The DA’s vision for government, as set out in Vision 2029, is animated by the values of freedom, fairness and opportunity.
We believe in a partnership approach to development. The government has a critical role to play in creating and expanding opportunities so that citizens can flourish and live lives they value. In turn, all South Africans have a responsibility – to themselves, their families and their communities – to make the most of those opportunities. This lies at the heart of development. It is how we will create South Africa a dynamic and vibrant country, a leader in the developing world.
But right now, government is proving to be an unreliable partner. The current bloated ANC national government is failing South Africans in numerous ways. Corruption and nepotism, at every level of government, are diverting resources from where they are needed most and enriching a small elite.
Two decades after South Africa’s first democratic election many South Africans do not believe that all government departments and state institutions are working to serve them. We have seen many of our democratic institutions abused by a ruling party that seems more focused on serving its own interests than serving the people of South Africa.
In terms of the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators, South Africa’s percentile ranking in nearly all key indicators of good governance has declined.
The DA believes that governance and government in South Africa can be better. We believe government can be more responsive to the needs of the people, we believe it can be more transparent and accountable to those it serves, and we believe that it can be more efficient in delivering services. We believe that government can do more to create an enabling environment for growth and development.
For this to happen, South Africa must radically rethink the shape and function of government, from the top down. Reconfiguring government to create a nimble, cost-effective executive designed to maximise service delivery and tackle head-on South Africa’s primary challenges — unemployment and poverty — is an essential first step in this process. Our government needs to be streamlined to contain public spending and to promote clean, accountable, efficient, responsive and citizenoriented governance.
This paper details the DA’s plan to do just that. It provides an in-depth analysis of how our current financially unsustainable and ineffective government is hurting the economy. It documents the kinds of expenditure patterns that the government must prioritise in order to remedy this. It then provides a new configuration for South Africa’s executive, pared down to 15 ministries, linked to spending priorities that promote economic growth and job creation. Moreover, the paper will show that by reconfiguring the Executive, and realigning some of the associated national departments, the DA could save an estimated R4.7bn each year!
Where the DA governs, our service delivery record and governance outcomes show that we are committed to spending public money in the interest of the people and that we have the capacity to deliver.
Nationally, the time has come to get the macro structure of government right. This will lead to more bang for the taxpayers’ buck, and better service delivery for all South Africans. And it will begin to lay the foundation for a partnership approach between the government and South African citizens. A partnership in which the government works to deliver opportunities and citizens take responsibility for using these opportunities to improve their own lives.