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Moving forward in Zimbabwe Reducing poverty and promoting growth that build trust and confidence amongst mobile firms, investors and consumers to facilitate ICT-enabled development. POTRAZ is a caricature of what a good regulator should be, meaning that there is a lot of image cleansing that needs to be done. Regulatory legitimacy is earned through the perceptions of the parties that are regulated, and not necessarily through the statutes that created it. It is in the interest of the growth of the ICT sector, and the long-term interest of governments, to support the establishment and development of regulatory environments that provide mobile firms, investors and consumers with the confidence and trust that will facilitate ICT-enabled development. Regulation is about balancing the interests of all stakeholders, investors, consumers, employees and operators (UNCTAD 2007a). 110
Moving forward in Zimbabwe Reducing poverty and promoting growth Moving forward in Zimbabwe Reducing poverty and promoting growth CHAPTER 10: Public services 10.1 Introduction Public services translate political vision into implementable policies and programmes that transform the daily lives of people. They offer a range of services, such as health, education, public infrastructure, agricultural extension and personal identification. As public services link the ordinary citizen with the state through the delivery of services, public servants are expected to demonstrate and display impartiality and a high degree of professional rectitude in the discharge of their responsibilities. If, for whatever reason, the trust and relationship that citizens bestow on public officials and government diminish, a social crisis arises. In this chapter we look at developments in Zimbabwe’s public services from 1980 to 2008. The chapter then identifies interventions to make public services more efficient and effective in service delivery. For the purpose of this discussion, the focus is on the civil service as public officials under the employment of the Public Service Commission. It therefore excludes the army, security agencies and the police. 10.2 Context and background At Independence in 1980, the country inherited a settler colonial administration, with socio-economic delivery in favour of a minority white settler community and urban areas. The primary function of the colonial administration was to maintain law and order. The post- Independence government put in place public service programmes to repair, maintain and construct new public infrastructure, and increase agricultural development and marketing, particularly in the marginalised rural areas. The government developed policies to meet the expectations of its citizens and adopt administrative structures to deliver on the national agenda in many areas of development. In order to accelerate national development and acceptance of the public service by the majority, then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe issued a directive in 1981 that Africanised the public service. The public service was tasked with making the government vision and agenda of a socialist transformation of society operational, as articulated in the ‘Growth and Equity’ document, supplemented by the Three Year Transitional Development Plan. The state was not always able to develop and implement its own policies, due to imposed strictures and shortages of specialist skills in various sectors, such as education, health and engineering. Skills gaps were filled by employing expatriates, who often were not familiar with the political environment and value systems under which they were working. Through Prime Minister Mugabe’s directive the public service was transformed to deliver services that were in tune with the new social and economic environment. Hitherto marginalised groups, such as women and young people, were also targeted for development. Special ministries were created to promote and accelerate their development. Civil servants were trained at public service training institutes, in order to acquaint them with how government operated and to understand the rules and procedures governing service delivery. By the late 1990s the public service had grown to 192,000, from 10,570 in 1980. It had become the largest single employer and was also largely Africanised. The Prime Minister’s directive of 1981 changed the face of public service without necessarily transforming the rules and regulations governing public administration. Although this institutional inertia delayed implementation, public services benefited from the many highly qualified Zimbabweans who returned after Independence. The civil service achieved most of the post-Independence successes in education and health that were examined in chapters 6 and 7. Things began to fall apart when budget deficits began to grow, following the rapid expansion in service provision. By the end of the 1980s, economic growth was slowing down and the economy failed to generate the 500,000 jobs per annum needed to absorb the school leavers being churned out by a highly improved education system. The private sector was only generating 50,000 jobs per annum. Chapter 2 on employment discussed the reasons for this sluggish growth. Suffice it to say that the poor economic performance began to affect service delivery as well. The introduction of ESAP as a way of restructuring the economy also required the restructuring of the administrative machinery. Reforms demanded that the public service redefine its role, to focus on providing an enabling environment and regulatory frameworks that allowed the private sector to thrive. It was also required to outsource non-core functions through commercialisation and/ or privatisation of parastatals. In addition, the civil service was required to exercise fiscal discipline in order to reduce government expenditure. In general, ESAP was asking for less government, and as a result cuts in what the government provided where inevitable. There was a perception that the civil service had become bloated, with outdated management systems that were not responsive to the new social and economic challenges, leading to poor quality service delivery. Apart from the budget imperatives there were criticisms that public servants had assimilated the tradition of bureaucracy 111
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