The relationship between party and state in our post-colonial societies is premised on the form of democracy that the liberation movement has adopted.
Arising from this is the understanding that the state is, constitutionally, a nonpartisan instrument of society as a whole, pursuing a national democratic society.
It is a multiclass entity, and a contested terrain. The party exercises its electoral mandate through the government, which in turn leads the state.
That mandate is translated into state programmes through a hierarchy of legal instruments, ranging from the Constitution, to legislation, regulations and bylaws.
Through its government, the liberation party (if it wins elections) has the right – nay, the responsibility – to transform the inherited colonial state at the same time as it pursues programmes of social change.
But that relationship cannot be one of party directives being issued to state organs; nor can it be at the whim of the political leadership.
Transformation of the state includes the infusion within its agencies of a corps of cadres who are committed to fundamental transformation.
This applies to all centres of power, from the bureaucracy, to security agencies, to the judiciary, and to the very organs tasked with the promotion and protection of the Constitution.
But the manner in which this is done has to be clearly elaborated in legal prescripts. In other words, one cannot have some laissez-faire frolic in which comrades, friends and relatives are inserted into instruments of state while they have neither the expertise nor the potential to undertake such functions.
How posts in state institutions are advertised, the criteria for qualification, the composition of panels and the rationality of the final decisions – all these have to be open to all citizens and beyond reproach.
Institutions mandated to ensure professionalism of the public service (in South Africa’s case, the Public Service Commission) have to ensure that these principles are observed.
Nothing prevents inclusion in qualifying criteria issues to do with an appreciation, on the part of the candidates, of the transformative content of the Constitution as well as familiarity and comfort with the agenda being pursued by the party in office.
But attempts at rigging the system by imposing partisan candidates who do not meet set criteria are not only illegal, but also self-defeating.
In South Africa, various approaches have been tried in the past 22 years to ensure that these principles are observed to the letter.
But success in this regard is patchy. It is in recognition of weaknesses in this regard, that, in its current strategy and tactics document, the ANC asserts the following:
- The ANC should give strategic leadership to those of its cadres in institutions of government, through conferences, councils and branch general meetings. In this respect, it needs to act as the ultimate strategic “centre of power” for its members.
- To ensure that its strategic mandate is carried out, the ANC needs massively to strengthen its monitoring and evaluation capacity. This will ensure that cadres deployed in various capacities are able to improve their work in meeting set objectives. At the same time, these cadres should have sufficient space to exercise initiative within the strategic mandate rather than being subjected to micromanagement.
- Systems of information-sharing within leadership structures and across the organisation should afford those outside of government sufficient data to make strategic interventions. In the same measure, all cadres should apply themselves seriously to governance issues, practically to add strategic value to the work of government.
- In its conduct in relation to the state, the ANC should be guided by its own principles, and act within the framework of the national Constitution and relevant legislation. In this regard, it should manage the state as an organ of the people as a whole rather than a party political instrument.
These principles are meant to empower and, at same time, regulate that relationship between the party and its government, and ultimately the party and the state.
With regard to the latter, among the additional measures that have been introduced over the years are: according directors-general administrative responsibility over departmental establishments; preventing office bearers in political parties from holding administrative positions within at least local government structures; limiting the involvement of political principals in administrative appointments only to the three highest management levels; and so on.
However, many of these precepts have been observed in the breach.
The consequence of this, the National Planning Commission observed in its reports, is the tendency towards micromanagement of the bureaucracy, fraught executive management relations, regular and acrimonious departures of senior managers, and the like.
The Natonal Development Plan seeks to take this matter further by, for instance, advising that the process of appointing directors-general should be handled by a separate authority, and should reach the minister’s desk after, for example, three qualifying candidates have been identified for final selection.
This has been accepted by Cabinet; but enthusiasm for implementation has been poor, to put it mildly.
The desire to exercise full personal control is one of the reasons behind patchy performance in this regard. Of course, there may also be other less honourable intentions.
The issue of state-party relations also arises in the context of weakness that the ANC has characterised as ‘sins of incumbency’. How do liberation movements lose the sense of idealism that included a preparedness to pay the ultimate price? How insidious can sins of incumbency become? A few factors that relate to state-party relations deserve mention.
This broadly is what the liberation movement inherited; and in situations where transitions include the integration of old-order political and bureaucratic functionaries, the problem is multiplied manyfold.
At the psychological level, if the power wielded has massive implications for the citizen – individual or corporate – and state remuneration does not approximate the extent of the power, all manner of temptation is injected into the system, with “weak” personalities easily tempted.
For many, the rise into middle class is tenuous, dependent on party selection processes and continued employment in state institutions. In South Africa, the very nature of middle-class lifestyles is distorted by the presence of a large white community, social trendsetters whose position was earned through racial privilege. In trying to mimic white lifestyles, the emergent elite overextends itself and individuals are tempted to sustain newly acquired tastes through corrupt means.
Where corruptors and benefactors are criminally creative, blackmail – including through down payments that leave the beneficiary hopelessly entangled – also becomes the stock-in-trade.
There seems to be scant appreciation that instability in senior echelons of the public service is not in the interest of the political principal, the government and the party. It results in the disruption of implementation of programmes of transformation – the very success of which would be in the interest of a political principal’s career!
It is in fact the very antithesis of a developmental state – one of the basic attributes of which is a professional and stable bureaucracy – towards which the liberation movement aspires.
This is besides the effect that party political interference in institutions such as the police, the military and intelligence agencies has on these agencies, on the party itself and broadly on citizens’ rights.
In brief, the principles and transmission lines in state-party relations assume a variety of complex forms. At the centre of this is also the matter of the duality of the presidential position in South Africa’s Constitution – as head of state and head of government.
What the principles outlined above mean is that, as a “constitutional being by design … the quintessential commander in chief of state affairs and the personification of [the] nation’s constitutional project” – to quote the Constitutional Court – the president is expected to undertake duties as head of state in the interest and on behalf of the nation as a whole.
Netshitenzhe is executive director at Mistra. This is an edited extract from a lecture he gave this week