Where service delivery is not a priority

ASTRID Ludin, who resigned as head of South Africa’s companies office this week, is the latest in a long line of public sector CEOs who have lost their jobs for reasons more related to politics than performance.

Two recent examples — the departure of Shan Ramburuth from the Competition Commission two years ago, and last year’s expulsion of former South African Revenue Service head Ivan Pillay in a move that bore all the hallmarks of a bid for tighter control by President Jacob Zuma — illustrate the point.

But Ludin does not feel that her resignation from the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) fits into that category.

She quickly rejects the conspiracy theory that has been touted for her being forced out — which is that her fall has a lot to do with the National Intelligence Agency, acting perhaps on Zuma’s behalf, wanting ready access to all the commercial information the CIPC has in its possession.

“All the information we have is in the public domain,” says Ludin. “There’s nothing secret about it. So there is very little interest to manipulate what we do.”

She says that although the reasons the Department of Trade and Industry gave for acting against her hold no water at all, they do highlight the extent to which the Public Finance Management Act, which governs how public officials can act, can hamper public officials who are serious about improving service delivery.

If you adhere strictly to the act, she says, it makes it very difficult to achieve quick improvements.

“We are subjected to a lot of scrutiny and a lot of rules. This means that a procurement process that in the private sector might take a couple of weeks takes four months in this environment. Everything slows down. That is something the [act] does. It is counterproductive,” she says. ”But you have to balance this with the fact that we are using public funds and there needs to be accountability.”

Ludin says it should have been for the auditor-general to look at “her” forensic report and decide if her technical infringements had been “fair and reasonable”.

“If we [public sector executives] got too caught up in the technical detail of the act, we wouldn’t be able to move on anything.” In situations “where service delivery is a major issue and big decisions need to be made quickly”, doing what she did is unavoidable.

This imperative is generally recognised, she says, and only really becomes an issue when the act is used as a tool to move against people who have become inconvenient for political or other reasons.

Ludin, 48, who leaves CIPC at the end of next month, says she will think “very, very carefully” before accepting another top job in the public sector. “Government is a difficult environment to work in. There are a lot of vested interests which make it a difficult place right now in which to achieve service delivery,” she says.

It is a difficult environment . . . a lot of vested interests