and thus ourselves, by pinning our failings on individuals. If Zuma is simply dubbed a ‘failed leader’, the nation will get to move on once he is gone, absolved and cleansed. In the eyes of some within the ANC, Mbeki was becoming a bad leader, and so the party, instead of looking inward, found in Mbeki a scapegoat for its own political shortcomings. So the ruling party unceremoniously removed him, and thereby cleansed itself of the sin it had committed by failing to transform into a modern political party.
As a society, it seems that we like to ‘manufacture’ leaders for our own convenience. And when things do not turn out the way we wanted them to, we simply demonise the leaders and blame them for all manner of uncomfortable socio-political developments. But usually the problem is much larger than one leader. In this case South Africa’s downward trajectory cannot be blamed on Zuma alone. He is, after all, just one man and part of a much bigger system. Maybe the Zuma years will help South Africans realise that deeply ingrained problems are not solved by getting rid of one leader and replacing him with another. South Africa’s problems are much bigger than Zuma. He has survived longer than most people thought possible, but one day he will go. And when he does, it certainly will not mean the end of our troubles.
TWO
Zuma’s bureaucratic empire
Two of the main reasons for Thabo Mbeki’s downfall were that he was too bureaucratic, and too fond of concentrating power in his own hands. So the ANC got rid of Thabo and his old pipe. In came Jacob Zuma, a non-smoker and non-drinker, and many thought a new day had dawned. But now, oddly enough, and well into the second term of his presidency, Zuma presides over an even bigger empire of red tape – and the presidency has a much tighter stranglehold on effective governance.
After taking over as the president of the Republic of South Africa following the 2009 general elections, Jacob Zuma increased the size of the executive branch of government from 28 departments to 35,1 with the National Planning Commission (NPC) being one of the most prominent additions to the public service. In his second term, which started in 2014, Zuma increased the number of departments to 37.2 As a developing nation frustrated by poor delivery of public services, South Africans seem to tolerate any expansion of the public service, as long as it is presented as a fix for poor performance. For this reason, the formation of the NPC was welcomed without any critical evaluation.
The approach is quite simple. Identify a problem in the public service and then create a department to deal with it specifically. This is a self-justifying initiative showing that government does care about resolving backlogs. What this approach lacks, however, is the realisation that the problems did not arise because certain institutions had not yet been invented to deal with them. No, the problems appeared because the existing institutions could not solve them. And that is why the creation of more institutions only adds to the number of non-performing institutions. The best alternative is to adjust existing departments to deal with the newly identified problems. This type of response to problems is not unique to South Africa. Big bureaucracies, often dysfunctional, exist all over the world, even in advanced democracies such as the United Kingdom.3 It is a common practice for politicians, together with their civil service counterparts, to grow government to an unrecognisable behemoth capable of delivering nothing.
In an episode of my favourite TV series, Yes Minister, Jim Hacker, the Minister of Administrative Affairs in the British government, is confronted with the problem of big bureaucracy. Hacker’s job is to ensure that government departments deliver on their mandate, and so he wants to cut government departments down to a more manageable size. Mr Hacker’s permanent secretary (in our system the director-general), Humphrey Appleby, is only interested in ensuring that Hacker’s department grows bigger and bigger. Why? Because then the department can have the biggest budget! That is all that matters to civil servants and their political masters: big departments with bigger budgets to play around with.
President Jacob Zuma’s reordering of the public service confirms this approach. New departments and agencies were created to deal with identified failings, particularly poor planning in government. But there has been no attempt to identify those who were not doing their jobs in the government agencies that were there already. This approach simply gives the impression of being busy. Agencies focused on specific problems are mistaken for bodies with the ability to actually tackle those problems and resolve them.
By the end of Zuma’s first term, in 2014, none of his newly created ministries and agencies – including his presidential hotline – had made any significant improvement in the public service. And this is despite the millions that have been spent on salaries and the operational costs of those newly created bodies.4 In a sense, what Zuma has done is to create a ‘big government’ system that has not received any meaningful critical overview. That’s because in South Africa, the existence of a problem-oriented government agency is accepted as an indication of focus and ability to resolve a problem. There is no discussion about big government.
Zuma appears more of a bureaucrat than Mbeki ever was. The establishment of the NPC, the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation and their clumsily articulated mandates seem to show that Zuma is also an Mbeki-style centralist! However, the departments he has established have yet to demonstrate their reasons for existence. A prime example is the Department of Economic Development, headed by Ebrahim Patel; it is not clear why this department was created.
But there’s something even more crucial. An ever-growing government bureaucracy weighs on itself to such an extent that there is no clear chain of command. It’s just not clear who’s responsible for what. And Zuma the centralist located the NPC in the Office of the Presidency. I hold strong views on the commission – and how its operation impacts on bureaucratic efficiency in South Africa.
Despite being a democracy, the South African government occasionally shows a fascination for institutions that belong in dictatorial regimes. One such institution is the NPC, which was set up to ‘develop a long-term development vision for government’. The main advantage touted for the commission was that it would provide much-needed long-term plans for South Africa. After all, it was often held that a lack of long-term planning had led to the electricity crisis, and to service delivery protests.
The NPC, it is stated, draws inputs from the wider public. Its notable character is that it promises to offer an opportunity to the public outside government to play a role and make suggestions to government planners. This is a noble call in the spirit of open democracy. But there is one thing we can’t ignore: the commission was created out of frustration with a system in which government plans slowly trickle down through government departments. Policies and plans move from the ruling party manifesto down to Cabinet and then further down to ministries or government departments. This is consultative in the sense that plans pass through a process of filtering, refinement and adaptation. The plans pass through different departments as implementable yearly government programmes. By imposing the NPC as a body chaired and coordinated in the Presidency, the flow of responsibility and ultimately the line of accountability are watered down by the time a plan reaches the department that has to make it work.
The commission claims to have reached out to the people. It is tempting to argue that since it is open to the general public, it strikes a blow for democracy. But this depends heavily on whether the commission actually reflects the views of the public in the long-term plans it dreams up. Since the commission is chaired and coordinated in the Presidency, the final word on any plan may inevitably be that of the Presidency – and not of the people.
The idea that the commissioners represent society as a whole seems to be taken as an indication that planning is automatically democratic. This idea is misleading. Commissioners may merely provide a legitimising role and may sit on the commission only as symbols of the broader society. There is no proof that they take part in drawing up plans. The much-vaunted public approach of the commission is beginning to look like a way to legitimise choices