Business Leadership South Africa CEO Busi Mavuso has high hopes that the National Framework Towards the Professionalisation of the Public Service (NFTPPS), which was recently approved by Cabinet and released, will bring a real turnaround in government’s service delivery.

In her weekly newsletter, Mavuso says businesses have long felt the sharp edge of the poor state of public services, with many factories and companies having had to cease operations or close permanently owing to basic failures in local government service delivery.

The NFTPPS was developed by the Department of Public Service and Administration and, according to Mavuso, effectively diagnoses the problem and consequences of poor service delivery in the country.

The document is frank in acknowledging how cadre deployment has damaged the civil service, Mavuso says, citing that “at the executive management levels, reporting and recruitment structures have allowed too much political interference in selecting and managing senior staff”.

She explains the result has been turbulence in senior positions and weak morale, as well as damage to citizens’ confidence in the State.

The NFTPPS states that a professional public service is one where people are recruited and promoted based on merit and potential, rather than connections or political allegiance. It bluntly says deployment practices ought to be ditched.

The framework is also clear about focusing on outputs, declaring that the end goal is high-quality public services for citizens and clean audits – as a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Mavuso says the challenge is, of course, whether and how far implementation will go.

The framework makes clear recommendations, including appointing an administrative head of the public service to whom all directors-general would report to on operational and administrative matters, and that government sets out to do away with cadre deployment, in favour or merit-based systems.

The NFTPPS also suggests that directors-general and department heads’ contracts only be renewed after a thorough performance review, and that new consequence management frameworks are put in place.

“The quality of our public service is one of the greatest challenges we face in repairing the damage of State capture and wider political interference in public service delivery.

“While we can work on stop gap measures to support government when we face particular crises and urgent obstacles, it is only once we have a full and capable State in place that we can expect high standards of service delivery and genuine democratic accountability,” Mavuso points out.

On another note, Mavuso says there were encouraging signals in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s address on the Zondo Commission’s recommendations; however, too many important elements are “to be reviewed” or “sent for further investigation”, while cadle deployment was not even mentioned, despite being a root cause of State capture.   

She, nonetheless, looks forward to working with government to support implementation of the NFTPPS in the meantime.