Many civil servants no longer take pride working for the civil service.
A great number of more senior civil servants, including those as high up the ladder as permanent secretaries, privately complain of unpleasant working conditions ÔÇô not just for themselves, but for those who they are supposed to supervise.
And that is before we even start to contemplate the terrible state of our health system, the crisis that has become our education system, the low moral in the police service, and lately the ever looming threat of strike action by teachers and other public civil servants, including at local government level.
While working in the civil service was for many years a pleasant national duty, over the past few years those who had a choice have long left, not because they love their country any less, but because the stench had become unbearable.
Put bluntly, the civil service has lost its way.
Of course, the buck stops with the State President, but is it only he who is to blame?
It cannot all be a personal responsibility or fault of President Ian Khama.
The President works with a team of advisors, key of whom are civil servants as led by Permanent Secretary to the President.
To underscore the importance of the PSP, he also dabbles as cabinet secretary and head of the civil service.
The PSP is one civil servant who easily overshadows cabinet ministers in terms of power, influence, prestige and access to the President.
At least at operational level the Permanent Secretary to the President easily ranks among the top three most powerful people in Government, not least because of the strategic outreach of the people who fall under his direct supervision.
Other than that he directly advises the President on issues of policy, the Permanent Secretary to the President appoints, deploys and supervises other permanent secretaries.
I cannot think of a more strategically etched person.
That position is currently held by one Eric Molale.
In a more recent interview, President Khama highly praised Eric Molale. This was a careless cover-up by a President, made on behalf of a man whose successes as PSP can hardly be counted beyond three fingers.
It has given credence to a widely held perception that President Khama is never a man to discard those who have been loyal to him, especially during a time of need.
While Molale is supposed to be the one motivating his charges in the civil service, to me he often casts an image of a man holding grudges against the entire civil service he is supposed to lead.
As we speak, the judiciary is clogged with cases of unfair dismissals lodged by former senior civil servants nudged out by the sprawling arm of the PSP.
The case of Sam Rathedi, by far one the best performing senior civil servants who a few years ago was sacked unceremoniously, only to be reinstated without any explanation is a glaring example of what we are talking about when we refer to the power of the PSP.
This is not to say the PSP should not be a powerful position.
But such power should co-exist with the similar levels of accountability.
Unfortunately that is not what we see happening.
As we speak, there just are too many failed projects which have cost the country millions of Pula through negligence by the civil service ÔÇô yet the PSP has not seen a need to take personal responsibility.
Even as the civil service is in many ways dysfunctional the PSP has not been in a hurry to introduce structural reforms to ensure that the institution becomes more efficient, more responsive and measures up to today’s challenges.
Inevitably this has led us to believe that the parlous state of the civil service is from beginning to the end a result of a failed leadership.
Looking from afar, it would seem like the Permanent Secretary to the President has run out of ideas.
The mere fact that he has not been able to come up with reforms to breathe life into the service may possibly signal that he is a man out of his breath ÔÇô at least intellectually.
It would be silly of us to believe President Khama would be able to see through his mandate of “Delivery” under the current conditions of the civil service.
There is no doubt that the entire civil service has to undergo major reforms (a paradigm shift even) if there is to be hope of ambitious “Delivery” as preached by President Khama.
But what are the chances of such reforms happening?
Under Eric Molale our civil service has been as static as it has been unaccountable.
This kind of paralysis was unheard of during the years of Elijah Legwaila, a cautious and thoughtful lawyer who manned the civil service during the latter years of Sir Ketumile Masire’s presidency.
Those who worked with Legwaila credit him with an imaginative mind that was forever looking at ways of enhancing the service’s dynamism.
Though less gifted, Molosiwa Selepeng ÔÇô Legwaila’s successor who the former President, Festus Mogae, cruelly and tragically demoted and banished to Australia for much lesser failings was a much better charge than what we have today.
During Legwaila’s time the civil service was functional.
Khama inherited Molale from Mogae – I guess because the President looked around but could not see a good replacement.
But it has been more than two years since Khama became President.
And worse it’s not clear to all that the civil service cries for a head that can look at things anew – with a total detachment from a rote that certainty belongs to an era gone by.
The last thing the civil service needs today is a leader who, when faced with turbulence, instead prefers to bury his head in the sand with the hope that things will sort themselves out. Molale has played his part and its time for him to go.
His departure from the key position of PSP will put a totally new texture as well as a different complexion on the currently demoralized as to be dysfunctional civil service.
