In an opinion piece in Business Times - "SA should emulate Singapore's rise" (September 27) - Jabulani Sikhakhane counsels South Africa to learn from Singapore's 50 years in transforming the civil service. While acknowledging that Singapore's democracy is different from ours, he indicates that they transformed the civil service by managing two competing policy objectives, namely, the creation of a professional and effective civil service and ensuring that its composition was representative of the local population.He also acknowledges that in the beginning, just like Singapore, South Africa did not sacrifice professionalism in favour of representivity, but of late that is what South Africa has been doing. He concludes by indicating that unlike Singapore's Public Service Commission (PSC), which is effective in the recruitment, selection and training of public servants, our PSC is ineffective.What Mr Sikhakhane has not indicated is that the ruling party of Singapore, the People's Action Party (PAP), under the authoritarian Lee Kuan Yew, was elected democratically in 1965 and used the powers of the state to reduce and almost eliminate political opposition.story_article_left1PAP used the Internal Security Act, which is almost akin to the infamous apartheid internal security act that was used to ban, marginalise and kill political activists in South Africa. Repression was used to create a climate of fear which resulted in people being too afraid to challenge the status quo, thus curtailing democratic life and civil society.Only sweetheart unions, such as the ones under apartheid before 1979, were allowed to operate, thus effectively ruling out strikes. The independent electoral commission was rendered ineffective by PAP, resulting in ineffectual opposition parties. PAP integrated itself with the state apparatus and as a result strategic appointments from among PAP members (what is known as cadre deployment in South Africa) were made easy.From this analysis, there are similarities between Singapore and apartheid South Africa. Definitely not what we want to learn from.With respect to the PSC, Mr Sikhakhane does not show the difference between our PSC and that of Singapore. The PSC of Singapore, just like those of Malaysia, Thailand, Japan and Taiwan, has powers to appoint and dismiss civil servants. The South African PSC does not have those powers. The power to appoint, train and dismiss is given to the executive authorities (the president, cabinet, premiers, ministers and members of executive councils). During the apartheid era, South Africa's PSC was just like Singapore's.In only 21 years, South Africa has achieved representivity, even though there are challenges of professionalism which are rigorously being addressed. As Mr Sikhakhane has indicated, according to the National Development Plan (NDP), "if we are to address the twin challenges of poverty and inequality, a state is needed that is capable of playing a transformative and developmental role". This state must have skilled professionals capable of delivering this vision.Our transformative and development agenda - found in a number of policy documents including the Freedom Charter, the Reconstruction and Development Programme, the Growth, Employment and Redistribution policy, the Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa, the New Growth Path and the NDP - is aimed at developing a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous South African society. Elements of this agenda are found in the Singapore model. Those are the ones from which we can learn.story_article_right2In celebrating its centenary in 2013, the PSC learnt from its colonial and apartheid history while mapping the way forward in building a capable state for the new South African developmental state. The follow-up was a conference with the theme "Building a Capable, Career Oriented and Professional Public Service to underpin a Capable and Developmental State in South Africa". Lessons from Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan, China, India, Brazil, Kenya and Botswana were learnt. The good practices that South Africa is learning from are based on democratic values and principles enshrined in our constitution.The authoritarian democracy of the "Asian Tigers", including Singapore, is not what we are interested in. South Africa wants to develop a prosperous society based on human dignity, freedom and human rights. We had enough of apartheid and we do not want to go back there, as DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard wants us to do.The Department of Public Service and Administration, the National School of Government and the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, together with the PSC, are seriously addressing the challenges of professionalising the public service and extending this professionalisation to state-owned enterprises and local government.The ANC's national general council will be tasked with discussing the issues, which are covered under the topic, "Legislature and Governance". The results of the NGC will go a long way to addressing the two competing policy objectives, namely, the creation of a professional and effective civil service and ensuring that its composition is representative of the country's population.Mabe is an ANC member of parliament and the chairperson of the portfolio committee on public service and administration..