Enforcing it in a culture of factionalism will be much more difficult

The testimony was dense with legal detail and policy jargon, but its stakes were immense. One after another, union leaders, policy architects, ethicists, and even a lone ordinary citizen stepped up to the virtual podium.

Their audience was a panel of lawmakers from the National Council of Provinces (NCOP). Their subject: a piece of legislation so complex it rarely makes headlines, yet so vital it could shape the very future of the nation’s democracy.

For hours on July 22, 2025, the NCOP Select Committee on Cooperative Governance and Public Administration listened to submissions on the Public Service Amendment Bill (PSAB).

The hearings lacked the drama of a corruption inquiry or the fury of a protest. But for those who could decipher the legal jargon, this was the grinding, unglamorous work of rescuing a state from itself.

The hearings were procedural, part of the constitutional requirement for public consultation.

Yet behind the legal language lay the lived realities of service delivery failure that give the Bill its urgency. In Kimberley’s Northern Cape Mental Health Hospital, 33-year-old Tshepo Mdimbaza was found unresponsive after months of electricity outages caused by cable theft.

The absence of functional resuscitative equipment meant he could not be revived, and he died shortly afterwards. His story, one among many, has come to symbolise how systemic neglect can turn public institutions meant for care into sites of tragedy.

Opening the hearings, Mxolisi Kaunda, the ANC Chair of the Committee, said: “This is about entrenching democracy. It is about ensuring that the public has a hand in shaping the laws that govern them.”

The Bill promises what has been termed a surgical separation of politicians from bureaucrats by transferring the power to hire and fire senior officials from ministers to professional administrators.

But is such a clean cut possible? According to public service scholar and New South Institute (NSI) executive director, Ivor Chipkin, the answer is no.

“It never can be,” he stated, cautioning that the legislation is only “the beginning of the process” and leaves key questions like how Directors General (DGs) should be appointed, unresolved.

Nevertheless, the Bill, which was passed in the National Assembly with rare multi-party support in February 2024, represents the most significant attempt in a generation to reverse the decay that followed the ANC’s once-celebrated “cadre deployment” system.

In the 1990s, this practice of placing loyalists in key government posts helped build capable administrations in some institutions like the National Treasury and SARS.

But under Jacob Zuma, cadre deployment degenerated into patronage, hollowing out ministries and state-owned enterprises into vehicles for looting, as chronicled in the Zondo Commission’s judicial inquiry into state capture.

The Bill was drafted and tabled before the Government of National Unity (GNU) was formed. When the GNU came into being, its new partners aligned themselves with the ANC’s already-advanced reform agenda, rather than the ANC reshaping the Bill to accommodate them.

Yet the path is fraught with contradictions. Civil society hailed the intent, but warned that without stronger checks, the cure could create a new disease: a bureaucratic aristocracy unmoored from political accountability.

To understand what is at stake, one must first understand what the PSAB seeks to fix. Cadre deployment has led to the elevation of party loyalty over competence in the appointment of public servants, particularly senior public servants who have a critical role to play in the delivery of services and implementation of policies.

The Kimberley hospital deaths were not isolated tragedies; they were symptoms of a hollowed-out state. Cable theft left wards powerless for nearly a year, sewage seeped from showers, and patients shivered under thin blankets.

Weeks before Mdimbaza’s death, Cyprian Mohoto, 36, had succumbed to untreated pneumonia. Their stories echoed other grim markers of systemic collapse: children drowning in pit latrines at schools, the preventable deaths of 144 psychiatric patients in the Life Esidimeni scandal, years of crippling load shedding that stalled economic growth, and the hollowing out of state-owned enterprises like Transnet.

Together, these failures show how decades of patronage and cadre deployment turned governance itself into a source of harm.

The legal architecture entrenched political dominance over the bureaucracy, enabling patronage networks to flourish and leaving space for incompetence to go unchecked, with devastating consequences for even the most basic services.

Section 3 of the Public Service Act of 1994 vested ultimate power over appointments and operations in the President, Ministers, and Members of Executive Councils (MECs). Unless authority was specifically delegated to them, senior administrators were effectively powerless.

That imbalance – long flagged as problematic by the National Planning Commission – created the dysfunctional “political-administrative interface” at the heart of South Africa’s governance crisis.

The July hearings revealed democracy in noisy action. Research institutes, unions, and citizens converged on a consensus to shift power to administrators, but not without safeguards.

“The essential task,” one expert summarised, “is to insulate public administration from inappropriate political interference, while ensuring it remains responsive to democratic mandates.”

One of the common proposals is for independent panels to vet candidates, with Ministers choosing from shortlists of qualified professionals. Without such checks, warned the Ethics Institute, politicians might still “tweak the rules to reward allies.”

The DPSA and Parliamentary legal advisers pushed back on some of civil society’s critiques, offering clarifications that grounded the debate.

On executive authority ambiguity, the DPSA stressed that the Bill deliberately redefines roles: “The definition of ‘executive authority’ (EA) has been deliberately amended to clarify that the President and the Premiers are the EAs in respect of HODs, removing misinterpretation”.

On checks and balances, they acknowledged concerns, but warned against constitutional overreach, pointing out that Public Service Commission (PSC) involvement in appointments would “conflict with their oversight responsibilities”, though new regulations would strengthen safeguards.

On the devolution of powers, the DPSA cited the National Development Plan: “The devolution of administrative powers to HoDs is intended to unburden the executive authority to focus only on strategic issues and policy direction”.

On political rights, the DPSA responded that the Bill was aligned with court precedent, limiting bans on holding political office to HODs and direct reports, avoiding unconstitutional overreach.

These clarifications underscored a central tension: balancing independence with accountability.

Yet even as Parliament embraced reform, the ANC’s ambivalence showed. In Gaborone, Bathabile Dlamini (previous member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee and former Minister of Social Development) urged Botswana’s ruling coalition never to abandon cadre deployment: “There is no way unless the party wants to serve for only one term.”

ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula defended his party’s support of the bill as he indicated that they voted for reform: “Nothing has changed. We go as a collective.”

Meanwhile, the Western Cape Government, under DA control, filed a constitutional warning. Provincial DG Harry Malila argued that the Bill undermines MECs’ accountability, saying “It will detract from their ability to account for delivery and risks weakening democratic oversight as enshrined in section 125 of the Constitution.”

The province, which boasts clean audits, insisted its model already professionalised the public service by balancing political leadership with administrative professionalism.

Passing the Bill may prove the easy part. Enforcing it in a culture of factionalism will be much more difficult.

South Africa has had sound procurement laws for decades, yet weak enforcement of these enabled state capture. The Bill’s success will hinge on whether Parliament, the PSC, and the Presidency can enforce accountability in an environment of entrenched political habits.

This article was originally published in the Cape Times. For more from Fidelis Zvomuya, read his companion work, “Beyond Compliance: The Public Protector’s Compass for an Ethical, Capable Public Service”.