Moving forward in Zimbabwe - Brooks World Poverty Institute - The ...

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