Gus > what we find in SA is virtual collapse of effective service delivery in every government department be it criminal justice, police, health, the military, you name it.
This is from a speech given recently by a famous SAn black woman and activist who made it in a white man's world.
capetimes.co.za
>>Ramphele slams party loyalty as ticket to jobs
September 13, 2005
By Dominique Herman
The government was partly praised but largely damned last night by former political activist Mamphela Ramphele who criticised the appointment of party loyalists to public service positions for which they were not qualified, leading to a failure to deliver services.
"Party loyalty is not a sufficient basis for appointment to public service," Ramphele said, giving the sixth annual Steve Biko Memorial Lecture at UCT.
"The appalling skills gaps in the civil service as well as the unsustainable vacancy rates reflect not only lack of skills, but the corroding impact of politicisation of appointments at many levels of our civil service.
"There are too many skilled professionals being denied job opportunities at the various levels of government because they are outside the party political networks that have captured civil service jobs for patronage.
"Strict professional competency criteria need to be applied ... to ensure efficiency and effectiveness. No longer can we tolerate municipal managers who lack basic management skills and the capacity to co-ordinate and give leadership in tackling the complex demands of running cities and towns."
The passive citizenry created by the apartheid regime had helped to constrain the emergence of stewardship, which was about meeting the obligations committed to in our constitution.
Post-apartheid "rhetoric", including the ANC's 1994 election promises of houses, water and education, had also created "a culture of dependence on government to fix everything".
Many of the problems could have been tackled in the first decade of democracy. A lack of political will to "close the gaps" between policy-making and implementation was to blame.
A "key constraint" in closing those gaps was the failure to acknowledge and tackle weaknesses in intellectual capital.
It was refreshing, however, to see the government's "growing candour" in acknowledging this. A recent government survey had found that only 8% of people in key jobs at local authority level had the requisite skills.<<
So, as you see , it's not only paternalistic whites, like me, who are concerned by the ANC's criteria for "merit" in the appointments made.
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