One of South Africa’s humblest proverbial shoes to fill. Should we deploy or commission into such shoes?

The unresolved normative tension at the heart of a meritocratic and professional South African state

South Africa’s public-administration crisis is often described as a deficit of skills, ethics or enforcement. Those diagnoses are valid but incomplete. Beneath them lies a deeper normative tension: the political disciplines required to defeat an illegitimate state are not the same as the institutional disciplines required to govern a legitimate one. The unresolved question is whether authority in a constitutional democracy belongs ultimately to political purpose or to public institutions governed by law, competence and professional ethics.

The normative fault line

Revolutionary disruption, also called ungovernability, withdrew cooperation from apartheid, and by default from state institutions because those institutions were instruments of racial domination or otherwise. Boycotts, strikes, rebellion, the dismantling of illegitimate local authorities and the creation of alternative centres of popular power were directed at making an unjust order ungovernable. In that setting, political purpose legitimately challenged the regime’s law and procedure.

Constitutional construction requires the opposite disposition. A democratic state must make authority lawful, predictable and impersonal. It depends on professional competence, institutional autonomy, transparent procedure, lawful hierarchy, accountability and the acceptance that political office-bearers are themselves constrained by the system they lead. Revolutionary politics asks how an unjust state can be prevented from functioning. Constitutional politics asks how a legitimate state can be enabled to function lawfully, fairly and effectively.

Why the tension persists

The liberation movement had to cultivate defiance, secrecy, militancy and organisational loyalty while imagining a future state founded on law, open institutions and public accountability. The contradiction did not disappear in 1994. The legitimacy of the state changed immediately; political habits, organisational incentives and conceptions of discipline did not.

The enduring risk is that the habits of struggle become a governing ethic: political purpose overrides procedure; loyalty to a party or faction supersedes loyalty to the Constitution; professional controls are treated as obstacles; and deployment is defended even where it weakens competence, continuity and institutional memory.

The issue is therefore not a crude opposition between revolutionary chaos and constitutional order. It is a contest between two forms of discipline: movement discipline, which aligns people behind a political project, and constitutional-professional discipline, which restrains power and obliges officials to serve the public impartially.

Meritocracy is a constitutional settlement, not a technocratic slogan

Section 195 does not force South Africa to choose between transformation and merit. It requires a public administration that is broadly representative while personnel practices remain grounded in ability, objectivity, fairness and redress. Meritocracy, properly understood, is therefore neither colour-blind managerialism nor a defence of inherited privilege. It is a constitutional method for reconciling representivity, competence and equal citizenship.

Section 197 gives institutional form to that settlement. It establishes a public service within public administration that must function and be structured in terms of national legislation, and it places the terms and conditions of employment of its members within a legally regulated framework. Merit is therefore not an optional managerial preference: it belongs within an ordered public-service system in which appointment, career progression, discipline and service conditions are governed by public law rather than by discretionary political patronage.

Crucially, section 197 also resolves a false choice between professional independence and democratic responsiveness. It provides that no public servant may be favoured or prejudiced merely for supporting a particular political party or cause, while requiring provincial governments to recruit, appoint, promote, transfer and dismiss personnel within a nationally uniform framework. Public servants must loyally execute the lawful policies of the government of the day, but their careers cannot constitutionally depend on partisan allegiance. The constitutional model is thus politically responsive administration without politicised personnel management.

Read together, sections 195 and 197 reject both an insulated technocracy and a captured bureaucracy. A capable state cannot be built if merit is reduced to qualifications alone; it must encompass demonstrated technical competence, ethical judgment, public-service orientation, relevant experience, performance and the capacity to learn. Nor can professionalisation become a shield against democratic direction. Elected leaders must set policy and priorities; professional administrators must advise candidly and implement lawfully, without fear, favour or partisan calculation.

Local government: inside public administration, but not simply inside the public service

The constitutional settlement becomes more exacting at local government level. Section 195 expressly applies the values and principles of public administration to administration in every sphere of government. Municipal administrations are therefore fully bound by professional ethics, efficiency, developmental orientation, impartial service, accountability, transparency, sound human-resource management and personnel practices based on ability, objectivity, fairness, representivity and redress. Local government is not outside the constitutional demand for meritocracy merely because municipalities possess institutional autonomy.

Section 197, however, speaks more specifically of the public service within public administration. This distinction matters. Municipalities form part of public administration, but municipal employees operate within a distinct local-government employment system rather than being treated simply as members of the national and provincial public service. The constitutional principles are common; the institutional and legislative arrangements through which those principles are implemented may differ. Section 195 itself permits legislation to differentiate between sectors, administrations and institutions according to their nature and functions.

Local government therefore occupies a constitutionally important space both within and outside the conventional public-service frame. It is within public administration because municipal institutions exercise public power, employ public resources and discharge constitutional obligations. It is outside the narrower public-service frame because municipalities possess original constitutional status, their own executive and legislative authority, and the right to govern local affairs on their own initiative, subject to the Constitution and applicable legislation. National and provincial governments may regulate, support and strengthen municipalities, but may not compromise their ability to exercise their powers and perform their functions.

This distinctiveness-cum-semi-autonomy does not dilute merit; it makes merit indispensable. Sections 152 and 153 require municipalities to provide democratic and accountable government, deliver services sustainably, promote development and structure their administrations around community needs. A municipality cannot discharge these obligations if its administration is unstable, politicised or technically incapable. In local government, meritocracy is therefore not merely an employment principle. It is a condition for fulfilling the developmental mandate and sustaining the constitutional autonomy of the sphere.

The Municipal Systems Act gives practical form to this settlement by providing a framework for local public administration, human-resource development, performance management and organisational change. The Municipal Staff Regulations further standardise municipal human-resource practices and competency requirements. Together, these instruments seek to make municipalities efficient frontline development institutions while preserving their distinct constitutional location.

The normative tension is especially acute at the local level. Municipal councils require sufficient political authority to give democratic direction, yet municipal administrations require sufficient professional autonomy to apply the law, protect public resources and deliver services impartially. If municipal autonomy is interpreted as freedom from national norms, it can shelter patronage and uneven standards. If uniform regulation is interpreted as central command, it can hollow out the constitutional integrity of the local sphere. The appropriate settlement is common constitutional standards with differentiated institutional application: political responsiveness without partisan staffing, municipal autonomy without administrative exceptionalism, and national support without centralised substitution.

A meritocratic settlement must therefore extend across the whole public-administration system without pretending that every sphere is institutionally identical. The constitutional objective is not necessarily one undifferentiated public service. It is one professional ethic of public service, expressed through appropriately differentiated national, provincial and municipal administrations. The discipline once used to make apartheid ungovernable must become the discipline required to make constitutional democracy governable.

What institutional conversion requires

Delimit political appointments, by narrowly defining which posts may legitimately turn on policy alignment, while insulating the wider administration from partisan patronage. Make merit visible and contestable, by publishing competency criteria, standardise assessments, record reasons for appointments and enable independent scrutiny. Stabilise the political-administrative interface, the protection of  heads of administration from arbitrary turnover while holding them to clear performance and ethical standards. Professionalise careers, not only entry, through the linking of  induction, continuing development, promotion and mobility to certified competence and sustained performance. Empower constitutional guardians by strengthening independent oversight of recruitment, promotion, discipline and organisational performance. Redefine cadre responsibility, this is the highest expression of political commitment in a constitutional state. It is not obedience to a network; it is fidelity to the public interest, lawful authority and demonstrable competence. Make entry to be a commission and not deployment. The former is about loyalty to rules that commission you, and the latter is about loyalty to those that deploy you.

The test for democratic statecraft

South Africa’s policy frameworks already affirm a capable, ethical and developmental state staffed by qualified and competent officials. The central challenge is no longer rhetorical endorsement but institutional enforcement. Recruitment, promotion, tenure and accountability must make professional conduct more rewarding than political compliance.

The decisive normative proposition is this: constitutional construction is not a retreat from liberation politics; it is liberation’s institutional completion. A democratic movement proves its maturity not by retaining the prerogatives of struggle, but by voluntarily submitting power to rules, competence and institutions capable of serving citizens beyond party, faction and generation.

Conclusion: Professional administration as democratic infrastructure

South Africa will not secure a capable developmental state through policy ambition alone. It requires a professional public administration whose authority rests on competence, integrity and constitutional duty. Professionalism must be embedded across the full career cycle—from open, merit-based recruitment and rigorous induction to continuous learning, fair promotion, stable tenure and credible accountability. These are not merely managerial reforms; they are the institutional means by which democratic promises are converted into reliable public value.

Political leadership remains indispensable: elected representatives must determine priorities, allocate mandates and answer to citizens. But administration must be sufficiently professional to offer evidence-based advice, safeguard legality and implement decisions impartially. This relationship is strongest not when officials are politically compliant, but when they are professionally loyal to the Constitution, responsive to lawful authority and courageous enough to resist impropriety.

The ultimate measure of democratic maturity is therefore the quality of the state encountered by ordinary citizens. A professional public administration makes rights tangible, institutions trustworthy and government capable of acting beyond party, faction and electoral cycle. It is not an administrative accessory to transformation; it is the durable infrastructure of transformation itself. South Africa’s task is to ensure that public office becomes a vocation of constitutional service—earned through merit, sustained through learning and judged by its contribution to the public good.