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Government must not only reconfigure departments but also be open to new people and new ideas, particularly in key departments such as Treasury.
Cosatu’s first deputy president Mike Shingange said the federation’s gripe was that for many years the Treasury had behaved like a “super ministry”.
If any other department came up with an innovative idea to try to make progress, it would get “stuck at Treasury”.
“It is almost as if Treasury is not servicing the people of this country but trying to please other people who are outside South Africa.”
City Press reported recently that Cosatu was pushing for President Cyril Ramaphosa to provide them with an opportunity to have a say in the deployment of bureaucrats at Treasury.
However, Shingange said the debate included all departments.
Generally, he said, it did not matter who the minister was “because it always boils down to who is the director-general, who is the deputy director-general and the programmes that they were driving”.
When the ongoing debate on the reconfiguration of the government started, he said, Cosatu had submitted that no matter “what ministers or ministries were reconfigured, if bureaucracy still tampered with them, they could still fail”.
“So, the second phase of the reconfiguration is to look into the bureaucracy below the ministers: Who are the implementing agents?
“We need to ask what their ideological thinking is and what their perspective is in terms of the developmental agenda.”
He said the government needed to look into some entities that fell under various departments, such as the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) under the Treasury.
He questioned whether the PIC should remain in Treasury because it had a lot of control and played a major role in the economy.
Shingange said: “The PIC should fall, maybe, under economic development because it must intervene in developing the deep rural and poor spaces and not just concentrate on the stock market, building malls, and so on.”
He said Cosatu was not convinced that the National Economic Development and Labour Council had to be housed under the labour department.
“So, we are looking into the various entities because this restructuring must be broad, it must bear fruit, and it must not be a cosmetic restructuring of government.
“We cannot have reconfigured ministries which operate for five years but are suffocated by bureaucracy; and then we wake up and say: ‘Oh, maybe we should have [stopped] the bureaucracy.’ The implementation phase must happen hand in hand [with the reconfiguration].”
One of Cosatu’s key campaigns had been a review of the Reserve Bank’s mandate to look at both inflation and employment.
Going to the ANC national executive committee (NEC) lekgotla this past weekend, Shingange said Cosatu’s overall focus was to push for the implementation of the ANC manifesto, but with a sharper focus on issues such as a review of the central bank’s mandate.
Shingange said the federation would push hard to change the mandate of the Reserve Bank.
The central bank should regulate the behaviour of other monopoly banks to compel them to ensure that 30% of their lending should be geared towards economic development.
He said Cosatu’s priority was on jobs and issues of the economy, including a proposal that the many state financial institutions should be consolidated.
He was referring to the National Youth Development Agency, the Development Bank of SA, Postbank and the Land Bank.
Cosatu believed that should these entities be consolidated they could lend money to boost small, medium and micro enterprises to create jobs.
He said: “Our big monopoly banks now do not lend me money to open a bakery or a filling station but they would lend me money to buy a car because they would repossess it if I do not pay and they would lend me money to buy a house and they would take it after 19 years.
“These various financial institutions that belong to the state must be consolidated into one funding model that is going to lend money, in particular, to small business.”
Shingange said it would be a victory if “a voice coming for the NEC lekgotla” would say: “Stop the war talk on jobs.”
He said workers were jittery almost on a daily basis because the leaders on top were speaking about retrenchments.
“We want to stop that so people must relax and concentrate on building the economy. We want to hear more talk about how to protect and create more jobs.”
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