Batho Pele - Putting people first?

To me the most revealing thing about Batho Pele is its website!

While Batho Pele is a process for the user of government services, the website gives no way of addressing the system in writing.

The INTERNET contact form specifically states

"due to high volume of mail, we're not always able to provide a personal response"

Submissions to the the form resulted in no response after 3 days, although a specific request was made to establish electronic communication.

To add to the inefficincy the website was offline for several hours on 16/03/08.

Batho Pele - What is It?

Batho Pele was established by Government to

"enhance the quality and accessibility of government services by improving efficiency and accountability to the recipients of public goods and services".

promising the user of government (local, provincial and national) services that eight service delivery principles be implemented

* regularly consult with customers
* set service standards
* increase access to services
* ensure higher levels of courtesy
* provide more and better information about services
* increase openness and transparency about services
* remedy failures and mistakes
* give the best possible value for money.

Do these things seem to be being done in the areas you interact with? - definitely not for me!

Africa & The CDM

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) arrises from the Kyoto agreement and is essentially a mechanism that finances renewable energy projects. As part of the mechanism Designated National Authorities are established as focal points. Looking at the map below of all CDM projects Africa is clearly a looser.

Without South Africa, there are only 5 projects in sub Saharan Africa. The dot in Mali is an error, its a Honduran project.

Africa has 33% percent of the DNAs and manages just 2.5% of the projects!

With all our talk about not wanting handouts and the massive rural energy and sanitation problems, why don't we perform better? Maybe its because we spend our time enthusing about a one off junk windmill and how it shows how brilliant we are and leave it to the politicians to be a DNA and presumably spend their time strategising & concretising.

Sheepdonkey Does A Brilliant Job

Until now the sheepdog "looked after" sheep - now in South Africa the donkey (Sheepdonkey?) have taken over the job.





As stated in the video, Sheepdonkeys have reduced the loss of lambs to predators, something which I don't believe Sheepdogs achieved.

Part of a feature from AgriTV

Not True, Even in Black and White

The bottle of juice calmly claims to be "100% cranberry juice" containing apple, cranberry and other fruit juice.



What it should be is 100% pure fruit juice with cranberry! Quite a different claim for the heath conscious consumer looking for the benefits of cranberry, but getting a mainly apple juice.

Innovation in Department of Home Affairs?

Morning Live, the SABC morning TV news, had another gem today. Talking of the


they said "... the plans includes a crack down on corruption and incompetency and other innovations include the separation of immigration ..".

Yes, it is unfortunately rather innovative to address address corruption and incompetency in this department.

Related was the comment by the minister that they needed unemployed & retired chartered accountants on a part time basis, who should co-operate to serve their country - had she stopped to think how the country served those who were pushed out of the very places which now need them.

9 months to my Second Life!

Today in 9 months time I stop my formal worklife and start my Second Life.

The parallel to pregnancy is obvious and today is therefore the conception of my Second Life. Then comes developing, growing and finally coming to a new world. There's also a parallel to reincarnation but I can't figure that one.

Tourism Good News

The minister of the Environment today announced an increase of 4.5% in visitors to South Africa for the 9 months to September 2006 and projected that this would result in a record year for 2007. That is good news!


Of interest in the information was a 9.7% growth in American and 42.4% growth in Russian visitors. Maybe the Americans have got over their fear of flying, while the growth in Russian visitors is noted as being off a small base.

The biggest growth is in visitors from Africa (18.3%) - I hope this is not just all the politicians and civil servants we host and often pay for eg the Pan African Parliament.

Machadodorp Musings I

Sitting in the car on the corner of General Smit and Potgieter streets in Machadadorp four things catch my eye:

• the hawkers across the road selling fruit and other food under the tree - there were others on other intersections
• the empty buildings all around
• the two new buildings each with 4 rooms with road facing counters
• the two guys down the street changing Potgieter street to Batana Jele street
  

and one my ear

• Trevor Manual on radio presenting a "internationally benchmarked budget" illustrating governments growing expenditure and real successes

Together they lead to questions that are important to success in South Africa

• why do we move so slowly
• why does development not reach the "Machada dorps" of South Africa
• why don't we learn from others

that maybe link back to one answer

• we don't have capacity and expertise in the organisations spending the money

with one solution

• truly involve those who used to do the job as mentors and teachers for those who now have to do it.

Identifying Africa's Constraints Now?

The following is an extract from NEPAD's newsletter which I receive by email. It is not archived on their site - that stopped in February 2006.

Is this not our problem in Africa - after 5 years of NEPAD and 7 of the African Union, do we really still have to create "a common understanding of capacity gaps and constraints" and outline a "process" "towards developing a strategy".


Another high level group is going to meet for 3 days, probably from the Addis Sheraton, to continue identifying, analysing, formulating and conceptualising; not even reaching concretising and planning let alone the implementation stage.

I believe we have the international Development and NGO community to thank for this they have overdeveloped the planning skills and underdeveloped the doing skills through their systems.

Public Service Capacity

The following exerpt from a call for bids in the Northern Cape got me thinking


what should we really expect from the English of Public Servants - can we really accept being

"..herewith invited to the supply of ... "

should we worry that they want

"..a broiler house typical to that of a poultry farm.."

or is that just being pedantic. But lets hope the same level of English is not used in the call otherwise we start to get difficulties in adjudication and in the contract otherwise...

But at a more significant level this is obviously the start of an attempt to create jobs with taxpayers (my) money by getting into the private sector. Lets hope at least they have an experienced business man (lets not train someone with no drive to be an entrepreneur) to run things. Otherwise it will go the way of many project, examples of which I can relate from experience:

• build something fancy but most often not approipriate
• put up the sign saying who did it
  
• get the minister to cut come and cut the ribon
• see it all on TV and the Good News site
• try, with out sufficient capacity, to get it to work
• forget about it - infact don't tell anyone what didn't work, which would be very useful
• go on to the next one

Then one level more what of the municipality - well they have obviously made a bunch of people happy finding a new name and developing a great logo (only excuse the quality it was a scan from the Sowetan) but does the poor work in publishing their call reflect their real capacity.

If you can't communicate how can you manage anything, let alone a municipality and what do you do with taxpayers money - interfere with the business men who really know how to manage and control. OK so they are not all supermen, but they are not using/loosing my money.

Its all very cynical, but what can we contructive can I do about it?

Looking for the Good and Bad

I have been trying to find really good and bad news to grow my South African Good, Bad & Wierd collection.

I visited the Why South Africa Sucks Blog and found only nonsense - how these people live I am not sure, it must be misery.

I also visited the South Africa Good News Site and found news items that were just what any successful country would be achieving anyway.

So where am I going to find my stories? Anyone have any suggestions.