Abstract:
In today’s fast changing world, countries and organisations need to have a sense
of urgency to change in order to be competitive. There have been numerous
dramatic changes in social, political, economic, environmental and technological
areas. Notwithstanding these changes being mostly at international level, they
also affected the national systems. These changes often blindsided the countries
which especially failed in strategic planning and transformational leadership. The
South African public sector is not spared. The public service is under considerable
pressure to improve service delivery to meet this challenge and the ever increasing
expectations of stakeholders and customers who are increasingly aware of new
technologies, governance possibilities and practices. There is an urgent need for
public sector transformation to deliver public goods meeting expectations and
spearhead the country to achieve vision 2025 and possibly, to start charting the
way forward beyond 2025 to meet even greater political, economic, technical and
social challenges of the future.
It is undoubtedly that the anticipation of these changes and taking the necessary
precautions are closely intertwined with a public administration system. The
variety, frequency and intensity of these changes and developments suggest that the detection of the problems and providing solutions for them are not as easy as it used
to be. Principles such as public participation, transparency and accountability are
now a part of our daily lives. The purpose of this article is to explore the complexity
of the public sector and the variety of leadership challenges within the South African
public service. Taking cognisance of the signifi cance of transformational leadership
in the realisation of public sector transformation, a thorough investigation of
the strategic issues is urgently needed in order to provide a co-ordinated and
comprehensive strategic approach to address the issues of poor service delivery.
The article concludes by arguing that bold, decisive and transformational initiatives
by the public sector and its leaders are necessary to meet the complex current and
future challenges of the country.
