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16 February 2009

Programme Director Commissioner Mashigo
AAPSCOM leadership
The African Union (AU) Commissioner Joiner
Chairperson of the Public Service Commission of South Africa Professor Stan Sangweni
Distinguished delegates
Ladies and gentlemen

It gives me great pleasure to be here with you this evening. At this time of the day and after such intense deliberations, the furthest thing on your mind is to listen to another long and drawn-out speech. We know that you are tired and need to relax. You deserve that. That is why I am going to be very brief, in my terms.

Programme Director
Allow me to extend a very warm welcome to our visitors from all corners of Africa to "the mother city," Cape Town. As South Africans we are extremely grateful that the interim secretariat chose South Africa to host the launch and summit.

Ladies and gentlemen
This conference offered us an opportunity to learn from the experiences of our peers from other countries. The deliberations that took place today demonstrated the wealth of knowledge that the African continent can share with each other. You dealt with issues ranging from the role of public administration in the promotion of good governance in Africa, to enhancing good governance through citizen participation.

You also discussed ethics and integrity; challenges posed by the HIV and AIDS pandemic on the continent as well as the effects of the financial meltdown and political changes on our respective public services.

All these are matters of grave interest, not only to us as political leaders and the technocrats who assist us in the execution of our duties, but to all our people in Africa and the Diaspora.

We cannot claim to know all there is about these matters, but the road we have travelled in the past 15 years as we struggle to transform our public service, may provide valuable lessons to all of us.

As a country we have come a long way in developing progressive and practical ways in ensuring that services get to all our people, particularly those disadvantaged by the apartheid policies of the past. Transformation continues, and it is true in our own Public Service Commission.

Fifteen years into what has been a sharp learning curve on the arduous road of service delivery improvement, we are still grappling with a lot of challenges, particularly the challenge of ensuring that the services we render to our people are effective and efficient.

In 1994 we inherited a public service that was designed primarily to promote and defend the social and economic system of apartheid. Based on the abhorrent doctrine of racial exclusion, it was designed in such a way that it fulfilled the material needs and interests of the white minority.

Not only that. It was structured in such a way that it openly promoted rigid racial and ethnic segregation. This fragmentation ensured and promoted wasteful duplication. It was heavily bureaucratic and regulatory, thus stifling innovation. It was neither accountable nor transparent. It also paid public service poorly thus leading to a motivated workforce and conflictual labour relations.

That is why early in our democracy we committed ourselves to reconstruction and development, national reconciliation, democratisation and public participation. We knew we had to transform our public service if we had to succeed in creating a better life for all our people.

We had to do away with the discriminatory nature of the public service, while ensuring that we put in its place an accountable and transparent entity that serves every citizen. We set ourselves out to create a people-centred and people-driven public service characterised by equity, quality, timeousness and a strong code of ethics.

In moving towards this vision, government set as a priority the urgent task to:
* Transforming service delivery to meet basic needs and redress past imbalances
* Rationalisation and restructuring to ensure a unified and integrated public service
* Institution building and management reforms to promote greater accountability and organisational and managerial effectiveness
* Representativeness and affirmative action
* The democratisation of the state
* Human resource development
* Improving employment conditions and labour relations
* The promotion of a professional service ethos.

The essence is that any public service that is bureaucratic, segregatory, unaccountable and not responsive to the needs of the people, is doomed to fail.

The theme of your summit: "Promoting good governance through public service commissions in Africa," lends credence to our long held assertion that the public service is an integral part in the improvement of the lives of our people.

Fifteen years into what has been a sharp learning curve on the arduous road of service delivery improvement, we are still grappling with the challenge of ensuring that the services we render to our people are effective and efficient.

Programme Director
As we gather here today as friends and colleagues from different parts of mother Africa, let the shared scars of our historic struggles of liberation from colonialism and dehumanisation, deepen our resolve to co-operate in areas that promote good governance for mutual gain and prosperity.

We are proud that today the final roof tile has been laid to ensure that Africa's public service commissions are housed in a firm structure called AAPSCOMs.

Once again I wish to thank you for the opportunity to make these short remarks and look forward to a successful visit that will grow our co-operation as we seek to improve the lives of our people.

To the new office bearers of AAPSComs and the secretariat that will be appointed tomorrow, I expect you to hit the ground running and take this wonderful organisation to greater heights.

I challenge everyone today to work very hard in ensuring that AAPSComs become a well recognised and respected organisation on the continent and internationally. I know that the new leadership will achieve that.

During your excursion to Robben Island and the Stellenbosch Winelands on Wednesday, I hope that you will enjoy the experience and relay to your people back home that they are welcome to come down South to taste the "Proudly South African experience" you had.

Maybe when you look through the windows of the cells on Robben Island you will, like former President Nelson Mandela, remark that Robben Island, "is a celebration of the struggle and a symbol of the human spirit, rather than as a monument to the brutal tyranny and oppression of apartheid."

"It is true that Robben Island was once a place of darkness, but out of that darkness has come a wonderful brightness, a light so powerful that it could not be hidden behind prison walls."

Please make sure that the Stellenbosch Winelands is the last place you visit as you will get to sample some of the finest, award-winning wines, and we all know what a bit of wine tasting can do.

On behalf of the South African government, I would like to thank you for the support you have given us to ensure that the African Public Services realises its objectives through this association.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Public Service and Administration
16 February 2009