The probe by the Public Service Commission (PSC) into more than 2 000 senior government employees who do not have the requisite qualification for the position they occupy should be welcomed as a step in the right direction and a confirmation that the professionalization of the sector is not a pipe dream.  

It makes a shocking revelation to read that in Gauteng, the Gauteng Health department leads the pack in the provincial departments' category with 50 officials out of the 2 349 of public servants without qualifications.

The Gauteng Health department’s core mandate is to improve the health status of the population, improve health services and secure better value for money.  It is inconceivable to think that a senior manager with questionable qualifications can be expected to go and provide strategic support and direction to Tembisa hospital which has been marred by a shortage of staff members and aging and dilapidated infrastructure.  This can only mean that most of the governance problems in the country are self-inflicted.

While a slight allowance can be made that some of the senior managers might have failed to ensure that their qualifications are updated on the PERSAL system, and others were appointed before public service regulations were instituted in 2016. These numbers are very high and unacceptable as they suggest that a quarter of senior managers do not have qualifications for the position they occupy.

The SAPS has the highest number, 214, followed by Justice and Correctional Service with 144 officials who do have the required qualifications. These are men and women who are supposed to lead the Justice, Crime Prevention, and Security Cluster (JCPS) and ensure that everything goes by the book.

A public servant with questionable qualifications will find it hard to resist or reject illegal instruction from a politician or a superior knowing fully well she/he shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Therefore, having qualified public servants is imperative for our developmental state, which should be constituted not only by technically sound public officials but also officials who possess unwavering high ethics, honesty, and batho pele principles.

Professionals in the public sector in many cases receive ‘political instructions’ from their political seniors to implement a decision that eventually gets flagged by the Auditor General SA as irregular expenditure and maladministration.

When President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa testified at the Zondo Commission into State Capture in August 2021, one of the admissions he made at the Commission is that competent and highly skilled state officials either left the civil service or were sidelined as they refused to perform certain illegal instructions.  Without qualifications to re-enter the job market, an argument can be made that those without qualifications will do anything to protect their bread and are the most vulnerable to being coerced into wrongdoing.

Lack of requisite qualifications renders the state vulnerable to corruption and can enable a repeat of another era of state capture. The interference by political heads in the day-to-day operations of departments, SOE can easily be stopped if the right people are employed.

The 2021 Local Government Elections have highlighted that South Africans have run out of patience and are not tolerating incompetence any longer and rightfully so. The country’s energy supply, rail system, road network and water supply are on the brink of collapse or have already collapsed. Nationally, our country has rolling blackouts.  In Gauteng, the water supply is not pure. In the Western Cape, the central rail line running through areas such as Mitchells Plain, Khayelitsha, and Philippi has been inoperable since 2019. In KZN, water blackouts are now being experienced.

Our country needs and demands civil servants who are duly qualified, experienced, and patriotic.   For the Ruling Party to fulfill its mandate of “Bolstering the State’s capacity,” it must appoint persons who are professionally qualified and experienced so that service
delivery is not compromised. Our country can also not afford to maintain the culture that working for the State and a SOEs is safe employment up and until you resign or die.

To break the cycle of poor and zero service delivery the following must take place:
1. Professional, competent, and duly qualified persons must be appointed in the civil service.
2. The appointees must support the principles and policies of the administration
3. De-link appointments of the Directors General to the office term of the Minister. This will ensure continuity and senior public servants who serve at the behest of political leaders.
4. Public representatives must have a minimum qualification and have the ability to analyze budgets,
understand technical reports and have a firm understanding of by-laws and how local government
functions.
5. Civil servants and MPs, MPLs and councilors must enter into a performance management agreement with Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) which are annually reviewed.
6. Should KPI’s not be met, consequence management must be implemented, and persons removed

The nation wholeheartedly pins its hopes on the capability of the state to deliver on its manifesto and for that to happen, we need the right and qualified people to be employed by the state, unapologetically so.

Written by Kashif Wicomb. Wicomb writes in his own capacity as President of the Progressive Professionals Forum and a member of the President’s B-BBEE Advisory Council