The Hidden Cost of Government Failure: When Dysfunction Becomes an Asset
South Africa's public-service crisis raises a more difficult question than whether the state can function: who has an interest in preventing it from working?
A government department that repeatedly fails to meet its obligations is usually described as inefficient, poorly managed or under-resourced. These explanations suggest a problem that can be corrected through better leadership, additional funding or improved administrative systems. But they leave another possibility unexplored: that dysfunction may create opportunities for individuals and networks whose interests are not served by effective government.
That distinction matters because the solutions to accidental failure and deliberate obstruction are fundamentally different. An institution struggling with inadequate resources may benefit from additional investment. An institution whose weaknesses create opportunities for personal enrichment requires something more difficult: changes to the incentives, relationships and accountability mechanisms that allow those weaknesses to persist.
Professor Somadoda Fikeni describes this phenomenon as a political economy of inefficiency. Speaking to Nkepile Mabuse on CheckPoint: The Podcast, he argues that some of the practices weakening South Africa's public service have developed into arrangements from which particular interests benefit. His argument does not mean that every administrative failure is intentional, but it challenges the assumption that dysfunction is always an unintended consequence of poor governance.
When the public service becomes self-service
The difference between an inefficient institution and one vulnerable to exploitation is not always visible from the outside. Both may produce the same results: delayed projects, vacant posts, unreliable services and frustrated citizens. What distinguishes them is the relationship between failure and benefit.
Fikeni argues that the democratic transition created opportunities for genuine institutional transformation, but that some actors increasingly treated the state as a source of personal advantage. In his assessment, public institutions could become instruments of patronage and enrichment rather than mechanisms for delivering services.
This creates a troubling cycle. Poorly coordinated systems make misconduct harder to detect. Weak accountability allows damaging practices to continue. Political or administrative instability can prevent institutions from building the capacity needed to challenge those arrangements.
The result is not simply a department that performs badly. It can become a department in which improving performance threatens established interests.
The cost of a position nobody fills
One illustration is the prolonged use of acting appointments and precautionary suspensions. These arrangements can serve legitimate purposes, including maintaining continuity or protecting an investigation. The problem emerges when temporary measures become indefinite substitutes for decisions that institutions are required to make.
Fikeni describes encountering cases of public servants remaining on paid suspension for years. Such examples, as recounted by him, raise questions about disciplinary delays, financial controls and the willingness of departments to resolve difficult personnel matters.
The costs extend beyond an employee's salary. A suspended employee may leave a department without the specialist capacity attached to that position. Another official
may have to perform the role temporarily, while the wider workforce sees the organisation paying someone who is not delivering services.
Acting appointments present a different but related challenge. Leaders without secure appointments may be less willing to challenge inappropriate instructions or confront powerful interests. Uncertainty at the top can also make long-term decisions harder to sustain.
In both cases, a problem that appears to concern human resources can become a wider problem of institutional accountability.
Why oversight is not the same as consequence
South Africa has institutions responsible for examining public administration and holding government to account. But an oversight finding does not automatically produce reform. There is a difference between identifying a problem, compelling a response and ensuring that corrective action takes place.
Mabuse presses Fikeni on that distinction, questioning what would make the Public Service Commission effective when other accountability institutions have struggled to secure meaningful responses to their findings.
It is an important challenge. A government can produce reports, investigations and recommendations while leaving the underlying arrangements largely untouched. In that environment, accountability risks becoming a process rather than an outcome.
Fikeni points to integrated digital systems as one potential reform, particularly where records of disciplinary action and employment history need to follow officials across departments and provinces. Better information-sharing could make certain abuses harder to conceal. Yet technology cannot independently create the political and administrative willingness to act on what it reveals.
A different test of reform
The most revealing measure of public-service reform may not be how many new policies are announced, but how many opportunities for institutional abuse are closed.
Are disciplinary matters resolved promptly and fairly? Are senior appointments made transparently? Can public institutions establish who is being paid, what work is being performed and where responsibility lies when something goes wrong? Do oversight findings lead to verifiable action?
These are questions about institutional design, but also about the distribution of power.
If failure is merely an operational weakness, better management may be enough. If particular interests benefit from keeping institutions weak, reform must also confront those interests. The public therefore has reason to demand more than promises of improved service delivery. It should demand evidence that the conditions allowing dysfunction to flourish are actually changing.
References
· CheckPoint: The Podcast, 30 October 2026. Nkepile Mabuse in conversation with Professor Somadoda Fikeni. Supplied full-episode transcript.
Catch up on all CheckPoint Podcast episodes here: https://www.enca.com/checkpoint-podcast-0