Bosa’s plans ‘make sense but promises won’t be kept’

Build One South Africa (Bosa) leader Mmusi Maimane’s plans for governing may limit corruption and save costs, but are simply promises he can’t keep, according to political experts.

Yesterday, Maimane said his party’s big plan to build a professional, world-class government, free from corruption, included cutting down on several government departments and changing the law to a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison for corruption.

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Bosa’s plans

Maimane said Bosa would launch an incentive-based scheme for all public sector employees and a national recruitment drive to professionalise the public service and establish “specialised corruption courts”.

He called for the implementation of continuous forensic lifestyle audits of all politicians and senior government officials “through an ethics ombud”.

He added: “There should be signed performance contracts with every senior government employee managed by a service provider outside government.”

Smaller Cabinet made sense

Political analyst Khanya Vilakazi said having a smaller Cabinet made sense.

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“It would make any administration look like they are trimming the fat by reducing the number of Cabinet members that utilise VIP protections and houses and more.”

He said lifestyle audits should happen regularly. “Sars [SA Revenue Service] needs to be capacitated to go through the lifestyle of people who work in departments, from the smallest to the largest person who works in finance.”

Economist Dawie Roodt said if it were up to him, he’d downsize the Cabinet to fewer than 10 departments to save money.

“If you talk about a minister, it includes a deputy minister, director-general, secretary and VIP protection. Each minister is way overpaid and underdelivers.”

Maimane making promises he couldn’t keep

Political analyst Piet Croucamp said Maimane was making promises he couldn’t keep.

He said Maimane had a good point about reducing the Cabinet to 10 ministers to save costs.

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“It may be true we have too many ministers and departments, but Maimane would not be able to keep the promise,” added Croucamp.