We didn't block peer review

Sapa 29 January 2007
The South African government has strongly denied that it intervened on Sunday to prevent discussion by the Africa Union of a report that criticises the crime rate in this country, among other things, Beeld reported on Monday.

The report of the Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) on South Africa was not tabled before the AU's heads of state, as planned, reported the newspaper's correspondent from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The APRM forum dropped the South Africa peer report from its agenda on Sunday morning.

President Thabo Mbeki's response to Beeld's enquiry was: "The document is still in draft form. We can't discuss it if it's not the final version.

"We agreed that all comments should first be integrated into the report."

Mbeki is attending the AU's biannual conference in the Ethiopian capital.

Discussion of the report was delayed by six months until the next AU conference in the Ghanaian capital, Accra.

On Sunday, Minister of Public Service and Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said report would only be tabled in July this year.

The report, which was due to be tabled on Sunday ahead of the African Union Summit, was found to have factual errors and did not include the most recent programme of action that would be taken by the South African government.

"It was decided that the South African report, along with the review reports of Algeria and Nigeria, would be tabled and discussed during the next AU heads of state summit in Ghana in July 2007," said Moleketi.

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Poor follow-up on corruption in public sector

Corruption in the public sector costs the South African government millions annually. From the beginning of the year – 20 public service officials were dismissed and 17 suspended, for allegedly being involved in corrupt activities.

This is a result of the national anti-corruption forum's hotlines - which serve as anti-corruption mechanisms within government, business and civil society. Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, the forum's chairperson, and minister of the department of public service and administration, said in Tshwane today that feedback from government departments on reported cases is still too slow.

Just under a third of cases of alleged corruption reported to the national anti-corruption hotline in two years were followed-up. A lack of additional resources and infrastructure in the public service commission has been identified as the cause.

Fraser-Moleketi, said: “We found that due to the lack of department's putting in place effective investigative units - there has been a fairly slow response in follow-up on the hotlines cases and hence we have only had 835 cases followed-up upon.”

The most frequently reported cases dealt with alleged abuse of government vehicles, fraud and procurement irregularities such as favouring friends and relatives or not following proper procedures when issuing tenders. The public's role as whistle-blowers was also highlighted.

Minister Moleketi said: “There's legislation in place that protect them - greater protection of citizens and the more effective use of whistle blowing - both within public and private sectors.” The effectiveness of hotlines in the private sector and the stronger fight against corruption will be taken one step futher at the Global Forum on Corruption - to be hosted in South Africa in April.

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The big business of bribery

South Africa has been ranked as one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to big business bribing foreign governments. This was revealed at the National Anti-Corruption Forum (NACF) meeting in Pretoria on Tuesday ahead of International Anti-Corruption Day on Saturday.

Adding to the country's corruption woes is that there are few, if any, mechanisms in place to deal with the tens of thousands of corruption reports received by government and few means to protect whistle-blowers.

The meeting, which was the last NACF meeting for the year, comes as Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi admitted there had been few, if any, investigation means available to deal with thousands of corruption calls received by the national anti-corruption hotline (NACH) each year.

Since September 2004, the NACH, managed by the Public Service Commission, has received 2 296 calls, but have only been able to deal with 830 of the allegations.

'Haiti is the most corrupt country in the world'
The 830 investigations have resulted in the dismissal of 20 officials from the public service and the suspension of 17 employees pending the outcome of the investigations.

The Social Development Department corruption hotline received 40 168 corruption allegations while the South African Revenue Services hotline received 40 715 corruption reports since 2004.

Fraser-Moleketi, who said 2006 had been a positive year fighting corruption, claimed in a statement the Transparency International Bribe Payer's Index 2006 (TIBPI) had ranked South Africa 24th out of 30 countries, "indicating there is a strong possibility South African businesses will bribe foreign officials in other countries".

Haiti is the most corrupt country in the world, according to the 2006 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. Finland was found to be the least corrupt.

Fraser-Moleketi said the ranking was extremely worrying and was being addressed through various big business forums "with business acknowledging that it is its responsibility to put in place measures to ensure accountability in the business environment".

She said she was extremely worried about the problems in protecting whistle-blowers.

Once a corruption allegation was received, the report was passed on to the provincial governments "where the problems come in".

"It is here that we are experiencing major problems as there are few, if any, investigation tools available to different departments to stamp out corruption," Fraser-Moleketi said. Investigative capabilities were desperately needed to stop corruption.

To deal with corruption within the public sector, a total of 263 officials at national, provincial and local government level had been trained by the South African Management Development Institute.

Commenting on South Africa's TIBPI ranking, Business Against Crime's advocate Simi Pillay-van-Graan said they would be launching a code of conduct for businesses which would force companies and their employees to adhere to good business practices.

Anyone wanting to report corruption can contact the NACH on 0800 701 701.

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Red tape affecting civil service

Bureaucracy "strongly" frustrates most senior government managers, pushing them to the brink of leaving the public service.

On the other hand, clashes between directors-general and ministers are also impeding service delivery.

This is according to a self-assessment report on the review of senior management service compiled by the department of public service and administration.

The report also describes meetings and travel as bogging down the performance of senior government managers, who are otherwise described as patriotic.

"Senior managers cite ad hoc meetings and unscheduled travel as second only to staff and other resource shortages as the key impediments to their achievement of performance targets," the report says.

It paints a stressful picture for the industrious managers.

"A major issue is the lack of time for managers to attend programmes and therefore the training should be structured to accommodate the high workloads. The capacity of departments is coming under ever increasing strain as the workload increases from year to year.

"Vacancy levels across all ranks are unacceptably high, and are rising over time."

Directors-general are specifically frustrated by frictional relations with ministers or political executives.

"The relationship between the political and administrative heads of department is fraught with ambiguity, and subject to divergent interpretations as it is governed by different pieces of legislation.

"There appears to be no clear mechanism for intervening in disputes between them due to the varied interpretations of their powers and accountabilities at national and provincial levels."

Home Affairs is one department where the clash between the ministers and directors-general had led to a relationship breakdown, thus affecting smooth administration.

Jeff Maqetuka is the latest Home Affairs director-general to leave, after Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula asked that the department be placed under curatorship following "chronic" bad bookkeeping and unabated corruption.

Almost half of senior managers, according to the report, had not been in their posts for more than two years - an indication of an unstable public service.

"The 47 percent of incumbents with less than two years in the current post is cause for concern, as it means that nearly half of senior management posts became vacant during the past two years. This is not conducive to stability or sound service," the report says.

The report recommends a policy "to force departments not to appoint a (senior manager) who has been less than three years in a post".

However, the report points out that the recruitment process "takes an excessively long time, to the detriment of the departments."

"In many cases, the preferred candidate is no longer available for the post by the time an offer is made."

Following an outcry over the increasing number of senior civil servants and politicians leaving the government for private sector positions in the same or similar field, the report calls for a cooling-off period - a contentious issue that the government had tried to evade for years.

"A cooling-off period must be closely linked to the disclosure framework and must be enforced to prevent people from positioning themselves," the report says.

Senior managers are chastised for not implementing relevant laws relating to conflict of interest and ethical conduct.

"Non-compliance with the disclosure framework in a particular department and a lack of follow-up on disciplinary measures in this regard must be seen as a finding on the performance of the head of department.

"Prolonged suspensions, lack of closure to cases of misconduct and lack of disciplinary action of (senior managers) must be seen as a finding on the performance of the supervisor."

The review, which was done in June, was based on primary data collection in the form of interviews with 248 senior managers, focus groups "with selected middle managers in all participating departments, and key informant interviews with eight private recruitment agencies".

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Is there any light at the end of this foetid tunnel?

Of 135 audits on 34 government entities in the past four years, only seven were “clean”. How can South Africa hope to walk among giants such as the US and China?

It has long been said that charity starts at home: “When one of you is poor, he starts with himself”. If charity indeed starts at home, with the individual, then where does State accountability start, and where does it end? Where does the buck stop?

This question assumed grand importance upon the release by the Democratic Alliance, the official opposition, of a research report into 34 government departments and public entities. The overview is based on 135 annual audits on the entities mentioned – ranging from the Presidency and Parliament to Defence and National Treasury - conducted by the auditor-general over the past four years.

The research found a measly count of seven “clean” audits; 35 were either ‘Qualified’, received an ‘Adverse Opinion’, or a ‘Disclaimer’. The latter three findings, translated officially, amount to a finding that the affected entities are in a state of financial disarray and mismanagement. The worst performing entities (unclean in four out of four years) were Home Affairs and (ironically) Correctional Services.

Those with unclean reports in three out of four years are Public Works (the “HO” organising the upcoming world cup), Statistics South Africa (read their figures, not their accounts), Health (naturally), Defence (still to find a war), and Water Affairs and Forestry (where sustainability rules, you understand).

The amount of money that is either going walkabouts or is simply not properly accounted for runs into billions. Just looking at the 2004/5 financial year, clean audit reports covered just R282m (0,18% of the national budget); reports with an emphasis-of-matter covered R103bn (66,6%); qualified reports covered R49,5bn (27,5%), and disclaimed reports covered R2bn (1,2%).

Among the tragedy of the analysis, even when emphasis-of-matter reports (the lesser of the three evils names) are excluded, nearly 30% of the national budget is being mismanaged. It seems almost natural, given the flow of the story, that there has not been a single consequence for any of the disgraced departments. People run departments, of course, and it follows that there have been little, if any, consequences for individuals.

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Lazy public servants must go

Public servants who fail to bring value to the public service must "bow out", according to Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.

While answering questions in the National Council of Provinces she said: "Some of them are quite indifferent. I do believe there are people who have an attitude... who are just there to draw a salary and don't have any real contribution to make."

She noted that there were two types of severance packages for government workers: the voluntary severance package as well as the employee-initiated severance package.

"We do not want to see ourselves carrying dead wood in the public service," she said.

Government is the largest employer in the country with over one million workers.

She said while attending an imbizo of public servants in Gauteng this week, it was clear that there were those who were interested in capacitating themselves and those who were just interested in getting better salaries.

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Vacant: impossible job with impossible boss at R1-million a year.

This is an apt description of the post of director general (DG), the mandarins who sit atop national departments. Analysts says Thabo Mbeki's great legacy is that he has built the state, developing institutions from scratch -- directors general must now give effect to the mandates of those institutions.

In the blushes of freedom, straight after 1994, these were coveted posts at the apex of a negotiated revolution. Directors general then were largely political animals drawn straight from the front ranks of the African National Congress (ANC) and the broader mass democratic movement.

It was sexy work at first, as the state was re-engineered from its apartheid past for a democratic present.

New policies were formulated to give effect to the Reconstruction and Development Programme and the early experiments with governing gave effect to years of planning to take over the levers of the state.

It's no longer so. Government is hard grind. We are in the implementation phase and it's detailed, frequently boring, work.

Government puts its own report card up in February when President Thabo Mbeki delivers the State of the Nation address. Every quarter, it's updated.
View our table of the tangible programme recorded until the end of September.

Our spherical system of national, provincial and local government is often impossible to manage as turf wars and incompetence slow down progress of directors general.

All the delivery departments -- housing, social development, water, agriculture and land -- depend on the competence and cooperation with provincial and local counterparts.

With President Thabo Mbeki's system of governing in clusters, it also depends on cooperation with linked departments. Often, it's work tantamount to getting clawing cats into a single basket. It's a mostly thankless task.

"While managing an individual department is critical, a director general has to understand that there are so many linkages between departments and therefore they should understand the strategic context within which projects are being implemented.

"They have to understand the linkages between them and that of linked departments. A director general of health, for example, who is planning to build a clinic, must liaise with transport because there is a need for a road leading to a clinic. Other departments must provide water and electricity," says Joel Netshitenzhe, who is the head of the policy unit in the Presidency.

In the implementation phase, technocratic skills are arguably more important than political skills. Are we at a point where directors generals do not have to be deployed by the ruling ANC?

"What is needed is an ability to understand the context in which policy has been formulated. This is simply because you have to understand that policy for you to translate it into programmes. The more appreciation of that policy, the better," adds Netshitenzhe.

Directors general often complain that ministers do not understand the distinction between roles.

One deputy director general, who asked not to be named, says: "The director general's role is generally misunderstood. Besides the political issue, the director general is the top civil servant in the government department.

"In the private sector its equivalent is that of a CEO -- the person who implements, while the minister would be like the chairperson, responsible for the strategic direction of the organisation."

The official says, unlike in the private sector, directors general were expected to be administrative heads as well as financial accounting officers. "It is very difficult to have the same qualities -- administrative strength and ability to implement strategic policies -- in one person."

The deputy director general says the perception that directors general were necessarily political appointments, was misguided.

Directors-general appointments are approved by the Cabinet and appointed by the president, causing the impression that those appointments were political.

"Because we are in a transition stage and because many of the directors general are black, people assume that they are from the ANC or that they are political appointees. It is not true for many of them," says the deputy director general.

This certainly appears to be the case. The era of the party mandarins, such as former communications director general Andile Ngcaba and trade and industry's Allister Ruiters, appears to be ebbing.

And with a looming crackdown on the revolving door between the director general's office and corporate boardrooms, the job may become even less attractive to the politically connected, who can enter much more lucrative black economic empowerment deals.

Centre for Policy Studies senior researcher Ebrahim Fakir says though directors general do not have to be political party cadres, they should at least be sympathetic to the government.

"You don't want them to be political but they should at least be politically informed and sussed and they must understand the political strategy. If they don't share government's perspectives, how are they going to deliver on its mandates?"

He adds that a good director general would have a fair balance of technical skills and conceptual and ideological perspective.

Fakir says now that the institutions of delivery had been set up in the first years of democracy, current directors general had to give effect to the mandates of those institutions. "Mbeki's great legacy is that he has built the state, developing institutions from scratch."

He says directors general played the central role of providing the link between the internal management of a department with the political oversight.

"They work with internal staff, the minister and Parliament. They have to understand that ordinary people's confidence in government will be undermined if they do not perform their work. While they are not political, they have to be responsive to the public."

What it takes to be a DG

• Technical expertise


• An understanding of how your department links to others


• A working knowledge of the three spheres of government


• Good interpersonal skills


• Political suss


• ANC party membership

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SA among the worst when it comes to bribery

SOUTH African companies are among the worst in a group of 30 leading exporting countries when it comes to bribery to get business in foreign markets.

A report released yesterday by Berlin-based anticorruption watchdog and lobby group Transparency International ranked South African companies as the sixth most likely to bribe.

Transparency International Bribe Payers Index 2006 surveyed the inclination of companies from 30 leading exporting countries to bribe abroad. Firms most likely to bribe to get foreign business were, in this order, those from India, China, Russia, Turkey, Taiwan, Malaysia and SA.

The findings of the survey were based on questions asked of more than 11200 businesses executives from companies in 125 countries about the practices of foreign firms in their country.

A score of 10 indicated a perception of no corruption, while zero meant corruption was viewed as rampant by companies from a particular country.

South African companies received an average score of 5,61, compared with those from Switzerland, seen as least corrupt, at 7,81, and those from India, worst in the rankings at 4,62.

The survey’s release brought a sharp reminder from Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, who chairs the National Anti- Corruption Forum, that South Africans could face criminal charges for bribery outside the country. She said members of the forum, which includes organised business, had taken an oath to fight corruption.

She would not comment on SA’s ranking or the survey methodology and no comment was available yesterday from representatives of business.

Local Transparency International chairman Hassen Lorgat said the report showed his organisation was as serious in fighting “the supply side in corruption” from business as it was “the demand side” from governments.

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