In this episode of the South Africa Growth Though Inclusion series, Tim O'Brien, Senior Manager of Applied Research at the Growth Lab, speaks with Nomvuyo Guma, Chief Director of Microeconomic Policy at the National Treasury and Saul Musker, Director of Strategy and Delivery Support of the private office of the President of South Africa. The discussion centers on Operation Vulindlela - a joint initiative of the presidency and the National Treasury. Operation Vulindlela has been at work for about three years, focusing on many areas that the Growth Lab has found are most critical to growth and inclusion in South Africa: electricity, water, transport, digital communications and the visa regime.
Welcome to the Growth Lab podcast.
The Growth Lab at Harvard Kennedy School is a research program that pushes the frontiers of economic growth and development policy research by collaborating with policymakers to design actions and sharing insights through teaching tools and publications.
Today's episode is part of our South Africa Growth Through Inclusion series which takes a deeper dive into our two-year research engagement in South Africa.
If you'd like to learn more about this work or download the full report, visit our website at growthlab.hks.harvard.edu.
In 1994 South Africa ended apartheid and created a democracy. At the time, South Africa supported the 47th most complex economy in the world far ahead of any other African nation.
There were good reasons to believe that the economy would grow rapidly and opportunities would expand to South Africans previously excluded by apartheid.
Fast forward to 2023 in South Africa has become less complex. When compared to the rest of the world, jobs are scarce. Economic growth is slow and highly vulnerable and inequality is the highest globally.
Though government policies have dismantled many apartheid institutions, these efforts have not created an inclusive economy for the majority in 2021.
The Growth Lab at Harvard University started a two year research project in South Africa focused on understanding the root causes of the country's economic hurdles and potential pathways toward inclusive growth.
Our final report titled Growth through inclusion in South Africa finds that the country's poor economic performance can be explained by a collapse in state capacity and that the dysfunctional labor market is rooted in systemic spatial exclusion.
My name is Tim O'Brien and I'm a senior manager of applied research here at the Growth Lab.
Today's discussion on South Africa will be a clear reminder that collapsing state capacity is not happening everywhere. As I will speak to two incredibly capable public servants who are working to solve big problems.
Today, we welcome two guests because we're discussing a joint initiative of the presidency and the National Treasury Operation Vulindlela, which we'll probably refer to frequently as OV is essentially an organizational arm or delivery unit of South Africa's reform efforts.
Its aim is to accelerate the implementation of economic recovery strategies that South Africa has pursued since COVID-19.
It's overseen by Deputy Minister of Finance David Masondo and reports directly to President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Operation OV has been at work for about three years focused on many areas that we at the growth lab have found are most critical to growth and inclusion in South Africa, electricity, water transport, digital communications and the visa regime. OV released its latest progress report a few months ago and it shows that more than 70% of reforms have either been completed or are on track to be finalized in the next year.
But having gotten to interact with today's guests through our leading economic growth, executive education course at the Harvard Kennedy School.
I know that OV's work is about much more than just checking boxes of planned reforms.
They've been navigating emergencies with crises coming from across their portfolio of issue areas trying to balance emergency response needs with long term changes. It is no easy job.
Today's guests, Nomvuyo (Vuyo) and Saul Musker are from the National Treasury and Presidency respectively.
Vuyo is the Chief Director of Microeconomic Policy at the National Treasury and serves as co head of operation Ella from the Treasury.
Saul is director of strategy and delivery support of the private office of the President of South Africa and serves as the senior technical lead across Operation Vulindlela reform areas.
Welcome to you both. Could you each tell me a little bit about how you ended up in the positions that you have today?
And can we start with you, Vuyo?
Sure.
Hi Tim, and thank you so much for the opportunity to be here and to speak about Operation Vulindlela.
So in response to your question, I'm an economist by both education and training. After finishing my honors degree, I actually joined the private sector. I worked for a couple of banks, early on in my career and I mean, it was great. It was exciting. It was fun.
The money was good but it didn't feel really fulfilling.
And at some point I was just sitting at my desk, kind of minding my own business and the phone rang and this lady said, I'm calling from the National Treasury.
We have a few positions that we're advertising shortly and we would love for you to consider applying.
And until that point, I hadn't really thought of a career in public service, but it just so happened that I was looking for a change.
I was looking for something different. I thought I was going to hop into the Treasury for about three years. And then come back, you know, to my life in the, in the private sector and that was that was almost 10 years ago.
So I failed dismally at my three year plan. But that's because the work is just so engaging. It's so exciting. And I'm surrounded by incredibly talented, intelligent people.
And the work is just so stimulating and, and fulfilling.
So here I still am. That's fantastic.
And where, where are you from in South Africa?
Where did you grow up?
So, it's actually a very, not so simple question for me to answer because I was born in exile. So my parents were political refugees.
I was actually born,, across the border in Eswatini. My family originally is from the Eastern Cape, but now based in Johannesburg and I actually grew up in Cape Town.
So once we finally came back to South Africa, I spent a bit of time in Johannesburg then some time in Cape Town and I'm now based in Pretoria.
And how about you, Saul?
Hi Tim, and it's good to be here.
So I had, I had an interesting journey to get to where, where I am now.
in 2015, when we had widespread student protests in South Africa, I was on the lawns outside the Union buildings, part of a crowd of students with rocks being thrown over my head at a line of police officers and it was about five years later that I found myself sitting on the inside of the same building on in the Vle team.
And in the years in between, I spent some time in Ghana and Nigeria and Cote d'ivoire working on some equally complex economic reforms.
And then did my graduate studies at Oxford before coming back to South Africa after the national elections in 2019 and joining the president's office then that was the year before we launched operation Pinza and started this work.
What part of South Africa are you from?
My origins are much more straightforward than Vuyo.
I'm from Joburg and I have lived here in the city, pretty much my whole life.
Great. Thanks again for both of you, to both of you for being here.
Vuyo, maybe you're the right person to start us off.
Could you explain what is operation bound Lela in your view? Sure.
So, I mean, you've just described it as a delivery unit which is most frequently how we describe ourselves.
It's unique though in the sense that it is not based in one location.
So you have Saul and actually my co-lead Rudy Dix, who are based in the private office of the president.
And then there's myself and my microeconomic policy team and various other technical experts spread throughout the treasury who formed the broader OV team on the treasury side.
So really what it is is a joint initiative at the center of government to accelerate the implementation of growth, enhancing structural reforms.
Many of the things that you spoke to that are inhibiting South Africa's growth at the moment, logistics, electricity struggles in water are long standing issues.
And we've been speaking about them for a long time. We've done research on them.
We all know what the problems are, but for some reason, we were just really failing when it came to implementation.
And so in the aftermath of COVID, when it became clear that we would have to do things very, very differently, not just to recover from COVID.
But to put the economy back on a sustainable much higher growth trajectory than had been the case in the previous decade.
We started looking around for, well, what can we learn from pre attempts to implement very ambitious growth policies and how should we try to organize things differently?
And, and from there, we constructed this, we looked at various models around the world.
and then came up with this construction that is I think most important for being a joint initiative between both the presidency and the Treasury.
Very interesting.
So what are some of the besides being a joint initiative, key kind of aspects of the model that you picked up and found useful from the examples that you looked at or were there perhaps some widespread examples that you chose?
not to follow organizationally, tell me a little bit more about you know, how you operate on a day to day basis.
Sure. So Vulindlela actually was built along deliver principles.
So we focused on the experience of Sir Michael Barber's unit in the UK, but then also looked at different iterations, you know, it spawned different delivery units across the world and we then took what we thought were the key principles and then adapted them to the local context.
So the things that we think are really important that we have built our work plans around is firstly, a prioritization of very few issues.
This is particularly important in the context in which we find ourselves, which is one of fairly weak state capacity and capability.
So you don't want to overwhelm the reform agenda with a whole lot of priorities that you you are therefore unlikely to be able to make happen.
So you avoid spreading the effort and resources again around amongst too many objectives.
As I indicated earlier, the collaboration at the center of government is important because the Treasury, for example, you know, all of this comes out in the growth numbers.
And we also see it through a different lens through the budget process.
And the presidency of course, has this overarching agenda that the president needs to implement.
So having the partnership has been really key to how we've been able to execute and roll out reforms.
We have regular monitoring of progress against the targets using very simple tools, very simple plans and regular communication to the public on the progress against those plans in terms of how we work internally because it's a partner, it's a kind of very agile, non bureaucratic at all.
We're very flat structure and we, we are able to draw both on inside expertise from the Treasury and outside experts where needed.
We intentionally didn't want to have this institutionalized clunky structure.
And this really allows us to kind of move in line with what a reform might need at a, at a particular point.
We've focused quite a lot on developing the evidence base both to support, putting a reform on the agenda and then to get buy in from the various stakeholders, particularly the departments that are reform implemented.
in terms of how, you know, we think the reform should be carried out.
And all of this really were there to kind of support departments.
So we don't take over their work in actually implementing this.
Many of the departments and their political heads.
We call ministers in South Africa, actually have their roles and responsibilities are enshrined in legislation.
So you don't want to override that. We're here to play a supporting role.
We're here to crowd in expertise where required expertise and capacity.
We're here to help resolve deadlocks by escalating issues up the political chain and to the president directly himself when necessary.
And we're here to provide a coordinating mechanism because what we found is that for a lot of these reforms, they were kind of getting stuck at the coordinating point because when you have all sorts of ministries and no one above to break that deadlock, then things can kind of go around in a circle for quite some time.
Can you tell us about a few examples of progress or success so far?
Sure.
So, you know, we first have to ask what we mean by success and what's important there is that we're not just trying to tick boxes, we're not working our way through a list of, you know, legislation passed and, and regulations issued, but really focused on the impact that, that these reforms need to achieve.
And the way in which that impact is felt by, by South Africans and in the economy.
And there are three examples I think of successes in the last few years which speak to different objectives of Buhle.
One is a simple regulatory change that we implemented in 2021 to unlock private investment in electricity generation.
And that was to amend schedule two of the Electricity Regulation Act, this arcane schedule to legislation to remove the licensing requirement for private generation facilities.
And since then, we've seen just a massive response from the market.
We now have a pipeline of more than 12 gigawatts of mostly wind and solar projects, you know, already confirmed and at various stages of development where prior to 2021 there was none.
And I think what that shows is that a simple change in this case, really a P stroke measure can unlock investment. And, and that's, that's what we've tried to.
Those are the things that we've tried to, to find as, as ob the second was in March 2022.
Last year, the completion of the spectrum auction which made available new spectrum frequencies for mobile network operators.
And that auction had been stuck in litigation and dispute and policy disagreements for more than a decade which, which really had prevented those networks from rolling out, for example, 5G networks.
And after that auction was completed last year, we've seen just a, an amazing amount of investment in the telecommunications sector.
And in fact, since between 2021 and the end of 2022 the cost of data decreased by 25% for the lowest, the lowest cost.
And that really shows that these reforms, although they're often very technical and perhaps very specific to a particular sector do in the end have an impact on people's lives.
Reduction in in the cost of data of that scale will, will affect South Africans across the board and especially the poorest South Africans who need access to the internet to search for work to engage in the economy and so on.
The third example, I think is the turnaround of the water use licensing system.
When will Lila was established, there was a real crisis with water use licenses.
A massive backlog was taking more than a year on average for a firm to apply for a license.
And that was holding up real invest, investments in sectors like forestry, like mining, manufacturing.
And we have partnered with the Department of Water and Sanitation. We put a team into the department and re-engineered that license system.
So that by July of this year, we had cleared the backlog to zero and reduced the turnaround time from over 300 days to just 90 days for most applications.
And again, I think that's an example of how you can actually fix an institution that's not working and turn around a complex bureaucracy, make it streamlined and make it perform better and make it support economic growth.
It's the kind of story that we really need in South Africa in a context like Vuyo said, where the capacity of the state has been eroded for many years.
Some of those successes require learning on the job, learning how to overcome particular challenges.
I think, I think it absolutely did.
And you know, there's, there's the famous saying that Deng Xiaoping used with the, the Chinese economic reform program that you cross a river by feeling the stones.
I think we've really experienced that in vent Lela, you, you often don't know where a a process will, will lead when you start out.
And we've tried very hard as a team to apply PDIA principles, Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation, which means focusing on the problem and not the solution and learning as you go along and adapting the approach trying new new approaches as new information emerges. We found that I think in pretty much all the reforms that we've worked on, you know, one example is, is the spectrum auction again because when we started out, we thought that once that auction was completed and the spectrum had been allocated to mobile networks, that would be enough, they would go ahead use it and start to invest in, in upgrading their networks rolling out 5G.
But what we discovered after that was that there were huge bottlenecks downstream, all sorts of regulations and permitting processes and so on which were holding up that investment.
And so we worked on a number of initiatives among them, putting in place a new rapid deployment policy which aims to accelerate the roll out of infrastructure like like towers and fiber, you know, providing a mechanism for disputes with private landowners and, and so on.
As well as a standardized process for the networks to apply for, for way leaves to access municipal infrastructure and more quickly.
And, I think it's a good example because it shows that you can implement a reform.
And then, the impact that you expect it doesn't materialize until you realize, you know, talking to all of the role players and the firms themselves that you still need to do X and Y and Z to actually get it to its logical conclusion.
And that adaptive process iterative process I think has been true of, of the whole reform program that's fascinating.
What do you think, Vuyo? Were there some lessons that stood out to you as you've worked through these reforms over the last three years, in addition to what Saul has brought up?
Yes. I mean, I think, you know, solar spot on, you know, the reality is that you, you can have a plan,, that is very well researched and things change as you engage with the plan.
One of the things I think, you know, if we were to go back is to focus a lot more on the relationships.
So the alchemy of relationships is something we've been talking about.
Now quite frequently, I think spending a lot of more time with the departments, the reform implements their political heads, ensuring that we actually have a share shared assessment of what the problem is and then a shared assessment of the department's capacity to tackle that problem would actually have in hindsight, saved a lot of the struggles and challenges that then pop up mid reform that you have to overcome.
Because of course, even though you go to people and you say, hey, we're here to help the reality is that some people can be quite territorial or they do feel that this is my responsibility to execute.
It's enshrined in legislation, these are my powers.
So there is that initial hesitation that you have to overcome and get the department on board so that the reform flows a lot more smoothly.
So actually, spending time here can save you time down the line.
And I think that is one valuable lesson that is emerging in terms of the reform agenda as a whole, you know, ensuring that you have some early victories, some big wins.
So the raising of the embedded generation licensing threshold that Saul spoke about was first raised from I think 10 megawatts to 100 and then finally abolished.
But at the time that it was lifted to 100 megawatts, the conversation was, should we lift it to 50 you know, should it be 20 or 50 kind of range?
And so going even beyond what the market expected resulted in a huge confidence boost.
And so getting some early victories under your belt, in terms of the entire reform agenda really helps to build confidence and helps to build support from stakeholders once they really start to understand what you're doing and then you can leverage that momentum and that confidence for some of the more difficult reforms that leads into my next question.
So what are you seeing as some of the most difficult reforms now?
And how are you going about using what you've learned so far to come at them?
The most challenging reforms are those in electricity and logistics.
And they're challenging for a number of reasons.
Firstly, both of them involve very, very many stakeholders.
So not just multiple departments that are responsible for policy, but then also have state entities in the mix.
It cuts across the various spheres of government.
So from national provincial down to your local government, then you have stakeholders who are outside of government, from community organizations to to unions, to business.
And so design structures that actually allow you to take all of those people along in an efficient way that actually still gets the work done has proven to be quite a big challenge because one of the things that has previously happened in South Africa is we're a very consultative democracy and so often, you know, implementation plans can get bogged down in consultation as well.
So what we've had to do is set up structures for electricity, that is the National Energy Crisis Committee and for Logistics, the National Logistics Crisis Committee.
and these are structured that are chaired by the President.
We have various work streams, we have all of the relevant stakeholders and players in those work streams that means they meet regularly, get around the same room, talk about the problems, report back, design strategies and, and you know, report back regularly on implementation.
And through those processes, we've started to see quite a bit of movement but it's, but even as that has happened, those structures were set up in, in the last year or two.
And, and as we know, these sectors take quite a while to react to reform.
And so it's very difficult to keep that momentum going in a context where now, for example, the logistics crisis is worsening.
And so that is proving to be quite a challenge.
But I must say the, the the feeling in the work streams, the momentum that's been built up is really quite encouraging.
And so we are very confident that we will see the fruits of this labor in the years to come.
But while you're kind of in the thick of the storm and trying to balance all of these competing voices and stakeholders, it can be quite challenging.
Now, saw you alluded to PDIA before I wanted to ask you because a year ago, you and Vuyo were both taking our 10 week online Leading Economic Growth executive education program.
And I recall hearing you think through some of the, the challenges of the day through the assignments of that course.
Now a year later, I was when I was hoping you could reflect back and tell us a little bit about which tools you're finding useful.
And any reflections on, on what you learned there.
So I think for both of us being on that course, really gave us space and time to reflect about the work that we're doing in Vulindlela and how we could do it better.
And you know, the first question that, that the course, tries to answer offers an answer to, I guess is what does it take to get economic growth?
And the answer that I think shines through is complexity.
But what we're aiming to achieve is greater complexity, sophistication, diversification of the economy, which in South Africa's case means, you know, looking at what capabilities we have now and trying to, to assess where we can move to next.
So, you know, moving from a really great automotive manufacturing sector that we have in South Africa and we've developed over a long time to, you know, other components, steel products, all all sorts of things that that the same skills could, could be applied to or moving from the kinds of agricultural products that we produce now to more labor intensive export oriented crops.
But the, the fundamental question that we've been trying to answer in Vella is you know, what, what public goods are missing, you know, what is holding the economy back from producing that kind of complexity?
What is holding back all the actors, all the firms in this economy from going out and, and, and doing their thing expanding into new markets and new products.
And that's why I think the, the second thing that, that, that the course helps to, to answer is what does it take to actually do that once you know what we're aiming for, how do you get that done?
And, and how do you lead that process?
How do you lead a process of economic growth and transformation?
And from our experience, I think the concept of, you know, a high bandwidth organization really, really stands out that in the public sector, you need organizations which are open rather than closed, which are engaging as much and as actively as possible with all the key players, with those who hold the information that you need to identify really what the problem is or what what kind of solutions will work.
And, and we've taken that on board, I think at least as far as, as as we can in our own team.
And in the way that we approach this really big mammoth task of, of reforming the South African economy that it's as much about how you structure an organization and a team.
and the ways in which you work as it is about what you're trying to do and the reforms that you've identified.
Vuyo, you mentioned something I thought was very powerful, the simple idea of being targeted, not trying to take on too many reforms.
So I'm wondering what you see as the future of operation bundle as you get through some hurdles, work through challenges.
Is you have the tension of wanting to remain targeted on constraints that are most important for the economy.
But you've also built a very powerful problem solving machine or unblocking machine.
So what do you see as the future of operation Vend Lela Tim.
That is a conversation that we are actually having as a team right now.
So operation Vulindlela is set, this phase is set to end with this administration.
And we're actually thinking about what an OV two would look like.
So what's clear is that the structures that have been set up to manage the energy crisis, the logistics crisis, they will need to continue because that work certainly won't be completed by the end of this administration.
And that is somewhere early next year around May.
So that work at least will continue.
And then there's some of the reforms that have to be implemented at subnation levels of government.
So some of the electricity work will also need to be implemented in municipalities, some of the digital communications work, some of the logistics interventions as well.
So there's a a subset of reforms that will actually continue beyond the envisaged time frame of this phase.
And we are then talking about we have those things on the agenda and you're very right, we've now built this capability around problem solving.
Where do we turn our attention to next?
So we'll be spending some time in the next couple of months, going back to our original growth paper and thinking about what other sectors perhaps could benefit from intervention.
We're also very mindful that this first phase of operation, Vulin Dela was very much focused on fixing the binding constraints as as Saul said.
And so there has been some criticism that we haven't been focused enough on social issues, households in particular.
So we've picked up some reforms like the devolution of passenger rail that will also continue and there's scope to expand in, in into areas like for example, education and skills crime comes up and, and there are various other kind of socio-economic issues that also have important economic impacts that we could consider picking up.
So we don't have a final list.
But firstly, there's a, there's some things that we still need to close out and then there are obviously some pressing issues that we already know of that we weren't able to get to in the first phase that would be up for consideration in the second.
Now, I'm taking a step outside of the operation, vuna operations.
What do you, how do you see the the growth trajectory of South Africa moving forward?
We just released our report which, you know, points to many challenges, a lot of frustrations, a pattern of stagnation of growth struggles to include people.
One could easily read it and come away with a sense of pessimism, but we also point out how much potential there is.
that's kind of kept down untapped, underutilized.
He, when Saul you were mentioning some of the successes of OV, they stood out to me in the way that by kind of re releasing something that's been constrained through a public good.
You've gotten a response of private activity.
It's kind of beyond belief.
So how do you see the future of South Africa in terms of growth and inclusion and oh the what, what in your mind stands in, in the way of success?
Maybe I'll, I'll ask Saul first and then ask Vuyo to come in and add anything.
So, you know, South Africa faces some very serious challenges.
And your report, I think captures those.
Well, first and foremost, the energy shortfall, which really is a binding constraint on growth, the logistics system which is underperform, constraining exports and equally acting as a a handbrake on growth.
And, and if you look beyond those challenges, a really serious problem of inequality and exclusion which the report also points to.
and which really is the fundamental challenge that we've got to get to grips with in South Africa.
And so if you take a a short term view, if you look at just the next three months or the next six months, it is easy to become overwhelmed by those challenges and even to, to sink into despair.
But what's really important and what we've argued all along is that we have to keep our eyes trained on the longer horizon we've got to be thinking about what South Africa will look like, not in six months from now, but in three years or five years from now and, and the kind of potential that the country has, the economy has to grow up, what it will take to unlock that.
When you look at that horizon, I think the reforms that have already been implemented or or which are underway now will will drive some fundamental pretty radical changes in key sectors of the economy which, which should make the picture look very different.
So take energy for an example.
you know, until recently, we had one power utility Eskom responsible for all of our electricity generation transmission distribution and all of the crises that have resulted from that.
But through the reforms that are being implemented now, the restructuring of Eskom vertical separation, the introduction of a competitive wholesale energy market, private investment in in generation in the years to come, we're going to see a massive boom mostly in renewable energy, which we think will be the key driver of growth.
And apart from resolving the energy crisis, that investment will drive growth in the economy as a whole.
And it'll allow South Africa to play a leading role in those green sectors of the future green hydrogen and other green products.
So, you know, from our point of view, it's as much about recognizing the challenges that we have now as it is about thinking about the future, what South Africa could look like.
and, and, and what, what it will take to get there and, and we're confident that South Africa has the natural endowments, it has the skills, it has the institutions still to achieve that.
Yeah, I think Saul has hit the nail on the head.
I mean, firstly, I must congratulate the Harvard growth lab for a really, really, really excellent report or set of reports.
It's received a lot of attention in South Africa and has sparked debates that I think are far more helpful than the, the usual ones that we have, which tend to focus on the budget and whether it's expansionary enough or not.
but having kind of public discourse on the these really important issues, I think help set the economic agenda or at least foregrounds it in public consciousness in a way that's very helpful for the reform agenda and for some of the reforms that we may tackle in future.
So, you know, like Saul, I, you know, I share his optimism around the future.
I certainly wouldn't still be here and still be in government if I didn't absolutely believe in the power of this reform agenda to make a change.
It is just the nature of structural reforms that they want to take time to implement and to then, you know, take time to have the full effect.
And so it is really asking people to kind of have faith in the process, and trust that, you know, as we're presenting investment numbers, for example, we're actually laying the groundwork for higher growth in future.
Last thing I wanna ask you both is what advice you'd give to young public servants.
I know that neither of you necessarily planned to have a career in public service.
But you found your way here and you're doing a very important and impressive work.
So what advice would you give to, to younger people who are looking to contribute to either South Africa or somewhere else, in a similar way?
That's a good question actually.
I mean, I think the, the key thing, the key experience of my time in the public sector has been not to be discouraged too easily, don't give in easily and don't be discouraged too easily.
When you have a good idea, you've put in the time and effort to, to properly research it, to properly understand the issue, to properly engage with stakeholders, not everyone will back you at the start, but if you keep plugging away at it and you really believe in what you're proposing, the solution is more often than not people actually come around, and so I think if I had to give myself, advice, just looking back on the journey that I traveled, it would certainly be that to people outside of the system who are looking and possibly contemplating a future in public service.
I would say absolutely get involved. Don't believe the negative hype in the headlines.
Certainly, when I was sitting in my cushy office on the dealing room floor, I, I did not think very highly of government officials at all.
They all painted in newspapers as being somewhere between completely incompetent and completely corrupt. So it's not a pretty picture from the outside.
But I can tell you my experience from the inside has been that I have been able to work with some incredibly talented, passionate people.
And that even when things are really challenging, your shared excitement and commitment to the goal, is just something that has really carried me over the years and it's really something that money can't buy.
So if you're sitting on the sidelines and you're thinking about getting involved, I would say absolutely go for it to add to that.
I think, you know, government has unique levers to affect change more than more than anywhere else.
And you can do things in government with the kind of resources, the kind of powers that government has that you can't achieve anywhere else and you can solve problems in government that, that nobody else can solve.
And I really think that the world needs good government now, probably more than ever before.
Given the complexity of the problems that we're experiencing not just in South Africa but across the world.
So entering public service, I think is really important for young people who want to solve problems and know that the kind of problems that they want to solve.
I think what's equally important is to have a clear sense of who you are working for because ultimately, when the going gets tough, like Vuyo says that should motivate you to keep going.
And in our case, I think for both Vuyo and, and for me, you know, we're young South Africans and we're living in a young democracy, and the future of this country is not yet written. It could go in m in different directions.
On the one hand, that means the stakes are very high, but on the other, it means that there's an enormous amount of work to be done and it needs young people who are committed to public service to do that work.
Well, I can't thank you enough, Saul and Vuyo for joining us and having this discussion, and for the work that you do day in and day out for your country.
So thanks for joining us and hope you have a wonderful holiday season.
Thank you for having us, Tim.