The fallacy of sabotage in the civil service

By John Nyawali

Hardly a day passes without hearing about how some employees in the civil service are working hard to prevent the successful implementation of government programmes by the current political party in power.

Accusations have come from mostly ruling party functionaries and supporters including other unlikely institutions such as State House.

According to the accusers, some civil servants are simply sabotaging government programmes with the aim of making the party in power fail to perform, hence, loose popularity among citizens.

The civil service is structured in a systematic way that it has layers, bands and hierarchy. At the apex of the civil service is the Secretary to Cabinet who is assisted by two deputies and permanent secretaries that are positioned in ministries and provincial administrations across the country. Permanent secretaries are assisted by principal officers such as directors. This category in the civil service constitutes what is known as senior management.

It is a known fact that when there was change of a political party in power in the August 2021 elections, there was re-alignment of senior management of the civil service. New Secretary to Cabinet, permanent secretaries and directors were appointed. As it stands today, over 90 per cent of the current crop of principal officers in the civil service, including foreign service, are appointees of the current government. What is also true about these appointees is that most of them came either directly from the party structures or are those that are considered to be in good standing with their appointing authorities, in other words, they are trustees of the party and the appointing authorities.

It follows then that if indeed there is failure in the civil service, this failure should be blamed on principal officers in senior management who include permanent secretaries and directors. It beats logic that employees in middle management and their juniors could attempt to sabotage government programmes as this category of employees is not in charge of programmes and resources to implement approved activities.

My observation is that accusations of sabotage show lack of understanding or indicate deep ignorance on the part of the accusers on how government systems work. Solutions to these unproductive accusations may include reviewing some of the policies that the party in government would desire to be implemented. Some of the policies could have been copied from other jurisdictions, as such, may not work or adapt to the local environment. This means the need to come up with home grown policies initiated by the need and citizens themselves especially the grassroots, not the boardroom decisions. Failure or lack of implementation may not necessarily be a problem of civil servants but policy makers. For example, the alleged failures of the health and agriculture sectors including the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), fuel prices and electricity outages can no way be blamed on the civil service. They border on policy matters.

Secondly, give civil servants the space to work independently and respect them as human beings first and family people. Those demeaning names used in referring to them will not solve the problem. If anything, it will make professional civil servants feel vulnerable to political attacks, alienated and demoralised. If civil servants in middle management and their juniors cannot be respected and trusted, let Cabinet Office disband the whole civil service and re-constitute it.

Thirdly, there is urgent need to stop appointing party cadres and supporters to senior civil service positions as most of these appointees do not have the requisites to occupy such positions. Such appointments are a recipe for failure as most of the appointees do not have the capacity or technical-know-how to understand complex government operations or indeed professionally supervise government activities without being acrimonious towards junior officers or without calling them names.

The author is a PhD candidate with the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and holds a Master’s Degree in Environment Society and Sustainability from the University of the Cape Town. He also holds qualifications in Journalism and International Relations.