Incapacitated by incompetents

Jonathan Jansen: How did competence become a bad word? When last did you hear a South African talk about anyone as being competent?

I have not for a long time heard that word used to describe a politician - or any public servant, for that matter. Competence is an achievement that is more likely to lose you your job than keep it.

This is the problem of Pravin Gordhan now, as it was of Trevor Manuel then.

You do your job well, like preventing our economy from becoming a Third World basket-case, and some group or other will line you up for public execution. They will not accuse you of incompetence because it is obviously not the problem; they will call you "neo-liberal" (trust me, they do not know what that word means) or "counter-revolutionary" (though they are certainly not revolutionary), but the goal is to strike down any appearance of competence at the job.

It is why Mavuso Msimang failed to transform Home Affairs - it is not simply that incompetence was deeply embedded in the organisational culture of this notorious department, it is that the incompetence was protected, nourished and defended by the powerful when Msimang had the temerity to try and transform this business.

Let's be frank: too many people depend on a corrupt and inefficient Home Affairs for a newcomer to demand competence and take away a steady stream of income from the parasites inside and outside the department who feed daily on this rotten carcass with the homely name.

My dictionary is funny. It defines competence as "the quality of being adequately or well-qualified physically and intellectually". Oh boy.

The mind drifts involuntarily to the police force. Did you see that video-clip of policemen, led by their commander-in-chief, chasing some criminals down a field somewhere in the beloved country? There they were, protruding stomachs bouncing along ahead of the rest of the body.

The question that crossed every thinking mind was: Who will get there first, the stomach or the policeman?

Don't get me wrong, I'm no Twiggy myself. But then again, I am not running (oops) after criminals.

"Well-qualified physically", my foot. We appoint policemen to the job precisely because there is no qualification required, physical or intellectual.

The truth is, you need not be competent to find a job in South Africa. You need the right political credentials. You need the right networks. It helps if you have the right colour - the darker the skin, the better. And it helps if you make the right noises, show up at the right funerals and embrace the right scoundrels. But whatever you do, do not - under any circumstances - demonstrate competence; it could cost you your deployment.

We created an academic industry as progressive critics of the practices of the Afrikaner nationalists or the IFP ethnicists for linking employment to ideological or tribal loyalty in the bad old days. Now we are doing the same thing, with the same results.

When last did you sit on an interview panel for a job in the new South Africa and hear someone ask the obvious question: are you competent to do the job?

You will notice that people sneer when you arrive early for work or leave late. What is she trying to prove? Why keep serving people when they stand in a long queue in the blazing sun? It's your lunch time, after all! Bugger the people.

When I served as Dean at the University of Pretoria, most of our academics were housed in one building on the Education Campus.

Late at night, there would be about 10 office lights burning. I discovered that the people who worked late all got their doctorates overseas. They, too, were South African, black and white, but they had learnt to labour at a different pace, to put the work ahead of the timetable. They were the most productive scholars, people who hated mediocrity and were proud to be competent. Competence does not have a colour. It is a truly non-racial attribute of the human condition.

Look carefully at the collapse of basic services in the municipalities around the country. Look at the mushrooming of potholes that sink our provincial and local roads.

Look at how dirt stacks up even in all areas with or without strikes. The mess is quite simply a consequence of employing (or deploying) incompetent people. We all suffer when this happens, especially the poor.

Way forward? Make competence a respectable word once again! Be blind to politics or pigmentation in making appointments. Build capacity from the ground up, starting with youth. Send the right signals from the top down.

Begin by firing some senior politicians for non-delivery. Then watch this country flourish.