As South Africa prepares for the local government elections, few, if any, questions about the bureaucracy supporting the politics of the local state loom large. It is not only a country’s elected officials who make it competitive and capable, but also the technical capacity and capabilities of its appointed officials or bureaucrats that make the difference. Focusing on politically term-limited officials as the basis of state capability is insufficient for a complex democratic order like South Africa. It is the bureaucrats, in their various professional occupations, that ensure taps have running water, electric switches release light and energy, roads are surfaced and maintained, and human settlements are ideal for the next wave of the unfolding human civilisation. Human life primarily occurs at the household level, and households are found within local government jurisdictions, or rather, municipalities. Local government links the lived experience of citizens with the effectiveness or otherwise of statewide efforts, fostering trust in public service.

Citizens trust the government or leaders exercising political mandates to the extent that those mandates affect their day-to-day lives.  This trust capacity resides in the performance of the local government system. Without vitiating the significance of politicians, the  brute truth is that their world is that of managing interests, which are the currency of their vocation, politics. What is professional for  politicians is managing instability and, in some instances, managing unlawfulness to the extent that it advances the interests being pursued. This explains the paradox of why most decisions about genocide, xenophobia, racism, corruption, wars of dispossession,  and similar issues were mainly political. 

The default preoccupation of politicians about who gets what, when, and how will make sense if it is underwritten by professionals  who are preoccupied with why things are the way they are and whether things can be different. Societal politics is always about who  creates them, and the administration’s is about ensuring that what is lawful is institutionalised. Arguably, a professionalised  bureaucracy is expected to be profoundly efficient and technical, whereas professional politicians are, by fiat, ideological and  political.

It is the extent to which those appointed or commissioned into the public service are prepared to execute the unlawful policies of  politicians that draws the line between politics and administration. The professionalisation mandate of the public service across all  spheres, tiers, and levels of government has always been caught up in the question of how to reconcile the lawfulness of political decisions with the exigencies of the political interests that propel them. This is more a matter of consciousness and conscience for  public servants than a politics-and-administration dichotomy. 

 

The (overall) objective of professionalising the state’s bureaucracy, the appointed or commissioned members of the public service, is  to “have sure-footed bureaucrats-commissioned purely based on merit, rigorously trained, and constitution or rule of law respecting,  and integrity vetted officials or public servants. Arguably, only these should be allowed to implement and execute lawful policies and instructions, free from harassment by meddlesome public representatives. 

In local government, this will lead to the extraordinary marshalling of resources to create world-class institutions, infrastructure and  service delivery rising from the current social and economic rubble of current municipal government performance. There are usually  several conflicting truths on any given subject. Still, in the era of multiparty democracy, political rhetoric, often bordering on illegality, nailed things down, whether or not they turned out to be lawful, but professionalism can change that. 

Many state institutions are at risk of losing what matters most about public service and the state’s role in society. Trapped in the  whirlpool of politics, a necessary part of state matters, the valuable, civic, pounding-the-streets, asking-challenging-questions hard  graft of dealing with social justice matters that the dominant and powerful do not want known and solved, only a professional and  meritocratic public service or bureaucracy can shift the proverbial needle. 

South Africa is about to convene ten thousand freely elected representatives; the question is how they will relate to, interact with, and  transact with those appointed and qualified to implement. Herein lies the true value of professionalisation of the bureaucracy.  Professionalisation is not only about the qualifications of appointed officials, but also about the skills and attributes required to serve the public. It is about discerning what is right or wrong in an otherwise ethically compromised community of practitioners.

 

The Auditor-General’s reports, backed by the lived experience of local communities in most municipalities, point to dysfunctions that  border on the failure of local states. From the municipal debt crisis to the shrunken revenue-raising capacity, several  municipalities are strictly speaking no longer going concerns. Yet these have suitably accredited men and women in the post establishment.

These ‘accreditation-wielding and possessing individuals might not have availed themselves of the professional requirements of the  positions they occupy. It is the auxiliary functions of the public administration system that distinguish a professional public service  from what South Africa has experienced in recent history. 

It would be prudent to require, in the upcoming local government election process, that those making themselves available explain  how they will allow professionals to do their work free from unlawful interference. The public service challenge of South Africa, clearly, is not in figuring out what to do. Rather, the problem is how those commissioned into the public service find the strength and  courage to do what they know to be right and lawful. Democracies stand on the quality of how their administrators are allowed to  carry out the lawful directives of those who govern politically, and elections are an opportunity to reinforce this trust. 

If at all the vocation of politics can be professionalised, the first point of call is for it to be competent in allowing those who are  qualified to do their work unhindered. It is a tall order for politicians, as an occupational group that often believes and trades in the  incorrectness of their correctness as a criterion to ascend the ladder of vocation-specific success.