When he took office as South Africa’s finance minister in 2009, Pravin Gordhan found that government officials responsible for purchasing goods and services were wasting billions of dollars every year as a result of inefficiency, errors, and corruption. Gordhan wanted to confront all three problems by consolidating and strengthening control over procurement. In February 2013, he tapped longtime finance ministry official Kenneth Brown to serve as the country’s first chief procurement officer. Brown had to restructure systems, tighten procedures and regulations, and build effective oversight. He assembled a skilled team and persuaded skeptical politicians and business interests to support Gordhan’s goals. His office reviewed and renegotiated costly contracts, provided crucial market analysis and advice on procurement strategies for other departments, and took first steps toward creating an online system. Brown strengthened funding, built a staff, and put new systems in place. By the time he retired in December 2016, his efforts had sharply reduced opportunities for corruption, increased transparency in the procurement process, and slashed the time required to process tenders. The new office helped South Africa better comply with some of its obligations under the United Nations Convention against Corruption, even though Brown and Gordhan faced opposition from people at some of the highest levels of government.

Tristan Dreisbach drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Cape Town, South Africa, in March 2017. The British Academy-Department for International Development AntiCorruption Evidence (ACE) Program funded the development of this case study. Case published June 2017.

As of January 2008, South African citizens had to wait more than four months, on average, to get a government identity document. The delays in producing IDs, which disrupted lives by preventing citizens from working or accessing government benefits, reflected longstanding organizational problems at the Department of Home Affairs, the agency responsible for issuing the IDs. The processes at each stage of ID production were in disarray, and the department's staff lacked effective supervision. Backlogs developed; workers became demoralized. In 2007, the department began to tackle the problems. This was one component of an ambitious turnaround strategy that targeted the department's core business processes. In the ID production process, a team of consultants and department officials made individual and group performance measurable daily and weekly. The turnaround team avoided backlash by engaging the staff union, removing the threat of job losses as a result of restructuring, and consulting the workers in each section before making changes. The performance-management changes were informal: Managers evaluated employees' and sections' performance in meetings and on wall charts rather than through the formal performance-appraisal system. By the end of 2008, South African citizens received their ID booklets in an average of less than six weeks.

David Hausman drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa in February 2010. Case published April 2011. Case slightly revised and republished March 2013. 

Associated Interview(s):  Mavuso Msimang, Yogie Travern

South Africa's Independent Electoral Commission faced a daunting task in January 1994.  The newly established body had less than four months to organize and implement the country's first fully inclusive democratic elections.  The stakes were high.  A successful vote would signal a new beginning for the nation after the apartheid era.  Failure could mean civil war.  Choosing suitable polling sites, dealing with parties' distrust, reaching alienated and possibly hostile communities,  addressing potential spoiler issues and remedying shortages of electoral materials posed formidable challenges.  The commission's difficulties snowballed.  In the end, however, all parties accepted the election results and the Government of National Unity went ahead as planned.  The elections offer an example of how an electoral commission can sustain political will-of parties and the public-to overcome administrative shortcomings in extremely sensitive circumstances.  The case study discusses location of polling stations, temporary polling facilities, candidate access, ballots and ballot counting.

Amy Mawson drafted this case study on the basis of interviews conducted in Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa, in February 2010. To learn more about the second post-apartheid elections in South Africa, see "Using Conflict Management Panels to Resolve Tension in the Second Post-Apartheid Election." 

Associated Interview(s):  Johann Kriegler, Howard Sackstein, Benedict van der Ross

Between 1998 and 2009, the South African Revenue Service dramatically improved tax compliance.  The number of income-tax payers increased to 4.1 million from 2.6 million during the period.  Several internal organizational changes helped the revenue service persuade more South Africans to pay their taxes.  This case study tells the story of two of those changes in particular: the recruitment of a new cadre of managers from both within and outside the organization and a campaign to provide taxpayers with better service to encourage compliance.  The organization used diagnostic tests as well as informal recruiting to rebuild the ranks of upper and middle management, transforming the racial make-up of the organization while improving performance.  Meanwhile, in order to improve service for taxpayers, a team of managers and consultants separated back and front offices and introduced an annual "filing season" in which employees of the revenue service left their offices to help taxpayers file their returns.  In each of these changes, Pravin Gordhan, revenue-service commissioner from 1999 to 2009, played a central role, both determining policy and overseeing the details of implementation.

David Hausman drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Pretoria, South Africa in February 2010. Case originally published 2010. Additional text added in December 2013. 

Associated Interview(s):  Pravin Gordhan, Judy Parfitt

In the talks to end apartheid in South Africa, 19 parties sat at the negotiating table.  At least 10 of the negotiators had armed wings, and almost all had demands that they were prepared to back up with violence.  One in particular possessed the ability to destabilize the country: Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party.  To get him on board, negotiators employed a number of tactics, including splitting him from his backers, offering compromises and refusing to allow the momentum of the process to be slowed by his boycotts.  This memo examines the negotiators' efforts to manage Buthelezi's demands and draw him into a coalition, as well as the longer-term consequences of those moves. 

Daniel Scher drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town, South Africa, in February 2010. 

Associated Interview(s): Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Mario Gaspare Oriani-Ambrosini, Peter Smith

As South Africa worked to draft a post-apartheid constitution in the months leading up to its first fully democratic elections in 1994, the disparate groups negotiating the transition from apartheid needed to set the country’s internal boundaries. By 1993, the negotiators had agreed that the new constitution would divide the country into provinces, but the thorniest issues remained: the number of provinces and their borders. Lacking reliable population data and facing extreme time pressure, the decision makers confronted explosive political challenges. South Africa in the early 1990s was a patchwork of provinces and “homelands,” ethnically defined areas for black South Africans. Some groups wanted provincial borders drawn according to ethnicity, which would strengthen their political bases but also reinforce divisions that had bedeviled the country’s political past. Those groups threatened violence if they did not get their way. To reconcile the conflicting interests and defuse the situation, the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum established a separate, multiparty commission. Both the commission and its technical committee comprised individuals from different party backgrounds who had relevant skills and expertise. They agreed on a set of criteria for the creation of new provinces and solicited broad input from the public. In the short term, the Commission on the Demarcation/Delimitation of States/Provinces/Regions balanced political concerns and technical concerns, satisfied most of the negotiating parties, and enabled the elections to move forward by securing political buy-in from a wide range of factions. In the long term, however, the success of the provincial boundaries as subnational administrations has been mixed.

Tumi Makgetla and Rachel Jackson drafted this case study based on interviews conducted by Makgetla in Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa, in February 2010. A separate case study, “Refashioning Provincial Government in Democratic South Africa, 1994-1996,” focuses on the two-year mandate of the Commission on Provincial Government. Case originally published August 2010. Case revised and republished October 2012.