President Cyril Ramaphosa says the capability of the South African state has been severely weakened by corruption and state capture.
He says government has often outsourced services to consultants to address its lack of capability but that also failed to yield positive results.
Ramaphosa says the role of the state has once again been brought into the spotlight by COVID-19, which now presents an opportunity to bring about transformation in government.
The President was participating in a virtual master class for senior leaders in government hosted by the school of governance.
“And we’ve seen how outsourcing has also weakened our state and even those states we tended to outsource to we’re themselves captured, were also deeply involved in the challenges that we had to face of corruption, but what corruption did was to absolutely destroy our ability to get things done because through that the financial capability was weakened, there was over pricing,” he says.
National School of Government master class:
Ramaphosa says government needs to strive to be an entrepreneurial state by being more innovative, taking risks and adopting an investment driven approach in its leadership. He says government needs to be more people-centred and purpose driven if it is going to succeed in the fight against poverty and inequality which has been exacerbated by COVID-19.
The President believes that the public sector needs to be professionalised through the procedural appointment of deserving individuals.
“That redesigned process is also starting at the governing party. The governing party is now focused on ensuring that we get more skilled people, not just people who know others. More skilled people to be brought in either at local government level right throughout. And then we want to focus on professionalising the public service,” he says.
Cabinet last year approved the National Implementation Framework (NIF), which is aimed at professionalising the Public Service.
At the beginning of this month, President Ramaphosa urged ordinary South Africans to participate in the consultation process aimed at making a professional public sector a reality.
