John Matisonn: Dysfunction in the GNU - ministers without internet

Key topics:Government IT and project systems broken, causing delays and chaos.Procurement corruption entrenched, accountability resisted at every level.Reform efforts face systemic pushback, disinformation, and bureaucratic tactics..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By John Matisonn.The internet in the office of public works and infrastructure minister Dean Macpherson, who manages the government’s buildings and other assets, hasn’t worked properly since he took office 19 months ago.“When I first arrived people shrugged because it has been that way for months or years,” he told the Cape Town Press Club, adding, “It still doesn’t work, by the way. I have to use my phone.”Macpherson found the problem started with the basic culture in government – in other words with the government itself.IT systems do not speak to one another. “So data is inconsistent, and project information is incomplete. You cannot answer basic questions like: how many projects are we building, what stage are they at, and who is accountable?“The basics had been allowed to decay for years. Not only in headline scandals, but in the daily dysfunction that turns every instruction into a negotiation, every deadline into a suggestion, and every crisis into somebody else’s problem.”.Read more:. RW Johnson: GNU must sober up; no economic growth without policy changes.Macpherson said people were used to being able to ignore requests without consequence , where instructions are “noted” and quietly parked, and urgency was “treated as a personal preference rather than a public obligation.” The methods of obstructing progress include “delay, diversion, endless process, selective compliance, and the simple tactic of going slow until the political moment passes and the person demanding answers gives up.” Projects are delayed by unanswered emails, an IT system that never gets fixed, a procurement process that never ends, and in vacancies that stay vacant for years, “until accountability becomes blurred and failure becomes normal.” Attempts to find answers were met with assurance that reform cannot be done. It starts “quietly in corridors. politely in meetings.by giving you half the information and waiting to see whether you notice. And loudly, through surrogates, when you start pulling at threads that lead to entrenched interests. The minister said he was told it was impossible to fix the Independent Development Trust, or take on the construction mafia, or to fix the State’s leasing portfolio and end the inflated rentals the government pays. Officials told him it was impossible to enforce accountability in a procurement system that has been used to feed networks that profit from chaos instead of building for the public. He said when a reformer pushes too hard, they set you up to fail. “The real test of reform in government is whether you keep pushing when the system pushes back.” Macpherson said because the public works and infrastructure department is at the centre of so many projects and contracts, “it is at the centre of temptation. Procurement corruption is a business model for people who have learned how to extract from the state. “Procurement timelines are treated as elastic, maintenance backlogs are treated as inevitable, and a culture where the person who demands delivery is treated as a troublemaker rather than someone doing their job.” For years, criminal elements were allowed to disrupt sites, demand bribes, and escape consequence. The longer the state hesitated, the more they were emboldened to get bigger, go into more regions, and deepen the intimidation. “We are now building a system where an underperforming contractor does not fail in one province and reappear in another under a new name; project budgets are protected so sites do not stall because money is diverted midstream. “We can see which projects are off track and why, where procurement is monitored actively rather than discovered after it has gone wrong, and audit findings are dealt with as they emerge.”As Macpherson insisted on restoring accountability, he says the system fought back with routine non-cooperation dressed up as technicalities. When he requested documents surrounding the R800 million Oxygen Plant tender, he received “summaries lacking substance, without supporting records; critical minutes and procurement information not provided when asked for; and shifting positions: one day insisting everything is compliant, the next day expressing sudden “concern” once public pressure grows. Other techniques included coordinated disinformation, “which becomes a campaign designed to intimidate, distract, racialise, and delegitimise.”.Read more:.FW de Klerk Foundation: SA’s “controversial” GNU ministers.It’s done with fake call logs, fabricated voice notes and bot-driven narratives. The department’s next step is to take on fixing its portfolio of assets in land and buildings. “There is no reason that our R148 billion portfolio should not be a R1 trillion property fund that generates return for the state, cuts unnecessary leases and drives construction and development.”

John Matisonn: Dysfunction in the GNU - ministers without internet

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