Chairperson, in order to determine the driving force behind the service delivery protests it is necessary to establish the identity of social forces, contingent or hegemonic, that are at play. History tells us that the contingent agency will play a more visible and activist role while the hegemonic forces will become the ultimate beneficiaries of such a project. Such formations could take the form of social class with subculture character traits or a dual contingent arrangement at given historical moments designed to serve a specific purpose. Ellen Wood, in her 1986 book The Retreat from Class, argues:
A political force can be constituted and organised on the ideological and political planes constructed of various popular elements which can be bound together and motivated by purely ideological and political means, irrespective of the class connections or oppositions among them.
In contrast, one should also not assume that there is a coherent and organised social force behind these protests. Therefore I submit that where state institutions have succumbed to a subculture of kleptocracy and rampant corruption, these contingent social forces, including the lumpen proletariat, become more dominant and pervasive in our society. These relationships are not necessarily formal. Rather they are tentative and unstructured. Ineffective government policies, corruption within the public service and ill-conceived promises made by public representatives, create a breeding ground for the beneficiaries of the subcultural group. Their desire to loot and illegally occupy buildings and vacant land with impunity drives their actions. This view must not be misconstrued to suggest that there are no legitimate grievances. Where legitimate grievances exist, they should be addressed speedily, as Wood suggests, and I quote:
The struggle for social democracy can be conceived as plurality of 'democratic' struggles, bringing together a variety of resistances to many forms of inequality and oppression.
Any attempt to create artificial boundaries between the political and economic struggles would be dangerous and counterproductive. Hon Minister, it goes without saying that for your turnaround strategy to succeed a myriad of civil society institutions and organisations would need to be empowered to enable them to play a meaningful role in your campaign. You might want to think of a creative way of providing them, even if it is with limited funding.
You will agree with me that on the one hand governance is about the effective management of the functioning of the state machinery, the manner in which policies are implemented and the culture and values that guide the behaviour of the public service and public representatives. Co-operative governance on the other hand is about co-ordination and ensuring that the three spheres of government work to achieve the strategic objectives as stated in the state of the nation address. Evidence from our oversight visit to provinces proved that your department is far from achieving this strategic objective.
There are no clear guidelines on how national departments should co-operate with provincial departments to facilitate policy implementation at local level. The national departments operate without co-ordination at local level. The consequences of this vacuum are that there is mismanagement and misalignment of strategic plans in all three spheres of government, which results in poor implementation of government programmes, thus leading to the service delivery protest.
This statement suggests that our state institutional arrangements must be seen against the background of a Constitution that exhibits characteristics of both a federal and unitary state. Some people describe our Constitution as being quasi-federal, hence the strong feature of centralisation, while at the same time promoting consensual decision-making processes.
The ministerial and MEC fora are good examples of such consultative arrangements, albeit their decisions are only morally binding, not legally enforceable. However, we acknowledge that the value of these fora lies in regular monitoring of policy implementation and budgetary compliance. This is good for consensual decision-making but there is very little evidence to show that it is effective in co-ordinating government programmes at the point of implementation.
Even the proposed institutional reforms towards a unified public service will not improve the situation as long as the policy of cadre deployment remains in place. Furthermore, the general statements made by government regarding the professionalisation of the public service remain vague and undefined.
In Cope's view, the rationale for professionalising the public service should be to ensure continuity and also to serve as a staff retention strategy. Furthermore, the benefit of professionalising the public service should be to reduce political interference in the appointment of staff and ultimately to eliminate the politicisation of the process of service delivery, nepotism and cronyism.
We caution that the idea of an integrated public service should not be a ploy to reduce the powers of the lower spheres of government or to promote greater centralisation. Instead it should be a strategy to encourage mobility across all spheres of government and promote career-pathing. [Time expired.] [Applause.]