In retrospect, South Africa's electricity delivery in the last 15 years is most curious. Several times during this period, the country has experienced the worst stages of load-shedding and energy supply instability.
In a post-2017 period, acutely in 2023, exceptions have been the rule. There is renewed vigour to restore the electricity supply sector to stability. The country is on its way to fewer supply interruptions required for economic growth and investment.
No less notable than the primary process re-engineering interventions at Eskom has been the infusion of a new, able, and somewhat strategic c-suite anchored by executive authority vibrancy of a sector-respected and Ramaphosa-appointed energy minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa. Of all the variables associated with the almost total collapse of the national electricity grid and across value chain challenges, a recalibration of c-suite leadership made the difference.
From board chairperson Mteto Nyathi, to CEO Dan Marokane, to all other heads of critical divisions, and the remarkable heads of power stations, four of whom are women: umbokoto. As a group of people connected to one another by skill, grit, attributes, knowledge, and the mission of keeping South Africa's lights and industrial machines on, the Eskom leadership presides over a tribe we must celebrate for letting the nation thrive. Their tribalism is just about a good one for our wellbeing.
Without reflecting on earlier poor leadership choices and decisions, it is not difficult to realise how past national policy inconsistencies and the preoccupation with complying with disguised structural adjustment programmes packaged as just transition initiatives have stolen development hours and years from “we the people.”
The primacy of electricity supply to “we the people” got replaced by the exigencies of our commitments to a global carbon emissions reduction agenda. As it would be, as a nation, we have learnt from the experience of countries that entered just transition programmes without decimating their energy supply. This learning was a function of the commissioned competence to lead Eskom.
This national electricity recovery experience exposes truths about the existence of talent and competence in South Africa, with which other areas of dysfunction could be fixed. Applied correctly and given space, the country's engineering prowess can catapult the competitive development trajectory.
Besides the dangerous preoccupation of those in political leadership to claim technical knowledge in areas in which they are not qualified, South Africa must try to discover and assign the element of truth in each national experience and each divergent trend of opinion to its due place. We must elevate the respect of professionals and see whether the main lines of practical policy implementation will emerge. The vocation of politics should recede to its function of translating interests as the currency of politics into policies professionals must, and if lawful and constitutional, loyally execute within the means available.
Given the competence of the inaugural political leadership of democratic South Africa, most of whom were not necessarily politicians but anti-apartheid activists swallowed into politics by the exigencies of fighting apartheid, the country made the grievous error of decimating the significance of professionals as the substrate of public service and state formation at the altar of otherwise low barriers of entry vocation of public representative-based politics. This anomaly has seen the usurping of technical prowess required in certain public sector positions and roles to create space for the “dream deferred” brigade of politicians committed to “interests” emanating from shared, or otherwise ignorance of what an economy as sophisticated as the one South Africa needs to stay competitive.
The winds of change at Eskom and other areas, like what is being reported in KwaZulu-Natal crime-fighting initiatives driven by a career police commissioner, the border management authority, and “tyre-hit-the-road” experienced officials in pockets of excellence all over South Africa must be curated for scaling across sectors.
Less choked by the GNU context, President Ramaphosa should now accelerate the commissioning of appropriate talent into the public sector
The GNU spirit should be exploited to explore new areas where professionals could be commissioned. In local government, for instance, a policy must be determined to return the c-suite roles of Town Secretary, City or Town Planning, Town Engineering, and Treasury. In municipalities, a state's true nature and its government meet society; the household experience defines the stability of a democratic order.
The most significant and instructive event in a post-de Ruyter Eskom experience is a renewed commitment by home-grown competence and leadership to take up its rightful place in areas of engineering, commerce, management and leadership, and modern political leadership that does not feed on the belief that South Africa does not have talent. Less choked by the GNU context, President Ramaphosa should now accelerate the commissioning of appropriate talent into the public sector.
The brute truth is, notwithstanding our discontent about the South African education system and its challenges of producing “some” of the skills the economy requires, there are scaffolds of talent we can stand on to build. In our diverse nature, we have all been trained to love the implementation muscle of our development needs. Nevertheless, we need to supplement the doing more with national interest narrative approaches from history and the qualitative methods of other vocational requirements, especially politics.
As we open space for professionals to take charge of executing the lawful policies of the government of the day, there is extraordinarily little acknowledgment in conventional politics of the predictable (whether “rational” or “behavioural”) adjustments politicians will have to make in response to changes that might be misconstrued as intended to constrain their actions.
The professionalisation winds of change drive the continuing transformations of the public administration and management and are, paradoxically, making our increasingly politicians-run world “a politiciocracy”, ever less mechanistic and predictable.
Equally, professionals have yet to succeed in one important lesson from recent experience. That is the need for a science that can alter South Africa to engage with itself, participate in debate and promote public conversation about what politicians should be doing to make their professional vocations meaningful without being a professional liability.
The tracks dealing with capable states in the National Dialogue will hopefully engage on this matter. Otherwise, we will again be on a “umxoxo” journey.
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