Collins Chabane was relatively unknown on the national stage in 2009 when President Jacob Zuma appointed him to a new ministry conceived by the ANC.
Chabane prefers to keep below the radar and has spent considerable time putting together a team and sharpening strategies to monitor and assess the performance of government departments. His team worked on developing performance indicators and a performance management tool to assess civil servants and their departments. This year he finally released the first results of his assessment of departments and the picture painted was not an impressive one. According to a variety of indicators, management performances have declined overall in the past year. Chabane`s responsibility is to develop effective monitoring mechanisms. His unit is yet to produce a measurement that is comprehensible and accessible to all South Africans, but it is a work in progress.
The real question is whether his work is taken seriously. His department churns out reports, but has no power to recommend action against poor performers. The senior managers who perform poorly are hired by politicians, and these politicians are often appointed not on the basis of their competence but as a result of political considerations, thus creating the danger that all the hard work done by Chabane`s department may be going to waste.
We would recommend that the government carefully re-evaluate the mandate of this department with a view to strengthening it and making it more effective. Chabane has been a trusted lieutenant of the president and was the face of government during its biggest events of the year, such as the funeral of Nelson Mandela.
The National Youth Development Agency, which reports to him, seems to be finally mending its ways, tightening its financial controls and acting against corruption and waste within its ranks.