The DA’s vision is to build a capable state by depoliticising and professionalising the South African public sector. It was the DA that first diagnosed the risk posed by cadre deployment. It is the DA that is challenging the constitutionality of cadre deployment. And it is the DA that will ultimately outlaw this practice and undo the legacy of ANC cadre deployment.
Our vision for a new public administration policy to rescue the South African state is broad and all-encompassing.
It makes cadre deployment a criminal offence. It introduces a merit-based system for recruitment and selection, free from political interference. It includes the necessary legal reforms to separate party and state. It reforms codes of good practice to hold officials accountable for under-performance. It addresses the skills crisis in the public sector through an innovative scholarship scheme, pre-entry examinations, and dedicated training. It seeks to reform organisational culture by recruiting a new generation of public servants and appropriately using incentives and disincentives to reorient existing norms towards delivery, meritocracy and excellence. It enables a reconstituted Public Service Commission to take its rightful place as custodian of public sector delivery. It embraces modern technology and collaboration with the private sector to leapfrog into a modern future.
These DA reforms will unleash a public administration revolution by replacing a decaying, corrupt and politicised bureaucracy with a professional, innovative and capable state anchored in the age-old principles of liberal democracy in service of the needs of all the people of South Africa.