Governance collapses when the state retreats

Read More

Pinpointing when the state lost its way has become something of a chicken-or-the-egg situation. 

Some will say it started with state capture — a period easily identified as the start of governance collapsing, sending the economy into freefall. Others might say that state capture was the inevitable result of a public sector already stripped of its ability to ward off an economic coup. The state was ripe for the picking.

The latter scenario is more difficult to stomach because it implies that the state has been failing for far longer than we might want to admit. It’s not as easy as cutting off a limb to prevent further infection.

But this scenario is also a more hopeful way of looking at things. It suggests that the state is something worth holding on to — and that, contrary to what we have been made to believe, it cannot be replaced.

Last week, the question of the public sector’s ability to see things through was on full display with the cabinet’s passing of the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill. 

Most, including the country’s indignant insurers, admit that a national health scheme in the vein of the UK’s National Health Service is good, in theory, especially in a country with a lethally high level of inequality.

But those same people will say that there is no way South Africa’s government could see anything of that scale through — that it will be choked by mismanagement and corruption before it even takes its first breath. 

Attached to this view is that, on top of jeopardising the country’s already fragile health system, the government risks further alienating the private sector, which happens to be deemed far more reliable than the state. We could lose the last bits of sticky tape keeping the country from falling apart.

All this to say that trust in the public sector has worn rolling-paper thin. And there is good reason for this. 

It was not that long ago that the money earmarked to help the most vulnerable during the Covid-19 pandemic was wished away by public officials and their chums. This was so disturbing that, when flooding devastated parts of the country last year, some of us questioned whether government-distributed relief would ever reach the pockets of those needing it. Why bother?

What has been exposed in the wake of these events and others is that the state also does not trust itself. And why would it? State institutions have been hollowed out — and, more often than not, when someone is brought in to fill some or other position they are seen as political deployees, unable or unwilling to do any heavy lifting.

Add political meddling to all this and it makes for an impossible state of affairs. A type of paralysis inevitably sets in.

As a result of this self-distrust, if any action is taken, it’s incremental — even when the conditions demand urgency. And the slow state (big promises, little action) attracts more distrust.

This can be seen in what can only be read as a type of reassurance that the objectives of the NHI will still take some time to realise, despite it having been mooted for three decades now. 

The reason for raising this self-distrust is that it is at the heart of our country’s governance problem. At some point, the public sector stopped trusting itself to govern and so decided to outsource this crucial function. Given that governments are meant to be shaping their economies, this is very dangerous.

The ability of governments in Africa to govern has long been viewed with scepticism. This scepticism has been the basis of the “guidance” given to African policymakers by the likes of the World Bank, whipping their economies into shape.

In 1989, in a paper titled Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth, World Bank analysts noted that underlying Africa’s development problems up to that point was a crisis of governance. As a remedy to this, the World Bank suggested that intermediaries be used to bring “a broader spectrum of ideas and values to bear on policymaking”.

This all sounds pretty benign until you consider who those intermediaries are and where their interests lie. All too often they are nothing more than rent seekers who have left the institutions they have been commissioned to help in far worse positions than they found them — less capable and less confident to govern.

Economist Mariana Mazzucato delves into this dilemma in her latest book The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes Our Governments, and Warps Our Economies. Speaking at the Wits School of Governance last week, Mazzucato said the book was written as a wake-up call to governments to get them to see that they are contributing to the weakening of their own capacity — and, to rebuild it, they need to invest in the civil service.

By now, we have a good idea of how austerity has decimated state institutions, reducing the public sector’s share in the economy and threatening to deepen inequalities.

In April, in response to a parliamentary question, Minister of Public Service and Administration Noxolo Kiviet said that 166 365 public sector posts were vacant. The vast majority of these unfilled posts (109 894) were in education and healthcare. There are also considerable shortages in government departments, including employment and labour; higher education; justice and constitutional development and water and sanitation.

A dearth of people and skills leaves the public sector vulnerable to mismanagement or worse. It also leaves it strapped for good ideas — alternatives to the stale, often impractical and sometimes unimplemented, policies that have been foisted upon us. 

The problem is that many of our policies and reforms are geared precisely towards beating back the public sector. Unless we break this unhealthy cycle, we risk losing out on having a state that has the public’s best interests at its centre.