Entrenched political habits may weaken Public Service Bill

Enforcing it in a culture of factionalism will be much more difficult

- FIDELIS ZVOMUYA

THE testimony was dense with legal detail and policy jargon, but its stakes were immense. One after another, union leaders, policy architects, ethicists, and even a lone ordinary citizen stepped up to the virtual podium.

Their audience was a panel of lawmakers from the National Council of Provinces (NCOP). Their subject: a piece of legislation so complex it rarely makes headlines, yet so vital it could shape the very future of the nation’s democracy.

For hours on July 22, 2025, the NCOP Select Committee on Cooperative Governance and Public Administration listened to submissions on the Public Service Amendment Bill (PSAB).

The hearings lacked the drama of a corruption inquiry or the fury of a protest. But for those who could decipher the legal jargon, this was the grinding, unglamorous work of rescuing a state from itself.

The hearings were procedural, part of the constitutional requirement for public consultation.

Yet behind the legal language lay the lived realities of service delivery failure that give the Bill its urgency. In Kimberley’s Northern Cape Mental Health Hospital, 33-year-old Tshepo Mdimbaza was found unresponsive after months of electricity outages caused by cable theft.

The absence of functional resuscitative equipment meant he could not be revived, and he died shortly afterwards. His story, one among many, has come to symbolise how systemic neglect can turn public institutions meant for care into sites of tragedy.

Opening the hearings, Mxolisi Kaunda, the ANC Chair of the Committee, said: “This is about entrenching democracy. It is about ensuring that the public has a hand in shaping the laws that govern them”

The Bill promises what has been termed a surgical separation of politicians from bureaucrats by transferring the power to hire and fire senior officials from ministers to professional administrators.