I hope that the new government of national unity (GNU) both endures and delivers real change in the lives of many citizens.

As one Cabinet minister expressed to me recently, the answer to estimates on its longevity is summed up in the acronym TINA (there is no alternative).

Of course, his sentiment is sound, even if a bit optimistic. The uncivil forces of populism and racism are massing just outside the portals of power and would love an invitation to enter it. Their calling card is to create political chaos on the outside to disrupt and destroy delicate balances within the Cabinet.

Permanence in politics, except in authoritarian regimes, is marked, in fact, by impermanence. Whatever changes the new multiparty government heralds in our corner of the planet, some old habits from the past continue. One such practice is the recent announcement that all GNU members are to submit—as a key to accountability—performance agreements to be concluded with President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Electoral misfortune

Temper expectations here. Presumably, the past performance agreement of, for example, the ex-Minister of Employment and Labour Thulas Nxesi did not have as his “‘key performance indicator” the creation of the highest unemployment rate in the world. As a measure perhaps of either rough or divine justice, Nxesi lost his own job and seat in Parliament due to the ANC 29 May election decline.

Likewise, another forced retiree, due to the dismal poll result, from Cabinet ranks is the once ubiquitous, visit every crime scene performer, Bheki Cele. Once again, he presided over the mushrooming here of rampant crime and violence before his forced retirement from his post.

In September 2023, when Cele was in his sixth year in office (and having already served for two years prior to this as national commissioner of the SA Police Service), a coruscating international report was published. The Global Initiative Against Transactional Organised Crime ranked South Africa 7th out of 193 UN countries in organised crime, a rise of 12 places in one year.

Once again, electoral misfortune, not failure to perform under a signed agreement, led to his departure.

I have some, although limited, experience in the state performance evaluation system and none of it is reassuring. When I was posted as an ambassador to three South American countries, I spent many hours, even days, captured by the “Performance Management Development System”, a different and less malign beast than state capture itself. But in my view of limited utility.

This culture of performance, which continues under an entire ministry designed for its enforcement, was endless in its demands for forms, weights and measures. Hours that could, and indeed should, have been spent on trade and public diplomacy were lost to the demands of filling in – with minute particularity – all my diplomatic comings and goings, from high-end meetings to lowly social encounters.

This “Performance Appraisal” which had to be completed twice a year and a missed deadline was deemed the most serious offence. Yet in over three years of form-filling, I never received a single line of feedback from head office and doubted, beyond vigilantly policing (and thus box ticking) its on-time arrival, whether a single official actually read it.

At the time of this bureaucratic exercise in performance measurement was at its zenith, I chanced upon the departing cable (as diplomatic despatches even in the electronic age are still dubbed) by an outgoing British ambassador.

Sir Ivor Roberts wrote:

Can it be that in wading through the plethora of business plans, capability reviews, skills audits, and other items of the management age, we have forgotten what diplomacy all is about?

In his view, it was difficult, if not impossible, to measure “diplomatic successes” since much of it was elusive and ephemeral: you deal with one crisis, and before it is resolved, another breaks out. How do you measure “success” here when operating as a human fire engine?

He dismissed the entire vocabulary and piffle of the ‘culture of change management” as “the game of bullshit bingo”. Nothing diplomatic about that.

And then we have the failures in achievement mentioned above in policing and employment, which simply lead to no consequences since evaluation of professional competence, or more precisely incompetence, often yields to measures completely outside and immeasurable by any performance management system.

Cabinet office and its retention owes often far more to political influence or preferment than ability for office. And no management tool can capture it. Thus, while this evaluation via performance agreement is often in fact more performative than consequential, it does at least provide, if published and monitored, some idea of ministerial priority.

I do though have unsolicited advice for two recently appointed Cabinet ministers from opposite ends of both the political and publicity spectra. Both hold high office with an ability to change lives and futures in profound ways that shape our society.

Where McKenzie could start 

The first is, in every sense, a heavyweight. New Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie recently and volubly went public on his own expansive girth and his determination, via rigorous exercise, to slim down. Commendably, his effort at self-improvement chimes with what is both personally measurable and politically helpful: getting our ever more obese population to exercise.

However, McKenzie has one clear political advantage that will set his ministry apart from his predecessors in office. Recently, this portfolio was a dumping ground for ANC politicians who, on any measure of performance, were found wanting but who needed to be enveloped in the comforting pillows of high office.

Remember Zizi Kodwa, now on trial for bribery and corruption? Or his predecessor, Nathi Mthethwa? He of the infamous multimillion monumental flag debacle? McKenzie represents, though, 100% of his rising party (Patriotic Alliance) cabinet allotment. So, he is entirely dependent on achieving success and visibility in this department to justify his political future.

Here, a good place to start would be to clean house in the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc). How is it that after more than 30 years since our reappearance at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, we achieved precisely one gold medal in Paris this year? The same modest haul as neighbouring Botswana despite having 30 times their population and—in terms of GDP—economically 20 times larger.

Paying her own way

Is sports journalist Graeme Joffe correct in his recent assertion that “the system [for our Olympics preparation and funding] has been broken for a long time and the majority of sports administrators have prioritised self-enrichment ahead of the athlete”? He was referencing that some of our team had to pay their own way to participate in the Paris Olympics. Our silver medal winner for women’s Javelin, Jo-Anne van Dyk, won her medal “without any support from official structures back home”, according to reports.

Reprioritising spending on athletes, not officials, and increasing our medal haul in Los Angeles in 2028 are two demonstrable measures to which this voluble minister should commit.

If McKenzie receives outsize attention, his colleague, Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Thembi Nkadimeng is low profile almost to the point of invisibility. Though it is early days. And if we are slim on picking up gold medals at Paris, we do regularly award ourselves a gold medal for our constitutional attainments. But how long this aura of self-congratulation will continue is open to doubt. And here the new minister starts with an apparent disadvantage.

She is the first SA Minister of Justice since 1910 to enter office absent of either legal qualification or a spell in practice. However, given the state of our courts and the decline in our adjudication and the battering worthy candidates for judicial preferment receive from the now dysfunctional (and worse) Judicial Service Commission (JSC), things could hardly be worse. And perhaps a fresh set of eyes unencumbered by old habits could be transformative.

It is unknown whom the new minister interacts with. But she could do well to sit down with former Supreme Court of Appeal Judge Azhar Cachalia. His recent lecture on “Reflections on 15 years of the JSC’s misconduct” is a bill of indictment on that body’s key failure to fulfil its constitutional mandate.

It is also a crushing comment on the failures of some of Nkadimeng’s predecessor and, indeed, the president himself (since he signs off on judicial appointments and nominates a hefty slice of the JSC members.)

Rightsizing and reinventing the JSC should be one of the top measures on Nkadimeng’s performance agreement, and one which will be measurable.

But what can’t be measured by an agreement is the crucial centrality of the rule of law to our national well-being and future.

We can get many other things wrong, but as Leon Louw once noted when he headed the Free Market Foundation:

The ‘rule of law’ is the most important predictor of state behaviour.

And for its continuance, independent and competent judges are the sine qua non. Or without which there will be not much of a state or society left. No pressure on the new minister, then!