What do we do when the supply chain regulations are bypassed; when services aren’t delivered; when culprits are not held accountable; when corruption prevails?

Generally, we write more laws, regulations, policies and procedures in the vain hope that people will be held accountable to these new standards.  But alas, as T.S. Eliot said – We are “dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”

The problem is not always about wrong systems, but frequently about the wrong people.

The story is not new, and it goes something like this.

A politician appoints a person who aligns with their agenda into a position as Head of Department (or Municipal Manager, or Director General, or Chairperson of an SOE Board – choose your option). This appointment is informed more by political pliability than competence, integrity, or dedication to the public good.  Once this person is in office, they appoint other ‘aligned’ people into the organisation, or coopt the pliable ones who are already there.  While still partially trying to achieve the mandate of the organisation, the main project however becomes the allocation of positions or tenders for those who are part of the patronage network.

The result is a breakdown of skills and governance and then the concomitant breakdown of service delivery.  Then a new political head is selected, and then everything begins afresh with new people. That is the story of how to break a public sector organisation.

The above story, or parts of it, is told in the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs’ (CoGTA) State of Local Government Report (2009), the National Development Plan Diagnostic Report (2011), the 25 Year Review of Local Government (2019), the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (2021), the Public Sector Professionalisation Framework (2022) and most notably, the Zondo Commission report (2022). It is also in the media on an almost daily basis.

So it is clear that this story is known by everyone who takes an interest in these matters, and most likely by many who don’t.  The patient has just about been diagnosed to death.

We know for a fact that no amount of policy or procedure is going to lead to good governance where we have badly intentioned leadership.

I’m not saying we don’t need new legislation. I just think regulatory intervention should be focused on the crux of the matter.  Rather than fiddling while Rome burns, we should look at reforms that could potentially change the above story. If we spent all our energy on getting the right people into leadership positions, good governance would follow.

One of the key challenges is that heads of department at national and provincial government level, and municipal managers in local government, are political appointments. This means that the political heads have free rein over who they appoint.

The next problem is that heads of organisations are not certain of their tenure. If they go against the instructions of their political head, it is very easy to find a reason to remove them, especially in overregulated environments.  Even if a professional, capable person is appointed, they can be unfairly removed.

Let’s be clear – it’s not that all politicians are bad. But the reality is that politics, is by its nature, unstable.  What we need is stable, capable, and ethical leadership in the administration.  In other words, there needs to be a greater divide between politicians and the administration if we are to build professional service-oriented organisations.

The Public Service Amendment Act (signed into law on 1 April 2026) purports to make things better in this regard, and to be fair, it does address some concerns.

In the past the Executive Authority, or Minister/MEC, could appoint all staff in the department.  This responsibility is now assigned to the head of department. In other words, once the head of department is appointed, they take full responsibility for the staffing of the department.  (Heads of department have long carried full accountability for departmental failures, this gives them greater control.)

What has, however, been left unchanged is that the political head can, without much oversight, appoint whomever they want as the head of department.  Granted, this is a more difficult issue, because political heads must have some say in who occupies such a critical position. But the door for politicised appointments is still open wide.  Once a badly intentioned head of department is appointed, it is naïve to think that they are going to appoint the best people they can find.

Way back in 2012, the National Development Plan made the following recommendations:

• “Create an administrative head of the public service with responsibility for managing the career progression of heads of department, including convening panels for recruitment, performance assessments, and disciplinary procedures.
• Use a hybrid approach for top appointments that allows for the reconciliation of administrative and political priorities.
• Use a purely administrative approach for lower-level appointments, giving senior officials full authority to appoint staff in their departments.”

The Public Service Amendment Act (2026) only addresses the last of these recommendations. The Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI) has long recommended that interview panels for heads of department should be independently convened – either by the Public Service Commission or by a head of the public service. Such panels can include professionals, academics, and members of civil society to give the process more credibility. Once a shortlist of three credible candidates has been agreed by the panel, the Executive Authority can choose from this shortlist.

While not perfect, this approach balances the need for ‘administrative and political priorities’. Submissions to this effect were made by PARI and The Ethics Institute during the consultation period, but have clearly not been incorporated in the final draft of the Act.

Perhaps it is politically a step too far at this stage, and we should be thankful for the improvements that have been made. Building a professional public service is not a short-term objective, but the need is building in urgency.

Appointing appropriate leadership into an organisation is not easy, even if one is well intentioned. It is a pity that we are not using all the tools at our disposal to address one of the public sector’s biggest challenges.  Until we get this right, we will keep trying to solve people problems with policy solutions.

Kris Dobie is Executive: Organisational Ethics at The Ethics Institute in Pretoria, South Africa. He specialises in organisational ethics and corruption prevention, and has contributed to several South African public sector ethics and anti-corruption initiatives, including the National Anti-Corruption Strategy and the Code for Ethical Leadership in Local Government. He is the lead researcher on the South African Public Sector Ethics Survey and holds an MPhil in Workplace Ethics from the University of Pretoria.