The testimony was dry, technical and utterly consequential. One after another, they approached the virtual podium, union leaders, policy architects, ethicists, and a lone ordinary citizen. Their audience was a panel of South African lawmakers from the National Council of Provinces (NCOP). Their subject, a piece of legislation so dense it rarely makes headlines, yet so vital it could determine the future of the nation’s democracy.
For hours on July 22, 2025, the NCOP Select Committee on Cooperative Governance and Public Administration listened to submissions on the Public Service Amendment Bill (PSAB).
The bill promises a "surgical" separation of politicians from bureaucrats by transferring the power to hire and fire senior officials from ministers to professional administrators. But is such a clean cut possible? According to public service scholar and New South Institute (NSI) director, Ivor Chipkin, the answer is no. "It never can be," he stated, cautioning that the legislation is only "the beginning of the process" and leaves key questions like how director generals should be appointed unresolved.
The NCOP scene lacked the drama of a corruption inquiry or the fury of a protest. But for those who could decipher the legal jargon, this was the grinding, unglamorous work of rescuing a state from itself.
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It was also deeply personal. The hearings were, in part, a response to national traumas born in places like the Northern Cape Mental Health Hospital in Kimberley, where patients shivered in the dark after cable theft cut electricity for months. There, 33-year-old Tshepo Mdimbaza was found dead in his bed, skin cold from hypothermia, an empty oxygen tank standing nearby. “They died in the cold and the dark,” a nurse whispered. Her words gave civic fury a constitutional anchor.
“This is about entrenching democracy,” said Mxolisi Kaunda, the ANC chair of the committee, opening the hearing. “It is about ensuring that the public has a hand in shaping the laws that govern them.”
The Bill’s Promise and Paradox
The bill, which passed the National Assembly with rare cross-party support in February 2024, represents the most significant attempt in a generation to reverse the decay that followed the ANC’s once-celebrated “cadre deployment” system. In the 1990s, this practice of placing loyalists in key government posts helped build capable administrations in institutions like the National Treasury and SARS. But under Jacob Zuma, cadre deployment degenerated into patronage, hollowing out ministries and state-owned enterprises into vehicles for looting, as chronicled in the Zondo Commission’s judicial inquiry into state capture.
Now, in a striking political paradox, the ANC the very architect of cadre deployment has, as part of the new Government of National Unity (GNU), joined its governing partners, including the Democratic Alliance (DA) to champion a bill to end it. The unlikely alliance underscores a shared recognition, without professionalising the public service, no policy promise can be delivered.
Yet the path is fraught with contradictions. Civil society hailed the bill’s intent, but warned that without stronger checks, the cure could create a new disease: a bureaucratic aristocracy unmoored from political accountability.
The Human Cost
To understand the stakes of the PSAB, one must first see what it seeks to fix. The Kimberley hospital deaths were not isolated tragedies, they were symptoms of a hollowed state. Cable theft left wards powerless for nearly a year, sewage seeped from showers, patients shivered under thin blankets.
Weeks before Mdimbaza’s death, Cyprian Mohoto, 36, had succumbed to untreated pneumonia. Both men became symbols of how cadre deployment’s decay made governance itself lethal.
The legal architecture enabled it. Section 3 of the Public Service Act of 1994 vested ultimate power over appointments and operations in the President, Ministers, and MECs. Unless they explicitly delegated authority, senior administrators were powerless. That imbalance, long warned about by the National Planning Commission, created the dysfunctional “political-administrative interface” at the heart of South Africa’s crisis.
History’s Weight: From State-Builders to State Capture
Initially, cadre deployment was a project of empowerment. “You have a big drive for empowerment because the black majority has been left behind,” explained Jan Naudé de Villiers, chairperson of the Portfolio Committee. The mechanism, the ANC Cadre Deployment Committee, ensuring “your highest placed officials in government are all ANC cadres.”
But the erosion accelerated under Zuma. During his tenure, South Africa cycled through 126 directors-general and acting director generals, many chosen for loyalty over competence. “What we lived through was not just inefficiency but the deliberate destruction of professionalism,” said Chipkin. He calls the bill South Africa’s “second chance.”
The Zondo Commission laid bare the cost, Eskom, Transnet, and municipalities gutted by loyalists unfit for their roles. In 2024, the ANC lost its national majority for the first time. The GNU’s shared “National Intent” made professionalisation a cornerstone. The PSAB is its most concrete manifestation.
A Chorus of Civil Society
The July hearings revealed democracy in noisy action. Research institutes, unions, and citizens converged on a consensus, shift power to administrators, yes, but not without safeguards.
“The essential task,” one expert summarised, “is to insulate public administration from inappropriate political interference, while ensuring it remains responsive to democratic mandates.” The common proposal, independent panels to vet candidates, with ministers choosing from shortlists of qualified professionals.
Without such checks, warned the Ethics Institute, politicians might still “tweak the rules to reward allies.”
Yoliswa Makhasi -A Constitutional Imperative
Former DPSA director-general Yoliswa Makhasi and now with NSI, cut through the technocratic jargon. “This is about separating political and administrative roles to promote efficiency, accountability, and neutrality in governance,” she testified. For her, professionalisation was “non-negotiable for a capable and developmental state.”
Her words reframed reform not as a bureaucratic adjustment, but a constitutional covenant with citizens.
COSATU’s Conditional Backing
The trade union COSATU, long an ANC ally, offered hard-won support. Parliamentary coordinator Matthew Parks praised the clause banning officials from doing business with the state: “a critical step to cleanse the cancers of corruption.”
But COSATU fought to narrow the ban on political office to Heads of Department and deputies, calling the original draft’s blanket prohibition “a constitutional overreach.” They also railed against grotesque wage disparities: “Nurses, teachers, police officers, work under very trying conditions, while some senior managers are paid more than the President.” For COSATU, professionalisation must mean fairness, not just competence.
The Citizen’s Voice
Amid institutional voices, Thulani Nzuza, a lone citizen, made a plea for restorative justice. Permanent bans on officials dismissed for misconduct, he argued, risked being more punitive than constitutional. “Laws should be biased towards restoration than retributive,” he said, noting even criminals are eligible for parole.
The DPSA responded that Regulation 61 already empowers reinstatement after misconduct dismissal, providing “minimum periods after which employees may be re-appointed” .
The Government Responds
The DPSA and Parliamentary legal advisers pushed back on civil society’s critiques, offering clarifications that grounded the debate.
On executive authority ambiguity, DPSA stressed that the Bill deliberately redefines roles: “The definition of ‘executive authority’ has been deliberately amended to clarify that the President and the Premier are the EAs in respect of HODs removing misinterpretation” .
On checks and balances, they acknowledged concerns but warned against constitutional overreach, PSC involvement in appointments would “conflict with their oversight responsibilities”, though new regulations would strengthen safeguards .
On devolution of powers, DPSA cited the National Development Plan: “The devolution of administrative powers to HoDs is intended to unburden the executive authority to focus only on strategic issues and policy direction” .
On political rights, DPSA aligned the Bill with court precedent, bans limited to HODs and direct reports, avoiding unconstitutional overreach .
These clarifications underscored a central tension: balancing independence with accountability.
Contradictions and Dissent
Yet even as Parliament embraced reform, the ANC’s ambivalence showed. In Gaborone, Bathabile Dlamini urged Botswana’s ruling coalition never to abandon cadre deployment: “There is no way unless the party wants to serve for only one term.”
ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula defended his party’s support to the bill as he indicated that they voted for reform: “Nothing has changed. We go as a collective.”
Meanwhile, the Western Cape Government, under DA control, filed a constitutional warning. Director-General Harry Malila argued the Bill undermines MECs’ accountability: “It will detract from their ability to account for delivery and risks weakening democratic oversight as enshrined in section 125 of the Constitution.”
The province, boasting clean audits, insisted its model already professionalised the public service by balancing political leadership with administrative professionalism.
Chipkin warned of a different risk, a “deep state” of unaccountable bureaucrats. “The cure for patronage could breed a new pathology.”
The Global Mirror
South Africa’s gamble defies global trends. In the US, allies of Donald Trump push “Schedule F”, a proposal to replace thousands of federal employees with political appointees a revival of spoils politics.
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Recent research from UC Berkeley found that narratives of bureaucratic inefficiency are exaggerated. Professor Steven Callander concluded: “The push for politicisation often creates a whole set of problems on the other side.”
Elsewhere in Africa, Rwanda’s disciplined bureaucracy underpins rapid development, though under authoritarian rule. Botswana offers bureaucratic stability. Kenya oscillates between reform and relapse.
As de Villiers put it: “Do you want a functional country where services are delivered or a state where only an elite has access to riches?”
“While some nations embrace a new spoils system, South Africa is trying to end its failed experiment with Tammany Hall politics,” said a Western diplomat in Pretoria. “The world is watching.”
The Implementation Abyss
Passing the Bill may prove the easy part. Enforcing it in a culture of factionalism is another.
“You can design all the rules you want, but if politicians can tweak them to reward allies, nothing changes,” warned Kris Dobie of the Ethics Institute.
South Africa has had sound procurement laws for decades, weak enforcement enabled state capture. The Bill’s success will hinge on whether Parliament, the Public Service Commission, and the Presidency can enforce accountability against entrenched political habits.
A Second Chance
The People’s Bill, as some civil society actors call it, is not a silver bullet. But it is a shot at redemption.
“This is our opportunity to finally have a public service that meets the needs of all South Africans, not just the connected few,” Makhasi urged. “We cannot afford to waste it.”
That hearing on July 22 was just the beginning. The NCOP's Select Committee on Cooperative Governance and Public Administration has now embarked on a rigorous schedule to process the Bill, along with other critical legislation like the Public Administration Management Amendment Bill. A detailed programme for September and October 2025 outlines a series of meetings where departmental responses will be heard, negotiating mandates from provinces will be tabled, and final amendments will be debated, aiming for the adoption of Committee Reports by mid-October.
For Tshepo Mdimbaza, Cyprian Mohoto, and countless others failed by the state, it is already too late. For the living, this bill may be democracy’s second chance.
