Given the widespread financial mismanagement at all levels of government, it is appropriate to be concerned about the quality of public finance and business management training received by public sector employees.
This is not to say that business schools are running programmes that are not working, but the question remains: how do we train public sector leaders to do better, or do the state’s shortcomings lie outside the realm of education?
Joseph Sekhampu, director of the North-West University (NWU) Business School, whose Mahikeng campus is largely geared towards serving government employees, points out that poor governance does not by itself prove that business schools are teaching the wrong things.
And while he agrees that business schools should be held accountable for the quality and relevance of their programmes, he doesn’t think they should be treated as the main explanation for failures produced by a much wider system of governance.
“Management education matters, but it operates inside institutions that can either use or frustrate what people have learnt,” he says. “Universities can strengthen analytical judgment, ethical awareness and financial decision-making. They cannot determine whether a graduate returns to a workplace where competence is valued, authority is clear and accountability is enforced.”
The performance of a municipality or government department reflects not only the quality of its management, he points out, but also the quality of the political leadership, the robustness of its institutional systems, the availability of resources and its organisational culture.
“In many cases,” Sekhampu adds, “the constraint is not that officials lack technical knowledge; it’s that political interference, unstable leadership, weak controls, uneven enforcement and persistent capacity gaps make sound management difficult to sustain.”
In short, “a well-trained official can improve practice but cannot single-handedly repair an institution whose incentives repeatedly work against professional judgment”.
The more pertinent question, he feels, is whether public institutions give capable people enough room, authority and protection to do their work properly.
A knowledge deficit isn’t the real or only problem
Rhodes Business School director Owen Skae argues that the problem in government is not primarily a lack of knowledge.
Citing the auditor-general’s (AG’s) consolidated general report on local government audit outcomes for 2024/2025, he notes that of the 72 municipalities that received modified audit opinions, 66 of their CFOs met the prescribed minimum competency levels.
“We have the Municipal Finance Management Act [MFMA] and the Public Finance Management Act,” he says. “What fails is application, control, discipline and consequence management.”
The AG report supports this conclusion, noting that only a third of municipal public accounts committees handle accountability matters appropriately. In addition, it finds that municipal councillor training on consequence management, MFMA responsibilities and updated legislation is fragmented across municipalities and has had “limited impact”.
For instance, of the 60 municipalities assessed in 2024/2025, the AG found that councillors at 25 did not attend professionalisation framework training; councillors at 17 did not attend training on updates to legislation; and at 14 municipalities, no training was provided to councillors on environmental management.
“Overall, councillor training continues to be largely compliance-driven, with insufficient focus on practical application and enforcement, which reduces its effectiveness in strengthening accountability and service delivery,” the AG report concludes.
At the same time, vacancy rates continue to climb. In 2024/2025, the metros averaged a 25% vacancy rate at senior management level (compared to 15% in 2020/2021), with Nelson Mandela Bay the worst-affected metro with a senior management vacancy rate of 67%.
Little surprise, then, that the local government sector’s bill for using financial reporting consultants has rocketed from R590m a decade ago to R1.61bn in 2024/2025. To make matters worse, most municipalities keep reappointing the previous year’s consultants and, according to the AG report, 51 municipalities showed no evidence that skills transfer is taking place between their own staff and the external consultants employed.
Skae feels the situation requires “both a microwave and an oven” — short, in-house training piloted in one municipality alongside the slow burn of the university degree pipeline, delivered in formal partnership with the South African Local Government Association, the department of co-operative governance & traditional affairs and the National Treasury.
Strengthening the capability of the state
One of the most credible ways to assess how effective business education is at raising the quality and professionalism of graduates once they are back in the workplace is to follow them over time.
“Business schools should be honest and say what education cannot fix and then track our graduates who are in the public sector and establish where they are making a difference and why,” says Skae.
Sekhampu agrees: “We look for evidence of career progression, greater leadership responsibility, employer feedback, professional recognition and continued alumni engagement. More importantly, we ask whether graduates are using what they learnt: whether they frame problems more clearly, make better use of evidence, exercise sounder judgment and improve decisions in their workplaces.”
This is also why the NWU Business School’s relationship with the public sector does not end at graduation. It works with the North West provincial government through policy dialogue, executive development, leadership training and other collaborative initiatives.
“These engagements allow us to hear directly where capability gaps remain and to adapt our contribution accordingly,” Sekhampu says. “Our task is not simply to award qualifications but to remain involved in the longer work of strengthening the capability of the state.”
In short, the responsibility is shared. “Business schools must develop leaders who can think critically, act ethically and manage scarce public resources well. Public institutions, in turn, must create conditions that reward professionalism and evidence-based decision-making.”
Is demand for public sector management education falling?
The higher education sector was disrupted during and after the pandemic. Since then, slow economic growth, fiscal consolidation and sustained pressure on public budgets have reduced training and development expenditure.
Departments and municipalities are often forced to choose between immediate operational demands and longer-term investment in their people. That trade-off is understandable, but it carries a cost.
“Periods of fiscal pressure make sound management education more necessary, not less, because officials are being asked to deliver more with fewer resources,” says Sekhampu. “A department cannot improve its financial management, governance or service delivery without continuing to develop the people who lead and administer it.”
But business schools must also earn that investment by ensuring their programmes reflect the realities of public administration. “Technical competence remains essential, but it is no longer enough,” says Sekhampu. “Public sector leaders must be able to work through institutional complexity, defend ethical judgment, manage scarcity, lead change and translate policy into public value.”
Ultimately, whether they are equipping leaders with these skills is the standard against which business school programmes should be judged.
