Johannesburg - The delivery of services to the country's people dominated a discussion between President Zuma and his top management on Friday.
The President told his top management in a frank engagement that after two decades of democracy, lack of service delivery to the people could not be blamed on apartheid.
"After two decades we will not be able to make an excuse if we do not deliver faster change in the lives of our people," Zuma told Director's General and Deputy Directors General (DDGs) from national and provincial government.
"We will not be able to blame apartheid if villages still have no water, no electricity, no roads. We will not be able to blame anyone else if children still study under trees, if houses and schools are falling apart."
Zuma and his administration have had their share of frustrated citizens taking to the streets because of service delivery.
He said his administration takes seriously every protest, adding that they would investigate how they can improve the pace and quality of delivery.
Government officials, he said, also needed to change their attitude and improve their work ethic, in order for the country to see change.
Zuma was frank that some of the officials did not respect the jobs they were employed to perform.
"We all know that the failures in our government are not mainly caused by any significant lack of capacity, nor are they caused by poor education ...the simple truth is that we lack accountability."
Zuma, who met will top government to share his vision of change in government and to ask them what they were doing to change the way they run government departments, said work done on a DG level might be escalated.
He said the DGs would become more like principal public liaison offices so that government could receive quicker responses - a view he said would engage DGs on.
"We do not want to rely on reports from the public service only; we want to see first hand what is happening where our people live ...this means DGs and DDGs should be visible on the ground from time to time and not be completely desk bound."
Public Service and Administration Minister Richard Baloyi echoed the same sentiments, saying that the top management must be the "commanders of service delivery."
He said they must at all time be ready to listen, serve and to account to the masses.
Zuma spoke fondly on accountability. He said the problem of accountability would not be solved by sophisticated technologies and the administrative system but rather by putting the people first, serving them with dignity and respect.
He said what the country needed was a new breed of public servants - a public servant who respects the citizen, who values public resources and who comes to work on time and performs his/her duties diligently.
The meeting arises from Zuma's drive to improve service delivery through making public servants do things differently to deliver services faster and in a caring manner.
