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A fortnight ago, non-governmental organisation, Pitsong Institute of Implementation Research (PIIR), berated Government Secretary (GS), Teboho ‘Mokela, for failing to enter into performance contracts with Principal Secretaries (PSs) as required of her.
The PIIR said her failure was unacceptable as the office of the GS played a pivotal role in the administration of the public service and in constituting a sound and coherent government.
The GS is required by law to ink performance contracts with PSs (Section 97 of the Constitution of Lesotho and Section 12 of the Public Service Act 2005).
In his acceptance speech on 28 October 2022 after winning general elections that month, Prime Minister Sam Matekane directed the GS’s office to immediately “enter into performance agreements with PSs and make them public”. Even though Ms ‘Mokela was not in office then (she took office on 2 January 2024), such performance contracts have still not materialised nearly two years after Mr Matekane’s order.
To ensure the contracts are finally done, the PIIR threatened to sue GS ‘Mokela should she fail to have them drawn and signed within a month.
It would seem that GS ‘Mokela heeded the PIIR’s warning. On Tuesday, she issued an internal memo informing PSs across all ministries, that the contracts had been drawn and would soon be signed.
The memo seen by the Lesotho Times is dated 23 July 2024 and titled ‘Preparation for Signing of Performance Contracts 2024-2025’.
It was against this background that the Lesotho Times (LT)’s political reporter, Mohloai Mpesi, sat down with PIIR founder and director, Mpopo Tṧoele (Tṧoele), in light of the bizarre threat to sue the GS to enforce the signing of the contracts. Mr Tṧoele says they only resorted to the threat of legal action after GS ‘Mokela had refused to meet them to discuss the issue.
Excerpts:
LT: How does the absence of performance contracts for Principal Secretaries affect governance and service delivery?
Tṧoele: I cannot speak on behalf of the government. But as PIIR, we have followed the civil service for a very long time. Not just this government (Prime Minister Sam Matekane’s) but even previous governments, to understand why things are not happening.
We studied the public service for a long time, focusing on what should be done for it to be effective. We worked with people like former GS Moahloli Mphaka (under former Prime Minister Thomas Thabane’s 2017-2020 administration), where we were trying to see how we could help make the public service effective.
We learned that systems and structures were either not functional or not there altogether…because often when things don’t happen in government, people start pointing fingers at others instead of systems and structures of government.
There is a theory that argues that states collapse or fail because of the absence of systems and structures that run government. When you look at the public service, for the longest time, it has been a service that depends on what people in government want to happen, not what it (public service) as an organisation wants or is intended for.
It has laws that govern it, laws that are meant to guide whoever enters the service. There must therefore be systems to guide the implementation of those laws….Otherwise, you expose the system to people’s personal management depending on who does or doesn’t want this or that….
I will make an example with these coalitions. It is common for people to say coalition governments don’t work. But when you carefully study systems of the public service, you will realise that there is one GS in a coalition government who is supposed to make performance contracts with PSs.
So, when the GS enters into contracts, he/she strengthens the systems and structures of the public service to stand on its own, against interference…
LT: Before we go any further, what are these performance contracts?
Tṧoele: It is an agreement between a person and a supervisor or subordinate. ‘I commit to doing this and that and I will be held accountable for performance or non-performance’.
It is a commitment to achieve something measurable, and normally performance management systems are put into action, where there is an interest to achieve something because their logic drives from behavioural sciences.
There is only so many things that one can do during the day because people are looking. But once it becomes dark and things are not clear, it is very easy for people to start doing things which they would not do if there was a system that transparently states, that one ought to have done this today, and the social engagements around it.
If you remember Premier Matekane’s acceptance speech, he talked about how different his government was going to be. He said his government was going to promote accountability in the public sector, and that it should be known what each public servant must do, when and how. He added that that information should be made public, so that Basotho know their roles as that would enable them to engage and demand. That way, accountability is driven from below, instead of the top.
For example, a PS requests for a budget saying he or she is going to buy fertilisers for Basotho, but then Basotho do not get fertilisers. Right now, it is possible for that to happen because there are no consequences whether fertilisers are bought or not. People will only complain about unavailability of fertilisers. But in a situation where there are contracts, and PSs have committed themselves, people would perform.
The whole logic towards this type of thinking is birthed by behavioural sciences. When you are aware that you will be asked about something and there would be consequences, chances are that it becomes easy for you to do that, not the opposite.
But when there are no systems, it becomes easy for one to not perform. Transparency becomes a variable in influencing change, because when things are transparent, people engage with them.
What we did was to influence or stimulate processes of transparency. The thinking was to hypothesise that she is behaving the way she is behaving because her duties and responsibilities that are defined by law, are not known. If they were known, she wouldn’t want to be in a situation where she is being told to do her job.
L.T: But there is a school of thought that this is a veiled attack on the GS as a person and not the office. What is your take?
Tṧoele: People’s first reaction is that she is being attacked. It is not about the person but the office itself. If you can study Lesotho’s public service, the GSs play a pivotal role. You can say they are the Prime Ministers’ right hand men or foot soldiers.
But the system is designed such that the GS always has more experience of the public service, much more than their master, which makes it difficult for the master should they want to hold the GS accountable. In a bureaucracy, there is this misconception that your master knows better than you.
GS is very important because she is the cabinet secretary, tabling issues that come from the PSs. You can see that if the GS does not step up, the system will burden the Prime Minister.
So, when things don’t happen, people put the blame squarely on the Prime Minister’s shoulders. So, we say, Prime Minister Sam Matekane stated that he wanted to promote accountability. Instead of trying to fish where there is no fish, why don’t we go straight to the fish?
The Prime Minister does not sign performance contracts or oversee public servants daily. He oversees them through communication with GS, who keeps him up to speed with developments in the civil service.
The sad part of the public service is that it never stops moving, the machine keeps on rolling whether you are delivering as PM or not. The machine keeps on moving. Hence the public servants would say “These guys (politicians) will come and go, don’t worry.”
It is easy for them to say that because the systems that are proposed by the Public Service Act, are not being put in place and utilised accordingly. The only person who can do that is the GS. I mean the office of the GS.
LT: Well, we already know that Premier Matekane said that for the public service to perform, there should be performance contracts between the GS and PSs. Which other offices or institutions are mandated to work with the GS to ensure that there is service delivery.
Tṧoele: Everything in the government starts with a budget. Without it, there is no government. The first thing the Prime Minister does when he gets into office, is to ask where the budget is, how much it is and if it will give his government value.
You see the centrality of public financial management in the office of the budget controller. There are technical discussions with ministries when they request for a budget. Those discussions are critical because they determine whether the money is going to be allocated in a way that gives government value or not.
So, the critical offices are those of the Budget Controller, and Attorney General’s. The AG’s office because it counsels the government in interpreting the law.
The issue of performance contracts is enshrined in the constitution. In an ideal world, the AG could have advised whoever, that there is a violation of law, that’s their job.
If the office of the GS does not work, for whatever reason, there will be problems. I can’t judge sectors, but I can judge systems and structures. They need to be built, and that starts with the GS.
The office of the GS is central to making or breaking the government.
LT: It is understandable that, Pitsong as an NGO, has the right to enquire when things are not going right. Have you tried to ask the office of the GS about this issue? What happened?
Tṧoele: Yes, we did make attempts, but the GS refused to meet with Pitsong. We wrote the letter and mentioned the date that we wanted to meet her on, because our intention was to follow up on implementation of directives issued in the Prime Minister’s acceptance speech.
The response we got from the GS’s secretary was that she could not meet us because she was busy. Okay, we then demanded her to give us a date suitable for her, even if it was the next month, we were fine. She didn’t entertain it. She didn’t want to see us.
We know this thing is wrong, that things that should be done, are not being done. But maybe some people are not aware of it. So, we thought, in the spirit of social mobilisation and advocacy, why can’t we put this thing out there in public because we have an obligation to do that, so that there can at least be dialogue around it?
Whether Prime Minister does want to talk about it or not, it ultimately must be addressed. It will set a precedent because even future GSs will be aware of it.
LT: But then, do you as Pitsong have locus standi to file a case against government on this issue?
Tṧoele: The reason we chose the legal representative we have, Adv Lintle Tuke, is because he (Tuke), took the bull by its horns and challenged the recall of an already dissolved parliament on a state of emergency in 2022.
If we don’t protect the constitution, who will? Can the constitution protect itself? So, I have locus standi because I must protect the law.
If we go to court, we will be going under the umbrella of Pitsong, but our position is strong because there is law which is being infringed upon. This is a case that can be decided in two or three minutes.
LT: How do you link the government administration, the public service and the political parties’ policies and/or manifestos in this regard?
Tṧoele: A political party may contest for elections, win the elections and deploy its people to government. It is being led by its national executive committee (NEC) to push the government’s administration, who are appointees of the ruling party or parties.
Hence, the GS is supposed to be a politician, over and above all the technical requirements that are part of his/her portfolio in that office. This is because accountability in government starts where a party deploys executives, appoints PSs.
Let’s assume that the GS signs these contracts, who determines that those contracts are in line with the ruling party’s manifesto?
We cannot forget that people went to elections, they made promises during their campaigns. This whole process is also about loyalty and many other things.
Once they are not there from the start, that’s a big problem. The question should be, how does that party convince itself that it is really delivering as it promised? It is important that a GS is loyal to the PM.
LT: Do all political parties in the coalition government have one manifesto that encompasses the desires of all Basotho, so that when the GS implements the performance contracts, everyone should be satisfied?
Tṧoele: It might happen that they don’t align, but the point I am driving is the centrality of the GS’s office. I dare argue that the Prime Minister of Lesotho needs a GS who supports his vision.
If the Prime Minister calls for performance contracts, because central to his logic of change is when accountability is available, and then the office of the GS does not grant those contracts, that is what is wrong.
As Pitsong, we champion accountability and if the Prime Minister says, ‘I am also for accountability’, then we are in his corner. We don’t know what the systems of bureaucracy do when an office has not done its job, but for us as NGO, we know what we must do.
