ANC Mayors and councillors - the new cadres!

As this edition of ANC TODAY went to print, the country was about to conclude the process of the establishment of our municipal governments, following the 1 March local government elections. To contribute to this process, senior national and provincial structures of the ANC, joined by representatives of our allies, met from 12 March to choose our mayoral candidates, who would subsequently be elected by the municipal councils.

We must take advantage of this Letter to congratulate all our councillors who have now been deployed by our movement to lead the various municipalities as Mayors. All of us must surely be greatly inspired by the important advance we have made, as represented by the increased numbers of woman Mayors.

The mayoral appointments made by our movement constitute an expression of our confidence that the comrades concerned, regardless of gender and age, will properly discharge their responsibilities as the leaders of government in their municipal areas.

Among other things, this means that these ANC Mayors must make it a point to study and understand our 2006 Local Government Election Manifesto, so that they are fully aware of the commitments our movement made to the people as we asked them to vote for ANC municipal councils and governments.

Together with the other ANC councillors and the local structures of our movement, our Mayors must work to translate the vision and plan contained in the National Manifesto into specific visions and plans for the Metro, District and Local municipalities, to ensure that the undertakings we made nationally find full expression at the local places where our people live and work.

Our Mayors should also immediately familiarise themselves with the Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) adopted by the outgoing municipal councils, the critical assessments of these IDPs made by teams deployed by the Department of Provincial and Local Government, and the Project Consolidate reports relating to their areas.

They should then assess all this against the commitments we made in our Local Government Manifesto. All this will help our Mayors, councillors and the local structures of our movement to make proper preparations for the popular and inclusive Growth and Development Summits (GDSs) they must hold in their areas by the beginning of June 2006.

Our Mayors must ensure that these Summits truly involve the people in their areas, so that from the very beginning of their terms, our councils get used to the critical importance of regular interaction between themselves and the masses of the people, and the implementation of the People's Contract. The Mayors must therefore ensure that our councils learn to work properly with both the local structures of the movement and the Ward Committees that will be elected.

In some areas of our country, the process of the selection of our candidate councillors brought us face to face with an ugly reality of hunger for power by some people within our ranks. On many occasions before, our movement has drawn attention to the danger that our political victory, which created the possibility for us to exercise state power, would draw people into our ranks intent to use this power for their selfish ends, including their personal enrichment.

During our candidate selection processes we experienced a number of unacceptable incidents, when some people resorted to foul means to secure selection by our branches and other structures as candidate councillors. To stamp out this criminal behaviour alien to the values of our movement, disciplinary action will be instituted against any of our members known to have engaged in activities that are at variance with our constitution, regulations and values.

In his Organisational Report to the June 2005 National General Council (NGC), our Secretary General, Kgalema Motlanthe, drew our attention to the need for us to maintain and continue to nurture the revolutionary morality that must continue to guide the actions of all our members during the current phase of the national democratic revolution. Among other things he said:

"Our review of the functioning of branch, provincial and national structures of the ANC has identified a number of problems that need to be addressed. These problems point to an erosion of the revolutionary morality that has characterised our movement for decades, and which infused the volunteers of the Congress of the People campaign with a burning need to serve the people. The reasons for such erosion are not hard to fathom...

"In many of our branches there are no sustainable political programmes and community campaigns. They are conflict-ridden and unstable and in many instances fraught with fights over leadership positions, selection and deployment of councillors, tendering and control of projects and recruitment of membership in order to serve factional or selfish interests.

"In many cases, the reasons for division and the resulting lack of coherent and consistent branch organisation are not rooted in ideological differences. Rather, these problems rest primarily on the preoccupation on the part of public representatives with securing access to and control over public resources. This in turn leads to tensions between cadres deployed in ANC structures and those in government and undermines the effectiveness of our public representatives...

"The central challenge facing the ANC is to address the problems that arise from our cadres' susceptibility to moral decay occasioned by the struggle for the control of and access to resources. All the paralysis in our programmes, all the divisions in our structures, are in one way or another, a consequence of this cancer in our midst...

"The problem lies in the fact that, in our efforts to make up for the debilitating weight of apartheid, many of us appear only too quick to sacrifice the moral and ethical standards that have characterised our movement. Moral degeneration, linked to the accumulation and control over resources, is not a consequence we can accept, since it threatens to extinguish the torch of freedom that our people have carried for so long. Because of their hopes and aspirations we are duty bound to act, as the ANC, in the vanguard of the struggle against moral decay and corruption.

"These problems are not confined to a particular sphere of government or geographic area. Their pernicious influence and unacceptable consequences are apparent at local, provincial and national level."

We are confident that the candidate Mayors we selected, who have been or will be elected by the municipal councils, are comrades who are inspired by the "revolutionary morality that has characterised our movement for decades, and which infused the volunteers of the Congress of the People campaign with a burning need to serve the people", of which our Secretary General spoke.

They will therefore occupy their positions as servants of the people, committed to advance the agenda of the national democratic revolution at the local level. But as we have also made clear, our movement will, within the context of the law, take action to withdraw any of our Mayors and councillors who betray this commitment or otherwise consistently violate the Oath which all our councillors pledged to honour.

Beyond this, our Mayors will have to take the lead as the kind of "new cadre" that the 2000 NGC directed us to develop. When we opened this NGC we spoke about "the need for us to develop new cadres to meet the demands imposed on us by the victories we have scored as we have pursued the objectives of the democratic revolution" ...and therefore "the need for us to implement a programme focused, among other things, on the development of cadres who are truly politically committed to the all-round success of the new democratic South Africa, and properly prepared with regard to the skills our country needs to achieve that success."

In this context, the NGC resolved that we should "expand our political school and (implement) a human resource programme, that ensures the continual reproduction of cadres in terms of political, ideological, cultural and moral training; academic and skills development to take on the diverse tasks of transformation (including expanding economic literacy) in a range of spheres of society and adapt the methodology and content of our political education to meet the challenges of the current phase."

The NGC said: "Within the ANC we need to build a corps of cadres capable of implementing required programmes and carrying forth the traditions of the movement. Our deployment structures must be able to draw on cadres who are committed, capable and innovative; cadres who are rooted among our people, and are dedicated to working with them to realise their aspirations." It went on to say: "At the centre of our programme is the urgent need to entrench the ethos of a transformative morality, discipline and caring among our members, our people and our country as a whole."

What all this means is that we expect our Mayors and councillors to:

• study and fully understand our movement's vision of fundamental social transformation focused on accelerating the advance towards the achievement of the objective of a better life for all;
• put in place practical and realistic programmes to transform this vision into reality;
• honour and respect the value system and morality of our movement and its unwavering commitment to serve the people of South Africa;
• maintain constant contact with the people to give expression to our commitment to a people-driven process of change;
• improve their understanding of the managerial, professional and technical requirements necessary for the effective delivery of goods and services by our system of local government; and,
• constantly review, monitor and evaluate their work so that they are able to correct any mistakes quickly and use their successes further to accelerate service delivery and development at the local level.

The results of the 1 March local government elections have once again confirmed the confidence of the masses of our people in our movement as the best representative of their hopes and aspirations. They expect that the new municipal authorities will build on the progress made since 1994 further to accelerate the advance towards the achievement of the central objective of a better life for all.

Our cadres deployed at the national and provincial spheres of government must also understand that they have an obligation to work with, and assist the municipalities to meet the expectations of the people. We should therefore not only make demands on our Mayors and councillors, but should also assist them to access the human and material resources that will enable them to discharge their responsibilities to the people.

Thus the new cadres we require for the current phase of the national democratic revolution must not only be good politicians. They must also be good developmental activists, ready to lift pick and shovel side by side with the people to end the blight of poverty and underdevelopment that continue to afflict many of our communities and millions of our people.

Women's Movement

A progressive voice for South African women

The road towards the establishment of a South African women's movement has become a lot shorter with the formation on 8 March, International Women's Day, of a steering committee to lead the process towards the establishment of a Progressive Women's Movement (PWM).

At a consultative meeting of women from different sectors of society it was decided to work towards the formation of a non-governmental organisation that seeks to ensure that all progressive women structures and individuals have a platform through which they can actively participate in the broader development agenda of the country.

The meeting was attended by representatives from faith-based organisations, non-governmental organisations, professional women, business women, rural women, workers, political parties and young women.

The steering committee will be convened by ANC Women's League Deputy President Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini and includes representatives from most sectors who attended the meeting. The committee has been tasked with further consultation among women's organisations to seek an endorsement of the concept of a women's movement and finalise a founding document. It also needs to draw up a minimum platform of action. The committee will convene a consultative workshop before the launch of the movement, which is set to take place in August 2006.

This initiative takes place during the year of the 50th anniversary of the 1956 women's anti-pass march to the Union Buildings. The formation of a progressive women's movement is an event of great significance, echoing the watershed moment fifty years ago when the women of South Africa spoke with one voice against discrimination and oppression. The progressive women's movement will need to take up the same struggle, uniting the largest possible cross-section of South African women in this effort.

The effort to establish a women's movement in South Africa began a number of years ago. A decision to begin discussions about the formation of a national women's structure was taken at the Malibongwe Conference in Amsterdam in the Netherlands in January 1990.

During the political negotiations around the transition to democracy a coalition was formed of women with different political backgrounds and from different political affiliations. Through the Women's National Coalition women were able to articulate their demands through representation in the negotiations process and through the Women's Charter for Effective Equality. This charter was presented by women to the first democratic government under the leadership of the then President Nelson Mandela. Many aspects of the charter are now reflected in the present constitution.

The Women's National Coalition disintegrated after the adoption of constitution. However, the idea of a women's movement outlasted the coalition, and has remained on the agenda. The ANC and the ANC Women's League (ANCWL) have held the view that there is a need for some kind of organic structure that will take up broader issues of women in South African society.

The ANC and its Alliance partners have discussed a women's movement whose key objective would be to ensure that it promotes transformation of South African society into one that is truly non-racial and non-sexist. Over the years various discussion papers and resolutions have been developed and adopted on the purpose, character and proposed programme of such a movement.

The ANCWL National Executive Committee decided at its meeting in October 2005 that it was an opportune moment for South African women to formalise the women's movement. The idea is that this movement be a broad front of women's organisations, grassroots organisations, feminist groups, researchers, and women involved in policy formulation.

This women's movement should be progressive, diverse, shaped by local struggles and it should acknowledge that women in South Africa are not homogeneous. It should seek the transformation of South Africa into a non-sexist, non-racial, democratic, united and prosperous society. It should have an understanding of social relationships of class, race, ethnicity, age and religion. It should respond to specific conditions of gender inequality through a minimum platform for action.

Among the principles that guide the women's movement should be the fight for women's emancipation and gender equality; it should fight patriarchy; develop a minimum and single platform for action; and work towards common policy positions. Members of the movement should agree to differ where necessary, and maintain the independence of member organisations while working towards unity of purpose.

The women's movement should target women from different sectors to ensure representivity. These should include women from rural areas, the business and professional sectors, faith-based organisations, workers, young women, women with disabilities, elderly women, unemployed women, and women from political parties.

Among its areas of focus, the movement would need to address issues of economic transformation as it impacts on the lives of women. This would include questions of access to economic resources, job creation, self-employment, access to credit, and access to technology.

It should address issues of social transformation, particularly as they affect the lives of women living in poverty. It should work to improve access to housing, health care, land, basic infrastructure, social grants and social services, and education and skills.

The movement should also work towards the achievement of 50% representation in all governance and decision-making bodies. It should play an advocacy role in promoting progressive laws that help to empower women.

The movement would need to build relations beyond South Africa and monitor the implementation of international instruments for women's development and empowerment. This would include establishing relations with the Pan African Women's Organisation and other international bodies.

Government programme update #3

Building a better public service

Following the state of the nation address in February, cabinet ministers addressed a number of briefings on progress in the implementation of government's programme of action. This week we publish an edited extract of the briefing on governance and administration:

In his State of the Nation address President Thabo Mbeki indicated that "the audit of a number of national departments has been completed". This referred to an audit undertaken by the governance and administration cluster of departments in collaboration with the departments of Health, Education, Justice and Trade and Industry, which conducted assessments of key delivery programmes in those departments.

In the health sector the focus of the study was on hospital management. The study found that public hospitals are highly stressed institutions due to staff shortages, unmanageable workloads and management failures. The situation with nurses is particularly acute. Limited devolution of decision-making power and organisational control has led to a number of problems.

Wide-ranging recommendations were adopted to speed up the devolution of decision-making to institutional level where capacity has been demonstrated. A focus on hospital managers in the next six months includes a review of the grading of posts and the development of a tailored training programme for CEOs. The numbers of less-skilled staff will be increased to ensure that health professionals do not do menial work but are able to focus on their healthcare duties. An investigation into the re-establishment of nurses training colleges will be completed by July.

A quantitative analysis showed that education departments in some provinces were allocated more than 50% of the provincial budget. Across the board there are too few administrative support staff at district level in relation to educators. There is only one senior manager for every 1,069 employees. The vacancy rate among financial and human resource professionals is high.

Cabinet agreed that the Department of Education, with assistance from the Indian Government, conduct an assessment of the role and responsibilities of district/circuit offices and managers and that the establishment of a distinct management echelon for principals be investigated by July. The department will also develop staffing norms to ensure appropriate ratios of teaching staff to support staff and will take steps to ensure funds are available to give effect to the norms by July. A further evaluation of skills gaps in management will be undertaken.

The study found that vacancies for judges and magistrates were higher than average. The Department of Justice has a very high proportion of staff employed on contract. Accountability of the courts and the need for improved coordination between the justice system role-players emerged as challenges. A shortage of management skills was identified.

The study found that vacancy rates in middle management and among trade and industry advisers were high. Skills shortages exist in key policy areas. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is structured in such a way that there are 21 separate agencies reporting to it. The qualitative review identified the need for greater alignment of objectives, outputs and outcomes among these institutions. Coordination across the cluster and alignment of planning across the spheres of government needs to be strengthened.

Developing capacity in the public sector

In the coming year, the governance and administration cluster will focus on addressing those factors that are militating against successful skills formation and the elimination of skills shortages in the public sector. Training is very often of doubtful relevance, rarely focused on carry-through impact, rarely accompanied by post-course support and implementation; and often facilitated or taught by people who have a very limited understanding of the public sector.

In support of government's efforts to address these challenges, the South African Management Development Institute (SAMDI) has recently commenced implementation of a new approach to teaching and learning in the public sector, aimed at improving internal effectiveness and external impact. In addition, a comprehensive strategy to improve the quality, cost-effectiveness and impact of training on improving service delivery will be implemented in the coming year. This will aim to ensure a better quality of entrant into the public service, accelerate the development of basic skills and support enhanced performance of existing public servants. The organisational and operational base for the delivery of these programmes will be a Public Sector College geared to excellent support for the unfolding developmental state.

Fighting corruption

The implementation of the three-year National Anti-corruption Programme, agreed upon by the public, business and civil society sectors, will be speeded up from April 2006 when the allocated budget becomes available. The projects of this programme will focus on ensuring implementation of the anti-corruption legislation in all sectors; advocating the obligations, rights, protection and sanctions of the anti-corruption legislation; ensuring ethical behaviour and standards form an integral part of all dealings in all sectors; and providing all communities at all spheres sufficient platforms to engage on issues of corruption.

The second National Anti-corruption Summit, held last year, provided an opportunity to reflect on our national and broad anti-corruption gains, and this year the Department of Public Service and Administration is focusing on monitoring detailed implementation of the Public Service Anti-corruption Strategy and appraising the impact of the national anti-corruption framework. This appraisal will continue until the end of 2007.

This work, coupled with other projects, will inform the development of a revised set of norms and standards for the whole of the public sector. By 2008, a broad governance strategy for the whole of the public sector will be in place.

The revised guidelines on the implementation of minimum anti-corruption capacity in departments at national and provincial levels were issued in January and will be supplemented by over 20 implementation training sessions commencing in April 2007 and concluding by July 2007. This initiative will establish a cadre of over 400 anti-corruption practitioners for these departments.

At local government level, a local government anti-corruption strategy and implementation plan have been developed. For some time now, the 136 local authorities within Project Consolidate have received direct anti-corruption assistance through support to put appropriate management policies and systems in place. This work will continue and be broadened with the implementation of the local government anti-corruption strategy.

Single public service

In his address President Mbeki said that "we will continue the work towards the creation of one public service covering all spheres of government, fully conscious of the complexity of this matter and the need to secure the agreement of all the relevant stakeholders".

As part of the implementation of the single public service work is proceeding under the following three work streams: the integration of the front office (points of service delivery); the integration of the back office (information systems); and institutional integration covering harmonisation of systems, conditions of service and norms within institutions and departments across the three spheres of government that deliver services to the people.

The objective of 'front office integration' is to present a single face of government that covers the three spheres of government and selected public entities that provide services directly to the people. Ground-breaking work has already been done in the establishment of multi-purpose community centres, the Batho Pele Gateway portal, the installation of public information terminals in selected post offices, and the deployment of Community Development Workers.

Having released the initial e-Government Policy for consultation in 2001, the department continued with the implementation of the Batho Pele Gateway portal, which was launched in 2004. Several important enhancements to the policy will be completed in the course of this year. The information content of the portal will be expanded to include provincial and local spheres of government. The Gateway information content is being translated into all 11 official languages.

By July 2006, government will adopt a comprehensive e-Government programme, which covers a governance model, strategy, architecture, and implementation plan for the single public service. The focus is on e-Government and information and communications technology (ICT), which will create a platform for services to be delivered through a single point of contact.

By November 2006, draft legislation to create an enabling environment for the single public service will be developed. The draft legislation will be the basis for further consultation within government. The draft enabling legislation will focus on human resource management and development; organisational and institutional matters; and ICT and e-Government across the public service.

More Information:

• Government Programme of Action

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