Position Paper on Appointment and Removal in the Public Service and Municipalities

The document proposes a structural shift in South African public personnel practices to insulate the administration from illicit political interference. It argues that while current laws formally exclude political criteria from appointments, in practice, political office-bearers manipulate the system to build patronage networks. To counter this, the paper suggests a four-stage appointment process—process planning, process administration, short listing, and appointment—where independent bodies (such as the Public Service Commission for the public service and new independent personnel committees for municipalities) act as a check on political power. The author advocates for an incremental 'covering in' mechanism to implement these reforms organ-of-state by organ-of-state to manage political resistance.

• The current legal framework in South Africa creates a contradiction where political criteria are formally excluded from appointments, yet politicians possess the practical power to introduce them, facilitating 'state capture' and the coordination of illicit operations.
• The Public Service Commission (PSC) is currently an underutilised oversight body whose independence is compromised by political involvement in the appointment of its own high-level administrative officers.
• The proposed reform model for the public service involves a four-stage process where the PSC (or provincial commissioners) handles process administration and short listing, while the President or Premiers retain the power to appoint from that short list.
• Because municipalities lack a constitutionally independent body like the PSC, the paper proposes creating independent municipal personnel committees composed of regulated professional bodies (e.g., engineering, accounting, law) to check political office-bearers during appointments.
• The document endorses the National Development Plan's goals of moving toward permanent contracts for senior managers and devolving appointing authority for lower-level positions to administrative leaders rather than political office-bearers.
• To overcome material interests in the current patronage system, the paper suggests a 'covering in' mechanism, allowing the President to incrementally apply the new appointment and removal statutes to specific departments or municipalities via proclamation.

APA

Brunette, R. (2020). Position Paper on Appointment and Removal in the Public Service and Municipalities. Public Affairs Research Institute. https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/REC14-04-21.pdf

Chicago

Brunette, Ryan. Position Paper on Appointment and Removal in the Public Service and Municipalities. Public Affairs Research Institute, 2020. https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/REC14-04-21.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Brunette |first1=Ryan |title=Position Paper on Appointment and Removal in the Public Service and Municipalities |publisher=Public Affairs Research Institute |date=April 2020 |url=https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/REC14-04-21.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{brunette2020position, author = {Brunette, Ryan}, title = {{Position Paper on Appointment and Removal in the Public Service and Municipalities}}, institution = {Public Affairs Research Institute}, year = {2020}, month = apr, url = {https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/REC14-04-21.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }