When President Cyril Ramaphosa came to power in February 2018 I was asked a question in New York by a successful businessman. I assume, he said, that the new president has identified the mission-critical jobs across national government — 200 positions on which any genuine renewal would depend — and that he knows who he wants to put in them?

Obviously, I don’t know if Ramaphosa did this or not. However, my suspicion at the time, confirmed by subsequent developments, is that the president’s usual approach to these questions is to first think about who he has to put in senior positions, not what is required by the jobs themselves.

Inevitably, that results in political appointments, cadre deployment and many people in senior positions, from the cabinet down, who are not (to put it politely) the best possible people to turn South Africa around.

Leaders of institutions or departments matter. A complex modern economy like ours requires leaders with experience, expertise, integrity and commitment to actually doing the job — if we are to prosper.

Whoever emerges as mayor in Johannesburg after the local government elections will have the same choice Ramaphosa faced and flunked: move immediately and decisively to put the right people in critical jobs, or allow the machinery of cadre deployment, corruption and factional fiefdoms to continue.

The consequences of getting this wrong will ensure continued decline of a city that cannot keep its lights on, maintain its roads, collect refuse reliably or manage its budget.

We will not fix Johannesburg, the country’s most important city and economic gateway to the world, unless the right people are in charge of critical institutions. As Harvard professor Ed Glaeser puts it, “capacity always eats policy”. What determines whether a city works is not the quality of its plans but the ability of its institutions to execute them.

Johannesburg’s governance crisis is severe. Since 2016, when the city last saw a single party have a majority in council, Johannesburg has had nine mayors and eight coalition administrations. At the top of municipal entities and departments, political allegiance has generally taken precedence over the skills and experience required for the job.

For example, not one of the members of the Johannesburg Water board is a professionally qualified engineer, despite the utility facing an infrastructure backlog of more than R26.6bn. The chairs of City Power, Johannesburg Water, Pikitup and the Johannesburg Development Agency are all active or former political party members.

At least 10 of the city’s 13 municipal entities have histories of alleged serious tender fraud. This is what happens when appointments are treated as political currency rather than a matter of professional performance in the city’s interests.

Coalition instability is not the whole story. Johannesburg’s governance problems predate the onset of coalition politics. Cadre deployment is deeply entrenched in Johannesburg’s entities and administration.

Part of the problem is that South Africa’s local government legislation does not draw a clear enough line between political authority and professional administration. It gives councils powers that reach deep into the administration, making genuinely autonomous, professional management almost impossible to sustain without significant political will.

Coalition government — with each partner demanding its share of board seats, senior appointments and procurement budgets — has stripped away whatever informal protections previously existed.

A new administration in Johannesburg cannot change the law overnight. But it can act as if the law were better: by making appointments transparently and on merit, by formalising the delegations the city manager needs to function, and by refusing to allow positions to become coalition bargaining chips.

The most consequential appointment the new mayor will make is the city manager. This person is the formal head of the administration and key to whether reform happens at all. Some political parties and civil society organisations have publicly questioned whether incumbent city manager Floyd Brink is the right person to lead the administration through a crisis of this magnitude.

A new administration will need to make that assessment fairly but quickly. If it concludes that different leadership is required it may need to find the resources to end his contract early. The cost of doing so will have to be weighed against the cost of leaving the wrong person in the most critical job in the city.

Whoever becomes city manager must be chosen through a process that is visibly independent of coalition deal-making, with publicly stated criteria, disclosed shortlists and declared conflicts of interest. The requirements should be clear in advance: demonstrated capacity to lead turnaround processes; strong financial management; technical familiarity with large infrastructure organisations; and the standing to resist inappropriate political pressure.

Once appointed that person must receive an immediate, comprehensive delegation of administrative authority: the power to appoint, promote and act on operational matters without seeking mayoral committee approval except if required by law.

On the utility boards, the sequence matters. Before filling board vacancies a new administration must appoint the chairs of City Power, Johannesburg Water and Pikitup — the three most important utilities delivering services. The chair sets the governance culture, leads the recruitment of other directors and is the primary line of accountability between the utility and the city.

Once the right chair and at least the core of a new board are in place their first task is to assess whether the right CEO is leading the entity, and if not to move quickly. The CEO must then build a capable executive team and be held accountable by the board for results. Three-year terms should replace the annual renewals that have made boards permanently hostage to political change.

A transition team established immediately after the election should audit every mission-critical position before the new administration takes office to determine who holds it, on what terms, and whether the original appointment was legally compliant. If it was not, the city can act without going through a formal dismissal process because the appointment itself is unlawful.

Senior contracts expiring in the first year should be identified early so that recruitment can begin before they lapse and successors are ready to start the day they end.

In the administration there will be capable, committed officials who have been doing good work in difficult conditions, constrained by the politics around them. A new government must find these people and back them while using the mechanisms available under existing law to deal firmly with those who cannot perform.

A new government should have no illusions about the resistance it will face. Organised labour is a significant force in Johannesburg and has at times operated outside the formal labour relations framework. Political actors whose patronage networks depend on current arrangements will push back through coalition negotiations and the courts. A smart strategy will be essential.

The parties contesting November’s election must be held publicly to account. Before polling day every party should commit to ending cadre deployment and ensuring competence and integrity will in the future determine how people are appointed. They must commit to keeping political office-bearers out of procurement and operational decisions and to making these commitments a binding, written component of any coalition agreement. The media, voters, business organisations and civil society organisations should push parties on these questions, publicly and repeatedly.

Ramaphosa squandered his moment. Johannesburg cannot afford to squander this one.

Bernstein is executive director of the Centre for Development & Enterprise. This article is based on ‘Kickstarting Delivery — Joburg’s Mission Critical Jobs’, the third report in the latest in a new CDE series: ‘Johannesburg Matters: Fixing South Africa’s Growth Engine’.

This article was published on Business Day