Programme Director
Honorable MEC Mabuyakhulu
Honorable Ministers
The President and AAPAM Executive Committee Members
Excellencies, Ambassadors and High Commissioners
Distinguished delegates
Invited guests
Ladies and gentlemen
All Protocol observed
Let me join MEC Mabuyakhulu and the President of AAPAM Mr Sekhamane and add my voice in welcoming you to this beautiful country South Africa and the province of KwaZulu-Natal.
I have observed with interest the successful African Association for Public Administration and Management (AAPAM) Round Table Conferences. Allow me therefore, programme director, to take us through this fascinating array of themes that have guided AAPAM conferences for the past six years.
The theme for the 27th Round Table Conference held in Zambia was: Harnessing the Partnership of the Public and Non-State Sectors for Sustainable Development and Good Governance in Africa: Problems and the Way Forward
The theme for the 28th Round Table Conferences held in Tanzania was: Towards an Effective Delivery of Public Services in Africa
The theme for the 29th Round Table Conferences held in Swaziland was: Political and Managerial Leadership for Change and Development in Africa
The theme for the 30th Round Table Conferences held in Ghana was: Enhancing the Performance of the Public Service in a Developmental State
The theme for the 31st Round Table Conference held in Kenya was: The World Economic Crisis: Challenges to the African Public Administration Systems
The theme for today’s the 32nd, Round Table Conference is: Repositioning the African Public Services for the realization of National visions
Programme Director
At the centre of all the themes are issues central to public service administration and accountability. We are here today talking about issues at the centre to AAPAM. I want to agree with and applaud this conference theme for what it says to our public/civil servants.
The theme directs us as policy makers and practitioners to reposition African Public Services for the realisation of national visions.
Repositioning means that we as African scholars, practitioners and indeed politicians acknowledge that the way we are structured does not necessarily, position us for the developmental agenda we seek to advance for the betterment of our people’s lives.
Continentally our forbearers like Nkwame Nkurumah, Haile Selassie, Nelson Mandela as well as our current crop of leaders have consistently declared that African governments will make sense if they are designed to serve the people they purport to have been created for.
The current leadership has reorganised the Organisation of African Unity into the African Union thus giving it impetus for 21st century challenges facing the African continent.
Central to this reorganisation and directly linked to AAPAM’s 2010 conference theme is the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). The APRM is Africa’s pyramidal policy instrument in the area of promoting and institutionalising good governance in Africa by Africans.
The APRM creates an opportunity for African governments to engage with issues of governance as peers and based on broad thematic areas.
These thematic areas provide a foundation for both repositioning and national visioning.
It is now becoming inconceivable for an African government to conceptualise its democratic nature and character outside the APRM thematic areas of:
- Democracy and political governance
- Economic governance and management
- Corporate governance
- Socio-economic development.
These thematic areas provide a compelling reason for the repositioning of the public service to serve the emerging developmental agenda and paradigm.
On democracy and political governance the APRM directs participating governments to focus on matters such as the involvement of civil society in policy making, corruption, any form of chauvinism that restricts access to services by communities, and how states are institutionalising democratic practice.
You may want to note that South Africa on this thematic area has thus far demonstrated its capacity for peaceful democratic change in the midst of politically charged situations.
The concretising stability of non-partisan public service delivery is a development of note that also yields new demands of further repositioning for developmental state entrenchment.
On economic governance and management the APRM process directs participating governments to address issues such as unemployment, service delivery capacity of the state as well as how a country’s economy is integrated within its economic region.
In this thematic area the South African public service has constantly been sensitised on the regionalisation of policies and alignment of in-country policies with those of neighboring states and countries within the political and economic region of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Policy instruments that have thus far found regionalisation expression include competitions policy, consumer protection as well as company legislations.
These are all designed to create general uniformity in how the region goes about doing business and protecting the regional consumer.
On corporate governance the APRM seeks to standardise on how companies and other institutions that are entrusted to governance structures are managed for and on behalf of stakeholders that wield some form of interest.
In this area there is a general repositioning of public entities to operate within the private sector generated voluntary instruments that have legal implications such as the King III Code.
Programme Director
The APRM is an instrument that requires of nation states a commitment to both participate and implement. As we congregate here, there are about 30 African countries that have voluntarily acceded to the APRM process.
It is worth noting that of the countries that have acceded, the ones that have since been peer reviewed have thus far registered a marked improvement in how they govern their people. This confirms that we survive to assist one another and that no-one is an Island. It is only a matter of time that these countries improvements in governance will soon be reflected in the economic growth pattern and therefore improved standard of living.
Programme Director
As we congregate here, there are about 30 African countries that have voluntarily acceded to the APRM process. It is also worth noting that the APRM is civil society friendly and in some instances it has been found to be civil society driven and directed. AAPAM as an organ of civil society with a continental reach has a very strategic role to play in shaping and directing the public service repositioning issues within the APRM contextual framework.
It is in the professionalisation nature of AAPAM and other in-country professional associations that AAPAM can create a niche for itself to both direct and influence the public service repositioning processes required by the APRM process. The think-tank capability of AAPAM positions it as an association that can muster from amongst its members an intellectual repository that can provide an originative historical context for public service repositioning in Africa. It is in the indigenisation potential of AAPAM that Africa can be relieved of policy directives that still have a colonizing sub-context disguised as ‘international benchmarks’.
Programme Director
As Minister of Public Service and Administration and serving in a number of public service related structures in the continent I want to submit here and now that AAPAM will be failing the continent if it does not create a public service cadreship ready to face the developmental needs of the continent.
Repositioning the public service for national visioning will require from Africa and therefore AAPAM and other professional association a public service cadre that has the following attributes:
Breaking new ground through innovations for solutions
- Inspiring success through self motivation and motivating others
- Raising standards to world-class level
- Introducing turnaround strategies to salvage situations
- Making a difference in the lives of the people through running an extra mile and sacrifice for others
- Ensuring success through collective leadership
- On board and own processes and initiatives
- International exposure and open for influence.
The development of these attributes would require an African network of like-minded public administration and management practitioners and scholars. It is therefore not only a responsibility for AAPAM to be at the forefront of organising these individuals across the African continent.
AAPAM would need to review its central role in the African Public Administration and Management field in a way that makes it to have a continental character that unites and integrates in-country best practices.
It is clearer to me that only AAPAM has the capability to create organic units of scholarship and practice with all African Countries. This would mean that AAPAM should recognise all in-country associations as potential members of the continental body.
If we are to bring African thoughts together around issues of Public Administration and Management, we should do so within the context of peer participating, influence and support.
I hope this conference will review the organisational character of AAPAM for it to claim representativity of all African countries; this is an area I will be raising with African Ministers of Public Service and Administration.
Programme director, as I conclude I want to remind us that African Public Service repositioning is an assignment that has now found an intellectual and practitioner home in AAPAM.
Ours is an African task that requires African solutions and African Unity.
I wish you all the best in your deliberations
Thank you.
