South Africans have grown used to government overpromising and underdelivering. But sometimes, the state does take that one step further: it actively undermines the freedoms of the very citizens it is meant to protect, all while insisting it is “strengthening governance.”
The Public Service Commission (PSC) Bill currently before the National Council of Provinces is one of those moments.
Sold, even by the DA in parliament, as an effort to professionalise the public sector and enforce and uphold constitutional values, the Bill is in fact simply a centralisation of power masquerading as a mechanism to improve governance. It aims to extend the PSC’s reach into municipalities, giving unelected commissioners binding authority over local councils. It is a classic case of the central state cloaking itself in virtue while eroding autonomy and undermining democratic processes.
Liberty-loving South Africans should see it for what it is: yet another layer of bureaucracy that will weaken accountability, undermine democratic principles and autonomy, and move us further down the road of centralisation that has already hollowed out so much of South African democracy.
The Bill’s defenders say it is about values: ethics, efficiency, fairness, transparency. Those words, quoted from section 195 of the Constitution, are hard to oppose. Who doesn’t want a clean, efficient government? But principles don’t enforce themselves. What matters is who enforces them, and at what cost to liberty. The Constitution already provides for municipal autonomy in staffing, budgeting, and administration. Section 151(3) affirms that municipalities “have the right to govern, on their own initiative, the local government affairs of their community.” That is a constitutional firewall against exactly this kind of encroachment.
By giving the PSC directive powers over municipalities, the Bill drives a bulldozer through that firewall. It shifts accountability from voters to unknown, unelected commissioners, from local councils to a central bureaucracy. And when accountability is shifted upward, it effectively disappears, as we have seen time and again in South Africa and elsewhere.
This is the trick of centralisation: it makes bad government less visible but more entrenched.
The state has an enduring faith in paperwork and administration. Each time a crisis emerges, the instinct is to legislate more rules, appoint another watchdog, create another commission. It’s what some have referred to as policy romanticism: the idea that the solution to problems is more rules and regulation and seldom practical enforcement and accountability.
Yet municipalities are not failing because of a shortage of rules. They are failing because the rules we already have are blatantly being ignored. Auditor-General reports simply gather dust, the Municipal Finance Management Act is treated as optional, and nobody ever pays the price for non-compliance with the litany of existing laws.
Adding the PSC into this mess is like pouring another bucket of water onto a drowning man.
So despite what the parliamentary committee members who initiated this bill say, it is not a neutral reform aimed at ensuring accountability at the local government level, where it is admittedly sorely needed. It is part of a larger project. President Cyril Ramaphosa has spoken openly about creating a “single, harmonised public service.” The PSC Bill is the final step towards that.
The central state wants to flatten differences between municipalities, bring them under the same bureaucratic umbrella, and erode the independence that makes local democracy meaningful. Why? Because uniformity favours incumbency. Opposition-run municipalities—Cape Town, Tshwane, Midvaal—are thorns in the side of the ruling party because they showcase the fact that opposition parties can govern and govern more effectively than the ANC. They show that governance can work when accountability is local. By dragging them under PSC oversight, the ANC gains a lever to interfere in staffing, discipline, and service- delivery decisions without ever winning local elections.
South Africa’s Constitution deliberately created a multisphere government. National, provincial, and local authorities were meant to be distinct but interdependent, not hierarchical. Section 41(1)(g) even instructs that no sphere may encroach on the “geographical, functional, or institutional integrity” of another.
The PSC Bill violates that principle outright. It hands a national commission directive authority over municipalities: authority the Constitution does not grant. In fact, section 196 confines the PSC to the public service, defined as national and provincial departments. Municipalities are outside that ambit. If Parliament wants to change this, it must amend the Constitution with a two-thirds majority vote. To do it by ordinary legislation is a violation of legality and the rule of law itself.
But the PSC Bill is not an isolated case. It fits a long pattern of creeping centralisation that the government is introducing under our noses. When provinces fail, national government steps in with section 139 interventions. When municipalities fail, provincial governments dissolve councils and appoint administrators. When all else fails, the centre expands its own reach.
This reflex is understandable and arguably quite human. Nobody wants to see communities crumble and remain without basic services. But it ignores the reality that centralisation rarely fixes failure. More often, it entrenches it. The same political party that collapses a small-town council cannot be expected to fix it from the Union Building.
South Africa’s greatest weakness is not a lack of laws but a surfeit of them. Each new statute is a monument to good intentions. But intentions are not results.
The PSC Bill will not bring accountability. It will smother it beneath bureaucracy. It will not empower communities. It will disempower them. It will not professionalise local government. It will politicise it further by creating yet another channel for central interference.
The road to failure and despair is paved with exactly this kind of legislation: sincere, high-minded, but extremely destructive.
If Parliament truly wants to improve municipalities, it should have the courage to enforce the laws we already have, and the humility to leave local government in the hands of local voters. Anything else is just centralisation in disguise and comes down to nothing more than an eagerness to remain in power .
Power must remain close to the people who suffer the consequences of its use. If a municipality fails, its voters should have the tools to remove its leadership, not watch helplessly as distant commissioners issue directives they never consented to. South Africa has tried its centralisation experiment and it has failed dismally. We need to try something else, and the PSC Bill does not get us closer to an alternative, it simply doubles down on the centralisation which failed us in the first place.
