The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) welcomes the formal introduction of the Insourcing Bill by the EFF in the National Assembly as a Private Member’s Bill, tabled by the Treasurer General, Commissar Omphile Maotwe. The purpose of this Bill is to compel the state, across all levels and entities, to insource essential and regularly required services.
At the core of South Africa’s collapsing state capacity lies the wholesale outsourcing of public services to third-party contractors. This trend has led to widespread corruption, manipulation of the tender system, inflated pricing, exploitation of workers, and ultimately the non-delivery of services. Outsourcing has replaced long-term skilled employment with insecure, low-wage, short-term contracts that offer no benefits or prospects for training or career advancement.
Since its formation in 2013, the EFF has consistently called for a professional and capable public service at the centre of service delivery. We have warned that outsourcing, driven by misguided neoliberal thinking, would weaken the state. This has proven true. Public institutions have become hollow shells, outsourcing everything from security to cleaning, gardening, auditing, information technology, and even healthcare services, while failing to retain skills or transfer knowledge to younger generations.
In municipalities in particular, this trend has been devastating. As experienced municipal artisans, engineers, and administrators retire or pass away, they are not replaced with equally skilled staff. Instead, municipalities turn to short-term Expanded Public Works Programmes and casual labour, with no meaningful training, security, or capacity building. This explains why so many municipalities have collapsed and are unable to provide water, electricity, waste collection, road maintenance or infrastructure refurbishment.
The Insourcing Bill will change this. It applies to all organs of state: national and provincial departments, municipalities, public entities governed by the PFMA, constitutional institutions, Parliament, and provincial legislatures. These institutions will be legally obliged to insource key services that are required regularly, including security, cleaning, maintenance, catering, auditing, ICT, transport, administration, and health-related services.
Where services cannot immediately be insourced, the Bill places strict conditions on outsourcing. Institutions must prove that no in-house capacity exists, must require the service provider to train public employees, and must report quarterly to the Minister responsible for public service and administration. The Bill allows exemptions only in exceptional circumstances, such as national security or public interest, and ensures that existing contracts will be honoured until expiry.
The EFF calls on the relevant parliamentary committees to ensure that the processing of this Bill is inclusive and participatory. It must involve wide stakeholder engagement, workers, unions, municipalities, state entities, and the broader public. The legislative process must prioritise the greater good of rebuilding South Africa’s state capacity and restoring a skilled public service capable of addressing service delivery failures, rather than narrow party-political positions.
This Bill gives legislative expression to the constitutional principles of fair labour practices and the promotion of decent work. It is a crucial intervention to restore the public sector’s capability, reduce corruption, and ensure that public money is spent on service delivery, not profiteering.
We call on all political parties, trade unions, civil society organisations, and communities to support this Bill, make meaningful submissions to the relevant portfolio committee, and unite behind the effort to rebuild a state that serves the people with dignity and accountability.
The EFF has a significant presence in various provincial legislatures.
berlin kamikaze
Fun South African Fact: The aboriginal people of South Africa are the San and the Khoi.
Moon Peaches
Fun South African Fact: Vilakazi Street in Soweto has been home to two Nobel Peace Prize winners. A tour through Soweto will always stop at Vilakazi Street to reveal a number of heritage sites of great importance to democratic South Africa. Both Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu lived here at some point in their lives. In 1984, Archbishop Desmond Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition for his non-violent fight against the apartheid regime. Nine years later in 1993, Nelson Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize with then-president F.W. de Klerk as an award for their role in bringing about the peaceful end of apartheid. Nelson Mandela then went on to become South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994.