Can home affairs be saved?

The success of the latest rescue plan for the department of home affairs hinges on uprooting the ‘institutional culture of indolence, lethargy and arrogance”, say experts in public administration and government leaders.

Merely installing state-of-the-art technology would not do the trick, they said.

After this week’s announcement of a ‘turnaround action team” for home affairs, newly appointed Home Affairs Director General Mavuso Msimang told the Mail & Guardian: ‘Some people in the current leadership in the department have no appreciation of the extent of the rot. They believe others are being too hard on them.

‘A total culture change is a sin qua non for the overhaul of the prevailing situation that has deteriorated to a point where not fixing it would certainly be a catastrophe.”

Chris Tapscott, dean of economics and management at Western Cape University described home affairs as ‘the most extreme example of a department that hasn’t properly transformed — it still embodies the culture of the apartheid era.

‘This lack of transformation is not about race and colour — it’s about administrative practice and a prevailing institutional culture of indolence, lethargy and arrogance.”

South Africans who have dealt with officials at one of the country’s 683 home affairs offices would attest to this inefficiency, which has generated a robust black market in which asylum seekers can ‘buy” permits for R500, illegal immigrants can buy identity documents for R1 200 and marriage certificates cost between R150 and R200.

‘The short-term strategies to deal with the infrastructure problems in the department are necessary,” said Francis Antonie, head of the Wits Graduate School of Public and Development Management. ‘But home affairs has a difficult political history, with legacy issues such as the homeland system and overt ideologies that still haunt it.”

Wits deputy vice-chancellor and former home affairs director general Patrick Fitzgerald said he was hopeful that the turnaround strategy would work. ‘Home affairs has been such a dire failure over so many years, I understand the cynicism. But I’ve been involved in government processes, and I think this plan at last represents purposeful action.”

Msimang said he did not fully understand why home affairs was in such a mess. ‘But what is clear is that the department faces tremendous fraud pressure as a result of people wanting to benefit from the relative wealth of the economy. The quest for employment, health and educational facilities places a high premium on the South African identity card.

‘Then there is illicit international traffic in prohibited drugs, people and endangered animal species. People who ply this trade are willing to pay enormous amounts of money to facilitate their business.”

The turnaround team announced this week is a hybrid of private and public sector specialists led by Kevin Wakeford, former CEO of the South African Chamber of Business and currently adviser to Eastern Cape Premier Nosimo Balindlela. It includes a national treasury task force led by accountant general Freeman Nomvulo, an IT panel led by IT strategist at De Beers Patrick Monyeki, communications specialists and a business re-engineering team from Chicago-based global management consulting company AT Kearney (See box).

Sven de Kock, CEO of Fever Tree consulting, AT Kearney’s local branch, said a culture change in home affairs had to be ‘the driver” of the strategy, rather than the implementation of new technology and infrastructure, which should be ‘the enabler”.

The strategy followed a damning investigation by another government task team into the disarray at home affairs. This found that there was a ‘lack of strategic leadership and management capacity”, with the result that the department’s transformation agenda was collapsing; and ‘a general crisis response to problems due to a lack of adequate management plans”.

The department has a 30% vacancy rate at middle and top management levels, rising to 40% among officials on the ground. Senior posts are filled by people in an acting capacity, which has created a climate of ‘instability and a lack of motivation” said Sandy Kalyan, the DA’s home affairs spokesperson.

Yusuf Simons has been acting director general for immigration for the past year, while his predecessor, Gcinumzi Ntlakana, acted in the position for a year.

The results speak for themselves: last year the department underspent on its budget by R206-million, or 7%. The Auditor General found new computer equipment worth more than R1-million had not been installed because of lack of capacity, while the Pico system installed in 2004 at a cost of R2-million to capture the names of detained illegal immigrants had not been used since the end of 2005 because of technical problems.

MPs were sceptical about the turnaround plan presented to Parliament’s home affairs committee on Tuesday, complaining that they had been hearing about such strategies since former director general Barry Gilder had initiated a similar plan in 2003.

‘It’s not going to be easy,” said Msimang. ‘A combination of commitment, relevant expertise, accountability and a generous dose self-sacrifice will be needed to change the fortunes of home affairs.”

Sexual harassment claims don’t add up

The sexual harassment accusations against Mavuso Msimang (pictured left), the newly appointed Home Affairs Director General, which allegedly occurred when he was CEO of the State Information Technology Agency (Sita) were made by a woman whom he had suspended on a list of disciplinary charges weeks before the claims were made.

Court documents reveal that the woman, Ursula Wagner, had a history of psychological problems, that a dispute settlement company had recommended disciplinary action against her after it found ‘her tendency to spread rumours and lies had impacted negatively on the culture at Sita”, and that she was involved in a romantic affair with her immediate boss.

The case raises questions about the extent to which sexual harassment can be misused as an act of revenge.

Nonhlanhla Tshabalala, acting director of the Sexual Harassment Education Project, said that while she could not comment specifically on this case, the secretive nature of sexual harassment made it one of the most difficult charges to prove. This often made the experience more traumatic for women but also enabled misrepresentation of the facts.

Lisa Vetten, gender expert, said that ‘generally any workplace or criminal law is open to abuse and can be used in malice”. She said that in this specific case she had found it strange that Wagner had gone straight for a civil claim rather than following company disciplinary procedures first.

Msimang had initiated disciplinary action against Wagner following the investigation by dispute settlement company Tokiso Dispute Settlement, which he had requested after a number of his staff at Sita had laid grievance claims against her regarding her lack of professionalism and dishonesty. The investigation revealed, for example, that after a female staffer’s husband was electrocuted to death Wagner spread rumours that she had murdered her husband; that she failed an integrity assessment report on her credit history; and ‘spread malicious rumours about other persons personal details that are too numerous and sordid to mention”. At one point she was booked off work by a clinical psychologist.

Among the disciplinary charges Sita brought against Wagner were misrepresentation because she put a false identity number on her CV, claiming she was three years younger than she was and dishonesty for submitting fraudulent travel claims.

Wagner subsequently failed to pitch three times for her disciplinary hearing and Sita suspended her in her absence. Weeks later Msimang was slapped with sexual harassment charges in which Wagner claimed R500 000 in damages.

Her court papers are pitted with mistakes — she claimed, for example, that she was Msimang’s personal assistant, when in fact she was assistant to another Sita director, Joe Mazibuko, also the man she with whom she had an affair. Roy Roxo, Wagner’s lawyer, said: ‘Yes, that was a mistake we’ll have to remedy.”

In defending the rumour­mongering claims, Roxo said they had been made by ‘faceless” staff. However when asked about the dispute settlement report, which lists the names those who laid grievances against Wagner, he claimed only to have gained access to the report two weeks ago and acknowledged that it ‘may shed new light” on the case.

Msimang’s appointment three weeks ago was overshadowed by this case as the media ran headlines calling him a ‘sex pest”, without obtaining his comment or referring to the details of the case. Press ombudsman Edwin Linington said: ‘It’s essential for fairness to check both sides of such claims because personal reputations can be ruined.” — Vicki Robinson

AT Kearney to the rescue

Among its turnaround successes, AT Kearney, a $798-million company, lists the pension service in the United Kingdom, the Portuguese ministry of economy, Mexico’s Rural Development Programme and Italy’s Central Procurement Agency.

In South Africa, the company led the recovery of the South African Revenue Service in the late 1990s.

It is unclear how much its work will cost South Africa, but the treasury allocated the home affairs department R1-billion over the next three years for the strategy.

However, Mike Ramagoma, special adviser to the home affairs minister said the allocation would be used only for infrastructure upgrading. Payment of task team members and AT Kearney will be in addition to this.

Home Affairs Director General Mavuso Msimang said he could not estimate the overall cost. ‘Against the cost of corruption, it will pale in significance.” — Vicki Robinson

AT Kearney to the rescue

Among its turnaround successes, AT Kearney, a $798-million company, lists the pension service in the United Kingdom, the Portuguese ministry of economy, Mexico’s Rural Development Programme and Italy’s Central Procurement Agency.

In South Africa, the company led the recovery of the South African Revenue Service in the late 1990s.

It is unclear how much its work will cost South Africa, but the treasury allocated the home affairs department R1-billion over the next three years for the strategy.

However, Mike Ramagoma, special adviser to the home affairs minister said the allocation would be used only for infrastructure upgrading. Payment of task team members and AT Kearney will be in addition to this.

Home Affairs Director General Mavuso Msimang said he could not estimate the overall cost. ‘Against the cost of corruption, it will pale in significance.” — Vicki Robinson