Journal of Public Administration - Volume 44, Issue 1, April 2009

The editorial is aimed at emphasising the importance of retaining and maintaining the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996. The Constitution was adopted with much fanfare and certified by the Constitutional Court as complying with all 33 constitutional principles agreed upon during the negotiations commencing after the unbanning of certain organisations on 2 February 1990 and resulting in the peaceful revolution in 1994.

This article argues that managers in the South African public service require specific leadership skills to enhance service delivery. The slow pace of service delivery by many South African public service organisations suggests that such organisations have experienced crises due to the lack of leadership at the top, and at best the presence of only some elements of managerial leadership. The lack of strategic leadership and the prevalence of only some elements of managerial leadership are the most important issues facing the South African public service. The importance of strengthening leadership capability in the South African public service is highlighted. Thus, leadership training and development of managers should be a high priority in the South African public service. In this article it is suggested that management in the South African public service should be trained so that they incorporate strategic leadership, (which is defined herein as a synergistic combination of managerial and visionary leadership) in their managerial role. In relation to the need to improve service delivery, this article argues that leadership skills are deemed critical for managers and should, therefore, be part of the leadership development management framework in the South African public service.

South Africa faces enormous challenges as it seeks to achieve development objectives set out in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996. Despite the enormity and complexity of these challenges, there is potential and opportunity for growth provided that skills deficit and development is promptly addressed. The extent to which the public sector can evolve as a developmental state centres on high skills levels. These skill levels inescapably influence the constitutional principles which are effectiveness and efficiency with which the government serves the twin goals of social and economic development. The Human Resource Strategy of the Public Sector seeks to maximize people development, management and empowerment through quality skills development to accelerate transformation and service delivery that will benefit the people of South Africa. The aim of this article is to analyse skills deficit and development within a training and development paradigm. Furthermore, the legislative and institutional mechanisms will be discussed as a means to sustain life long national skills growth for effective service delivery. Finally, this article proposes an innovative and learning strategy for training and development of human capital as an investment for a high performance public sector.

Public sector skills development in South Africa has been brought into sharp focus as both parts of the general skills deficiency as well as the need to ensure efficient and effective service delivery. Improving capacity requires the development of skills at all tiers of public service at national, provincial and local spheres. Intermediate-level skilling (the level for functional and routine skills, distinguished from mid-managerial and higher order strategic skills) is key to effective service delivery and represents a crucial component of the development of skills in the country. This article examines current skill development provisioning at this level and proposes that FET colleges are ideally placed to provide the systemic training necessary for this level, especially in view of the establishment of the Public Administration Leadership and Management Academy (PALAMA) in its new role as a facilitator as opposed to a provider of public service training and its commitment to working with public and private institutions. It is argued that using existing colleges for this sector's skills development needs would not only marshal a national public resource to serve national development objectives, but will also enhance their sustainability. This will, of course, require that colleges re-position themselves to ensure that the unique needs of the sector are accommodated. The proposed changes are identified.

The changes that were brought by transformation and administrative reform in South Africa challenged the black South Africans who were expected to take over the new administration of the country to address the inequality and imbalances caused by the apartheid government. These administrative changes and challenges need knowledgeable and skilful public servants who will ensure that global orders are well managed and proper administration and management of the country are achieved.

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In order for public servants to achieve proper implementation of the tasks that are bestowed on them, it is important that they should possess skills and levels of competency that will make it easier for them to cope with the challenges they are facing. Thus skills development in the South African public service is extremely important. The article will address the need for skills development in the South African public service and further suggest solutions to solve skills shortage. It will also highlight problems that the South African public service faces when trying to address skills shortage.

Critical issues of performance management and skill capacities are raised in this article. Performance management and skill capacity are conceptualised and contextualised. Performance management is a radical shift from performance appraisal. In a performance appraisal system, there is a vacuum which exists between individual performance and organisational performance. The introduction of performance management in the government sector aims to close this vacuum. How the performance management is applied in the government sector still remains a question due to skill capacity problems. In the main, this article argues that the government sector cannot yield the same results of performance management as in the private sector unless skill inadequacies and alignments are addressed first and foremost. It is for this reason that performance management without adequate skill capacity in the government sector leaves much to be desired.

Public Administration is a multi-disciplinary, widely spread-out dynamic field of knowledge with a combination of facts and values. It develops a comprehensive understanding of "govern and governed". It promotes responsive "cross-culturalism" and "cross-nationalism". The nature of public administration, either heretic or modern, is always attuned to perfection and the fulfilment of the needs of citizens. This article suggests a need to develop a curriculum of education and training in Public Administration at tertiary level to create a multi-skilled environment for the future educators and practitioners.

The concept of globalisation has become fashionable at local, national and international levels in public leadership and governance. It is widely gaining acceptance in the world of today to the extent that this emerging global process determines successes and failures of nation states' cultural, economic and social lives. The article attempts to address some critical policy issues on globalisation and gives an overview on the expected role of the states in pursuit of a better global public administration. The article identifies a link between public leadership and governance bringing out some benefits and challenges of globalisation in global policy-making. Some of the basic policy issues such as social, political, economic and technological were identified as keys towards transforming policy-making in the present globalisation era. Attempts were made to develop strategies that could encourage good leadership and governance through sustainable democracy and transparency at all levels of government. Conclusions were drawn on the urgent need for some global policy alternatives aimed at outcome based methods which targets specific policy needs at all levels of public leadership and governance terrain.