Officials shouldn’t toe the ‘party’ line

Here’s a simple statement of the employer-employee relationship: if you, as a worker, want to do something which is not official company business, then you must do it in your own time.

If that business needs to be done on any day in the working week, then you would have to put in for leave.

That simple rule does not seem to apply to the most senior civil servants, ministers, their deputies, premiers and provincial MECs.

This week, an assortment of ministers, premiers, MECs and senior civil servants attended the ANC’s 108th birthday celebrations in Kimberley … and none of them will say whether they took leave from their official duties to do so.

We doubt that they did because if that was the case, they would have been happy to confirm it. Instead, when we asked the question, we got rude responses from government spokespeople.

That shows the growing ANC inability to distinguish their government duties as servants of the people – which is what is construed as official work – and their work for their party.

Not only did many of them apparently attend the birthday bash – and its accompanying ANC campaigning – in work hours, they also did so with their administrative staffs (including spokespeople, who do not seem to understand that their job is to answer questions from the media) and their bodyguards.

In the case of the latter, everyone knows most VIPs have a number of armed people looking after them.

Let’s not even think about the cost of accommodating and feeding this lot – which, again, fell to the hapless taxpayer, because the ANC seemingly makes no distinction between the state and the party.

If you are a party which doesn’t see that difference, it’s a short step to looting Treasury’s vaults.

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