Closing address by Dr Chana Pilane-Majake, MP, Deputy Minister for the Public Service and Administration at the BRICS Conference on Governance and Public Administration Reform, University Of Pretoria
Programme Director
Members of the diplomatic community
Partners from the BRICS countries
Deputy Chairperson and Commissioners of the South African Public Service Commission
Directors-General, heads of state entities and senior public officials
Members of the academia
Esteemed guests, speakers and participants present here today as well as participants on the virtual platform from South Africa and around the world.
Programme director, allow me to firstly thank all of you for your participation and attendance of this BRICS 2023 Conference. Indeed, it was our pleasure hosting you over the three days amid very stimulating intellectual debate. We are pleased to have hosted delegates from across the country and the world. This has indeed lived up to its expectations of an international conference on governance and public administration governance in the context of BRICS countries.
I have been reliable informed that the conference received insightful and stimulating papers from more than 50 scholars, academics, and practitioners from BRICs bloc governments, schools of government, higher education institutions and related countries. I am pleased that the National School of Government of South Africa is partnering with the University of Pretoria to peer-review all the papers, which will be published. For this, I congratulate all of you and look forward to receiving my print copy.
We must express appreciation to the University of Pretoria, and the Acting Vice-Chancellor, Prof Carolina Koornhof for their hospitality in hosting the conference. Thank you, and we hope that the university will continue partnering with us. Once again, I wish to re-iterate that the significance of BRICS partnership in supporting South Africa and the African continent’s journey towards economic recovery post-COVID is paramount. Within BRICS, Africa will also rise. The Africa we want. For this reason, I wish to acknowledge the BRICS partners, their messages of support and ongoing partnership with
the National School of Government.
I am also pleased with the partnership with the OECD, from whom we received an insightful presentation on the future of schools of government. This remains ever so important in the global context of public sector reforms and in particular the future of the public service.
This conference provided a platform for discussion on matters that are key for the BRICS bloc, which relate to urban green development, energy renewal, disaster and risk management. This remains crucial for the BRICS countries and the African continent.
We must continue to strive towards building accountable, ethical, cable developmental public service in our countries to realize our developmental goals and decisively deal with corruption in our respective countries. Also Professionalisation and ethical conduct in the public sector is key, Most Importantly consequence management must be possible – as has been raised in the deliberations.
Going forward, I urge all of you to engage with the papers presented to draw lessons from successes and failures of our governments and approaches adopted in making our respective countries more responsive and agile to the needs of our people.
As we conclude the conference, I wish our international guests well in your travel back home and hope that your stay in our country was a hospitable. I do believe that this pre-summit conference was a success and has laid a good ground for further engagements at the BRICS Summit that is toheld in South Africa in August 2023.
Honourable guests, I declare the Conference closed pending announcements
I thank you.
