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Date : 04/10/2005
Source: Department of Public Service and Administration
Title: Fraser-Moleketi: Conference on Implementing Charter & related initiatives for Public Service Improvement in Africa


Keynote address by Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, Minister for Public Service and Administration at the occasion of the Conference on Implementing the Charter and related initiatives for Public Service Improvement in Africa

Director of Ceremonies,
Deputy Prime Minister Libertine Amathila,
Honourable Governor of the Erongo Region,
Mayor of Swakopmund,
Honourable Delegates,
Excellencies,
Distinguished members of the media,
Ladies and gentlemen

I am indeed honoured to deliver the keynote address today. South Africa interprets this invitation as an indication of deepening relations and ongoing endeavours of ensuring we deal with challenges facing Africa. There are very special bonds that our countries share, and we believe as our histories have been intertwined, so will our future.

The Deputy Prime Minister brings a certain energy to events and discussions that focuses all of us on the issue of how do we move from noble ideas and big intentions to implementation. Once again, she has put this particular stamp also on the theme for this Conference: "Implementing the Charter and related Initiatives for Public Service Improvement in Africa".

As I am occupying the podium today I do so with the utmost humility. The topic is a massive one with many underlying factors that are constantly changing. The great challenge is that the Charter is not caste in stone but will evolve around the changing elements. No matter how we deal with public sector reform and shaping public sector ethics it will have massive consequences and ramifications. South Africa, as all other countries, is continuously struggling to improve on our own arrangements in order to have better government; to have stronger and more inclusive relations with our citizens and organs of civil society; to involve the private sector in order to mobilize significant resources for the development of our people; to alleviate poverty and hardship that many of our people experience daily.

We certainly cannot boast that we have perfected any recipe notwithstanding the fact that if we have to run a checklist of what is regarded as so-called "best practice", South Africa has made provision for it, somehow. (I would argue to a fault some times, because we were not always critical enough about the internal consistency and the underpinning assumptions of some of the initiatives that we have introduced.)

In terms of progress I can assure you that when we are doing our own assessments, for example in Cabinet, we are brutally honest, highly critical and although we recognise the progress we make, we are always acutely aware of how much remains to be done and how much scope is left for improvement.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

The nexus between public governance and state performance or achievement in terms of growth and development has been receiving significant attention. At the United Nations (UN) it features in significant proportions in the thinking, deliberations and written output. The World Bank - for all its sins - has been engaging with these issues for the better part of four decades. Academics have concerned themselves with it. Practitioner communities in nation states and regional contexts, professional bodies, political parties – all have engaged with the issue, either directly or indirectly. By now the relationship is almost axiomatic. Given one of the most commonly used definitions of governance i.e. governance is "the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social development", this intricate relationship is not surprising.

Given the centrality of the relationship it is therefore logical that some of our most notable efforts, globally as well as on the continent, also recognize the importance of governance for development. The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) although it does not contain Public Sector Reform as one of the Goals, have clearly made the connection in the broader context and is actively highlighting governance practice as a key variable in the worlds’ quest to meet the MDGs within the stated framework. To this effect, issues of capacity building, deepening of democratic practice and anti-corruption initiatives are singled out. Closer to home New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) Africa's own socio-economic growth plan has also consistently made the link between the vision, the action plan and the governance capability required to realize both. As such some of the earliest initiatives in support of NEPAD have been the institutionalisation of the relationship between NEPAD and the Pan African Conference of Ministers of Civil Service and Public Service. We are hence awaiting the formation of the Specialised Technical Team of the civil service and public service. In addition, one the strongest statement that NEPAD has made in terms of improving governance is the institutionalisation of the African Peer Review Mechanism. It pursues progress in terms of four areas singled out by the Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance", these being:

* democracy and political governance;
* economic governance and management;
* corporate governance; and,
* socio-economic development.

The insight of establishing a relationship between governance and improving the life of citizens is, however, not the preserve of the learned and the powerful, and we should avoid trying to couch in smart and difficult language or through voluminous deliberation something that is fairly obvious to ordinary people. We are reminded of this by the words of the Nigerian musician, Ike Uzondu, when he states:

"The art of governing is not rocket science. Being honest; knowing that you are here to serve the people, not steal from the people; and finding a way to deliver the goods – that is the key".

Given how obvious the relationship is, it is sad that we are struggling so much with getting it right. An Ugandian citizen, Charles Onyango-Obbo suggested at the close of the 20th century that the biggest failure in Africa is, and I quote "our colossal incompetence at governance. Colonial rule was a disaster. Multiparty rule has been mostly a failure … One party rule … has been largely a calamity. Military dictatorship has been a trip to hell."

However imperfect our efforts, nobody can accuse us in recent years of not taking governance and public administration very seriously on this continent and not trying to make massive strides in improving the quality of government and governance on the continent.

Since 1981 Africa has elevated the right to the fundamentals of good governance as a human right. Article 13 of the African Banjul Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, provided for every citizen to have the right to participate freely in the government of his or her country, either directly or through freely chosen representatives in accordance with the provisions of the law. It also provided that every citizen shall have the right of equal access to the public service of his country and further stated that every individual has the right of access to public property and services in strict equality of all persons before the law.

The African Union (AU) Constitutive Act in its Objectives Section also makes brief mention of the legal obligation on the AU and its Member States to promote democratic principles and institutions, popular participation and good governance.

So although the overarching notions are captured, none of these are dedicated or developed as comprehensively or are in as much detail as the Charter for the Public Service in Africa.

As a symbol of the enormous efforts we are making and high store we set to governance related matters the Charter for the Public Service in Africa certainly stands out. For this reason I think it should always have a special place. A beacon that can serve as a point of reference. A document that embodies a framework of what, at a particular point of our history, we saw as the ideal that we should aspire to.

It was an ambitious process from the start to try and find agreement on fairly contentious issues from countries dispersed across the continent, at very different stages of their own public sector histories, and in many instances with divergent value systems. The effort was even more ambitious since we opted for a comprehensive Charter, rather than a narrower Code of Conduct. It speaks in its component parts to the interests of different players, e.g. trying to protect public servants as employees, ensuring that citizens get the best possible service in relation to the entrenched interests of the public employees, ensuring a workable relationship between politics and administration, and so forth. It tackles an enormously wide scope of matters.

And as we step back to review progress with the implementation of this ambitious document we must honestly say that our ambitions mean that as a symbolic policy the Charter is huge.

As a document that requires implementation, the ambitiously wide scope of the document undermines the implementability thereof. Our UN colleague, Prof Balogun, in his publication entitled: "The African Public Service Charter: Implementation Modalities, Capacity-Building Implications and Regional Follow-Up Mechanisms" also refers to this issue. I suggest that people look at this document if they haven’t already done so.

One of the most basic lessons in terms of implementation suggests that the wider and deeper the scope of change that an intervention seeks to introduce, the more difficult it would be and the more challenging the process to do so successfully.

We must also acknowledge that the process that we followed was not perfectly inclusive and formally has very little behind it in the form of continent wide institutional teeth. The stage at which we agreed on the Charter was at a stage when there was much flux in terms of the regional and continent wide institutions, and has not yet received formal consideration from the African Union itself.

Once again the theory on implementation is instructive. It teaches us that implementation is very difficult to achieve where key stakeholders might not have been adequately consulted and brought on board during the drafting stages. It further teaches that it is necessary to have adequate institutional and administrative mechanisms to ensure implementation. The literature also makes mention of the importance of champions to drive the implementation process and further highlights the difficulty of implementing complex processes that requires the cooperation of a wide range of players.

If we bear all of this in mind, and without wanting to preclude the deliberations of the next few days, I would suggest that we need to look deeper for successful implementation of the Charter as it stands at the moment is not too good.

I am saying this without wanting to detract from the overall standard of behaviour and the direction that the Charter is setting. I think our best possibility of allowing the sympathies of the Charter to infuse African Public Administration is to do the following:

a. Firstly to encourage all states to adopt their own Codes of Practice, and so forth, that takes forward the overall direction of the Charter. This is where instruments do not already exist. For example in the case of South Africa, our Constitution, our Reconstruction and Development Programme document, but also our legislation on Public Administration, which inter alia includes a Code of Conduct for Public Servants pre-date the Charter, but is certainly not contrary to the Charter.

b. Secondly to encourage states to enter the African Peer Review process that is recognized by the African Union and is administered through NEPAD and Eminent Persons Group (EPG). Adequate significance is attached to the issue of sound governance arrangements in that process and each country has the right to adapt the process. What is however, even more beneficial, is that the APRM process goes hand in hand with sharing and learning, an effort to constantly improve and a recognition that none of us are above such a process. Rather than attempting to start a separate monitoring process, as advocated in the aforementioned article by our colleague Prof Balogun, and implied by the proceedings of the first Workshop on Strategies for Mainstreaming Professionalism and Ethics in the African Public Service organised by UNDESA/DPADM in collaboration with the UNDP, ECA, and other partners that was held from 1 to 3 December 2004 in Addis Ababa let us use existing processes that overall will give us a reading of the direction we are moving in.

c. Thirdly, strengthen our efforts to introduce the norms and values that the Charter stand for in our education and training efforts as far as public servants, but also the broad citizenry go. I believe the recently launched African Management Development Institutional Network is a mechanism that can be used very successfully and we need to ensure that the discussion regarding public service ethics is ongoing in those quarters.

Having said that and for the doomsday prophets and those who are trying to write us off, I want to refer to Ali Mazrui’s book "The African: A Triple Heritage". He draws on some Francophone wit with regarding our continent and writes:

"Africa has its feet in the Neolithic and its head in the thermonuclear age. Where is the body? It is managing as best it can"

I believe in the future of Africa and I believe that also in respect of the issues of Administration and Governance we will improve. If we continue our current efforts and we do as best as we can we will arrive in a better place than what most outsiders would want to give us credit.

Deputy Prime Minister, I would want to say that with our feet squarely on the ground that the deliberations of the conference will go well and I thank you for opportunity to have shared these few ideas.

Issued by: Department of Public Service and Administration
4 October 2005

   

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