G Fraser-Moleketi: Presidential Strategic Leadership Development
Programme (PSLDP) 2nd Graduation Ceremony

27 February 2006

Campus Rector, North West University (Potchefstroom Campus), Prof. Annette
Combrink
Campus Rector, North West University ( Mafikeng Campus), Prof. Dan Kgwadi
Director-General of SAMDI, Mr. Bobby Soobrayan
Deputy Directors-General SAMDI, Prof. Stephen Hendricks and Mr. Rufus
Mmutlana
Acting Dean, Faculty of Arts, Prof. Attie de Lange
And all dignitaries present here today and all protocol observed.

It is an honour and opportunity to be here, at the second graduation
ceremony for the Presidential Strategic Leadership Development Programme. This
is an important event and for us to honour 94 senior public servants who have
embraced the challenge issued by the President when he called for "the
mobilisation of the public sector to speed up social transformation" in order
to efficiently and effectively serve the citizens of our country and to ensure
a better life for all the people of South Africa.

You have done this through devoting the time and energy that it takes to
achieve a qualification of this nature, in the critical area of public service
leadership. Prof Combrink referred to the fact that there were a number of
additional hours spent in order to make this possible.

I would like to quote Prof. Demitrios Argyriades, who served as a member of
the UN Economic and Social Committee, and currently serving in various other
capacities, when he said in 1999 that "several meetings of major international
organizations have focused on the importance of redesigning the state and local
government for the tasks of the 21st century. Enhancing the prestige,
performance and professionalism of public servants is part of this
problematique. It has come to be perceived as an essential prerequisite for
sustainable development and progress on the road to democratisation."

Prof. Argyriades went on to say that: "Re-professionalisation of the public
service encompasses two facets: One addresses the competence base, the skills
and knowledge required in the performance of public service tasks; the other
redefines the values, attitudes and behaviour that make up the profile of an
effective and dedicated public servant in a contemporary democracy".

For us as a democracy, these words are pertinent. They remind us of the need
to recognise those senior public servants who have re-sharpened their
management and leadership skills, and who are building capacity that will
assist us in purging the vestiges of poor service delivery, inefficient systems
and corruption. They have acquired the skills that will enable them to build a
proud and professional public service, which we need to serve the interests of
our developmental state.

As we look at the 2014 vision that we've set for ourselves, the current
focus on the Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (Asgisa), the
challenges entering the second democratic elections at the Local Government
Level, clearly the challenges are enormous. Those two requirements identified
by Professor Argyriades are pertinent in taking forward what we need to ensure,
in facilitating a cadreship in the Public Service that is equipped to take
those challenges forward.

Professor Argyriades, in a very different publication, when referring to the
Millennium Declaration and the implications for management at national and
international levels, looked at values in public service management. He said:
"The importance of professionalism in all it's key dimensions: Deep knowledge
born of study and broad progressive experience; high level skills developed
through consistent practice over time; high ethical behaviour which flows from
the internalisations of public service values; commitment to the common good;
tolerance for ambiguity; objectivity; respect for the truth and independence
and judgment coupled with accountability."

Again, these words are pertinent, not only to the graduates here this
afternoon, but to the public service as a whole in South Africa and actually
the Public Service globally, because we need to ensure that we do develop the
deep knowledge required to ensure that we are able to respond to the enormous
challenges that we find confronting us in our places of work.

Because the Public Service is not simply a bureaucracy where you can push
around paper, we face greater complexity through the networks with which we
need to intervene and interact, especially at the levels which you find
yourselves. We need to ensure that there is an internalisation of public
service values where we see ourselves as serving the people, wherever they find
themselves, recognising the diversity in service delivery and the diversity of
the people that we serve and a country like South Africa is a country that is
clearly cognisant of diversity.

This graduation results from our proud partnership for capacity development
between the South African Management Development Institute (SAMDI) and the
North West University ; a partnership which reflects the best features of
academic excellence uniting with the need to improve performance in the public
sector, the professionalism that we need. It is partnerships like these, where
a government department, which bears the statutory mandate to build the
capacity of the state through human and institutional development programmes,
collaborates with an institute of higher learning with the requisite ability to
harness knowledge and information, which will take us forward in our quest to
"maximise people development, management and empowerment through quality skills
development to accelerate transformation and service delivery that will benefit
the people of South Africa".

Entry into the ranks of Senior Management in the Public Sector is an
achievement characterised by performance success and a particular ethos that
displays strong leadership and a firm commitment to bettering the lives of all
South Africans. It was this view of senior management that was encapsulated in
our President's vision for the Presidential Strategic Leadership Development
Programme (PSLDP), when he launched it six years ago; it remains the core theme
underpinning the learning in the programme. The South African Management
Development Institute has made it their business to understand the challenges
that managers have to grapple with when performing their duties in the public
service, and has fed this information into the design of the PSLDP. These
challenges include:

* Responding to complex citizen expectations;

* Optimal utilisation of scarce resources in terms of Human Capital,
financial and technological infrastructure in the remote and suburban areas of
our country. High performance expectancy despite scarce resources;

* Changing employee profiles and expectations;

* South Africa 's newly defined role on the African continent;

* International agreements;

* Interactions with a global society, e.g. foreign policies and foreign
trade;

* Integration of the three spheres of government; looking at forming a
single public service.

* The changing nature of work, including the use of technology; and Private
/ Public partnerships.

* Transformation initiatives, such as outsourcing and employment equity and
diversity.

The PSLDP is further based on the SMS Competency Framework that was designed
by the Department for Public Service and Administration. Since its launch in
July 2000, 3 026 individual learners attended selected, or all eight modules in
a concerted effort to upgrade their individual proficiency levels. We are
particularly proud of the increasing number of women leaders who are going
through the programme - they are laying the foundation for a much more gender
equitable public service, and we salute your achievements here today. We salute
you particularly for the standard you are setting for our sisters at all levels
of the public service.

The PSLDP reflects cutting edge knowledge and skills related to public
service management and leadership. It is imperative that the PSLDP remains at
the cutting edge technology and skills in order to be responsive to public
service challenges.

We are experiencing a re-awakening or renaissance in the full knowledge that
once Africa was the leading civilization. We have records to show that. Part of
these records is found in Timbuktu in Mali . Let me share a glimpse of this
proud history with you as captured by a journalist for the National Geographic
News in 2003. "Since the 12th century, accompanying the camel caravans, rode
the intrepid scholars of Islamic learning, bringing with them over time
hundreds of thousands of manuscripts. These bound texts highlighted the great
teachings of Islam during the middle ages. These sacred manuscripts covered an
array of subjects: astrology, medicine, mathematics, chemistry, judicial law,
government and Islamic conflict resolution. Islamic study during this period of
human history, when the intellectual evolution had stalled in the rest of
Europe , was growing, evolving and breaking new ground in the fields of
science, mathematics, astronomy, law and philosophy within the Muslim
world.

By the 1300s the "Ambassadors of Peace" centred around the University of
Timbuktu, Gao, and Djenne, helping to serve as a model of peaceful governance
throughout an often conflict-riddled tribal region. At its peak, over 2500
students attended the University of Timbuktu ".

The issue of skills development and innovation in the public sector has
never been more important than it is today. The imperatives of Government's
Programme of Action demand a level of capacity that is commensurate with the
scope and challenges associated with its effective implementation. At the
present time, when the government allocation of financial resources and the
finalisation of priority setting, appear to have advanced beyond the capability
of certain parts of the state to deliver, it becomes clear that the formation
and outcomes of relevant skills formation are vital to the success of
Government's development agenda in the second decade of freedom. In public
services across the world, the increasing complexity of both policy-making and
administrative processes, as well as the erosion of human resources capacity to
carry out core functions, is making it very difficult for [governments] across
the world to implement the goals of reducing poverty and promoting sustainable
human development, as emphasised in the Millennium Development Goals". In South
Africa , we are determined to accelerate capacity – and the graduates that you
see here today are at the forefront of that reversal.

The achievement of the Millennium Development Goals remains at the forefront
of our national policy. As Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General said in
response questions about the achievability of the eight United Nations
Millennium Goals: "We will have time to reach the Millennium Development Goals
– worldwide and in most, or even all, individual countries – but only if we
break with business as usual. We cannot win overnight. Success will require
sustained action across the entire decade between now and the deadline. It
takes time to train the teachers, nurses and engineers; to build the roads,
schools and hospitals; to grow the small and large businesses able to create
the jobs and income needed. So we must start now. And we must do more than
double global development assistance over the next few years. Nothing less will
help to achieve the Goals."

There are certain areas of South Africa that we have met the Millennium
development goals and surpassed them. But in line with this, it cannot be
business as usual and our desire to break with business as usual, ASGISA is on
the government agenda. As you leave here this afternoon, we expect you to be
pioneers that will break with business as usual and go and make a huge
difference in your area of work and there has got to be a ripple effect across
the Public Service in this regard. If not, we would feel like that we have not
benefited from an investment that you have made in furthering your knowledge
base and your education. So prove that you can make that difference.

Less than a month ago, I indicated in the Parliamentary media briefing that
the Governance and Administration Cluster will focus, in the coming year, on
addressing those factors that are militating against successful skills
formation and the elimination of skills shortages in the public sector. The
greatest hereof is probably the fact that training is often of doubtful
relevance, rarely focused on carry through impact, rarely accompanied by
post-course support and implementation; and often facilitated or taught by
people who have very limited understanding of the public sector.

I deliberately made this generalization then, as I do today; In support of
these challenges the South African Management Development Institute has
recently commenced with the drafting of a new strategy to accelerate capacity
development, in response to ensuring that we meet the required challenges of
the developmental state; and this comprehensive strategy aims to improve the
quality, cost-effectiveness and impact of training on improving service
delivery. It's comprised of the following six components; I do want to state
today that we will have an engagement with universities in the forth coming two
weeks on this particular draft strategy.

* Firstly, increasing supply-side measures in the labour market to ensure a
better quality of entrant into public service;

* Secondly, furthering equity and laying a base for future skills
acquisition by implementing an accelerated programme for the development of
basic skills;

* Thirdly supporting enhanced performance of existing public servants by
offering programmes ranging from junior managerial levels at one end of the
spectrum to world class personally-tailored development and support to the very
highest levels of Government; and the PSLDP will remain the flagship within
that, because it's part of the programmes that will be taken forward;

* Fourthly, the organisational and operational base for the delivery of
these programmes will be an evolving internationally benchmarked Public Sector
College geared to excellent support for the unfolding developmental state; and
again we will be unveiling what this Public Sector College is envisaged to be
and how it links with existing institutions;

* Fifthly, it will be a new College combined with a partnering strategy with
expert associates both in South Africa and abroad; and

* Finally, SAMDI will, under the oversight of Cabinet, evolve new financing
modalities that will ensure the sustainability of a Public Sector College's
contribution to the state's effectiveness and efficiency.

In conclusion I would like to congratulate all the PSLDP graduates of 2006,
in achieving this academic qualification, which emphasizes application of
skills. Koffi Annan: "It is my hope that competencies will provide us with
shared language for talking, in concrete terms, about high performance, and
managerial excellence. I believe that a shared view of the standards we are
striving to achieve will assist us in our continuing efforts to prepare the
organization to meet the challenges of the 21st century".

So go out there and remember the Chinese proverb that says:

"Tell me and I will forget;
Show me and I will remember;
Involve me and I will understand."

We hope that the work you do in the public sector will live out this
proverb. The expectations are great, the challenges are many and we will not
hold back in what is needed for the public sector and the developmental
state.

I am certain and confident that you will do it!

So go out there and remember the Chinese proverb that says:

"Tell me and I will forget;
Show me and I'll remember;
Involve me and I will understand".

Thank you.

Issued by: Department of Public Service and Administration
27 February 2006