The Public Service Commission (PSC) has issued a formal advisory cautioning government employees against participating in unauthorised political activities, citing risks to administrative neutrality within South Africa’s Government of National Unity (GNU) framework.
The warning follows concerns raised by the United Democratic Movement and the Democratic Alliance regarding allegations that departmental officials are being summoned to political party study groups. PSC Chairperson Somadoda Fikeni explained that such engagements risk blurring the constitutional separation between public administration and political office-bearers.
“In the context of the current GNU arrangement, you may have one head of department who reports and has to support a minister from another party,” Fikeni said. “If they have unauthorised, sometimes not transparent engagements with the other party, it already creates friction and undermines the professionalism which delineates the roles of administration from political actors.”
Fikeni noted that while political parties have legitimate needs for technical information when preparing for parliamentary debates, this support should traditionally flow through political deployees such as ministers or deputy ministers. Problems arise when heads of departments, director-generals, or other senior public servants are drawn directly into party-level preparatory processes.
“This presents a number of risks,” Fikeni stated. “You may have instances where the very director-general or head of department is diligently attending these in the absence of the political principal, creating an asymmetry in terms of information. At times, this practice can encroach into the political space, creating the appearance that officials and party structures are jointly planning how to approach presentations.”
The PSC chairperson emphasised that the advisory was deliberately framed around constitutional principles—specifically Section 195 and Chapter 10 of the Constitution—rather than targeting any specific political party. This approach, he explained, avoids the “slippery slope” of investigating individual parties while reinforcing broader public service professionalisation reforms, including pending legislation such as the Public Service Commission Bill and the Public Administration Management Act.
When asked whether the practice could be linked to cadre deployment, Fikeni declined to speculate on party-specific dynamics. “We opted for an advisory instead of a deep-dive investigation,” he said. “It was not an investigative approach but rather to assert the values and principles… so that we don’t get into using the nomenclature of parties or saying we found X number of meetings in that party or that party.”
Fikeni warned that failure to address these dynamics could have serious consequences. Senior officials invited to political meetings may later be questioned by their principals about discussions they cannot fully disclose, breeding mistrust. “In the next round of contract renewal, this particular public servant may suffer—not because they invited themselves into these meetings, but because they could not say no,” he said.
He called on Parliament and GNU partners to establish clear, transparent regulatory mechanisms for instances where technical assistance from officials is genuinely required, ensuring permissions are granted and purposes are documented. “This is in the interest of protecting the very public servants and ensuring a clear delineation of administration from politics,” Fikeni added, noting that declining public trust in institutions may partly stem from such role ambiguities.
In a separate matter addressed during the same broadcast, the City of Johannesburg reported to Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts that it has strengthened its cybersecurity defences to protect sensitive municipal data. Johannesburg Group Chief Financial Officer Tebogo Moraka disclosed that a skilled entity now oversees the city’s systems following identified vulnerabilities. Muraka referenced a breach approximately five to six years ago where hackers accessed customer information—not billing data—but were contained within an hour. The city subsequently contracted the CSIR, a government institution with cybersecurity expertise, to manage its digital security infrastructure.
