Ivor Chipkin argues that South Africa’s 1993 interim Constitution imagined a non-partisan, career public service, overseen by a Public Service Commission with real powers. Within a few years that idea was abandoned. The 1996 Constitution and a 1997 amendment to the Public Service Act gave ministers and MECs the power to appoint, promote and transfer officials, in line with the ANC’s strategy of cadre deployment. The Public Service Amendment Act signed this year moves those powers to heads of department. Chipkin reads it as a fresh recognition of administration as a field of its own, and as an opening for practical reform. The essay is based on his opening keynote at Statecraft 2026.

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