Webinar recap: Retiring the 1994 Generation – The Senior Management Service
On 13 August 2026, the New South Institute hosted an online discussion on Retiring the 1994 Generation: The Senior Management Service, the third report in its Government in Numbers series. The webinar followed the publication of the report on 11 August and took place from 12:00 to 13:00.
The webinar brought together Ivor Chipkin, Co-Founder and Director of the New South Institute; Vinothan Naidoo, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Cape Town; and Yoliswa Makhasi, Head of the NSI’s Public Service Reform Programme. The session was opened by Chris Andrews of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS), which supported the research.
Chipkin presented the report’s analysis of demographic change within South Africa’s Senior Management Service (SMS), focusing on the ageing of the senior public service and the limited number of younger officials entering its management ranks. He situated these trends within the wider process of public service reform and professionalisation currently underway in South Africa.
Naidoo responded to the report by considering some of the questions raised by its findings, including the changing composition of the SMS, the decline in the proportion of mid-career managers, and the implications of approaching retirements for recruitment and succession.
The discussion considered what this generational transition could mean for the leadership of government departments, institutional knowledge and state capability. It also examined the opportunity presented by the transition to develop a new generation of public managers within a more professional and merit-based public administration.
Watch the webinar
Presentations
The presentations from the webinar are available below:
Read the report
Retiring the 1994 Generation: The Senior Management Service examines the demographic profile of the Senior Management Service across the national public service and the health and education sectors, using PERSAL data from 2009 to 2024.
