Professions and professionalism in emerging economies
The case of South Africa
South African sociology has not paid much attention to the sociology of professions in any formal way (Bonnin and Ruggunan 2013). While there has been a strong focus on the sociology of work and economic sociology, this has focused primarily on the labour movement and its strategies of organising and servicing blue-collar workers as well as the labour process and the conditions of production (Buhlungu 2009). Whilst middle-class professions have historically been ‘studied’ by South African sociologists (see Marks 1994; Nzimande 1991; Walker 2005), these analyses, with the exception of Gilbert’s work (1998) on community pharmacists, have not been framed within the established theoretical contexts of the sociology of professions. Instead, South African sociologists have been preoccupied with racial inequalities in accessing professional labour markets (Marks 1994; Walker 2005). Given South Africa’s racialised history and current context, this focus is appreciated. However, since the advent of a post-Apartheid South Africa in 1994, professions and their milieus are assuming an increasingly important space in the South African social and political landscape. This chapter identifies four shifts in post-Apartheid South Africa that motivate a need to engage, theoretically, empirically and practically in a sociology of professions. Two simultaneous processes occurred that spurred these four shifts: the dismantling of Apartheid and the increased opening-up of the economy to globalising (post-Fordist) processes.
South Africa held its first democratic election in 1994. The post-Apartheid government moved swiftly to dismantle legislated racism. They paid particular attention to the labour market and, within a few years, had passed a number of pieces of legislation – the key acts designed to remove discrimination and promote equity in the labour market were the Labour Relations Act, the Employment Equity Act and the Skills Development Act. Following these pieces of legislation were various other processes – transformation charters aimed at specific industries or professions, attempts to deracialise ownership of the economy through black economic empowerment, legislation aimed at specific professions, etc. – all aimed at deracialising the economy, the labour market and ultimately professions and occupations within that labour market.
The second process that marked the post-1994 period was the integration of the South African economy into the global economy. The Apartheid economy had been built on import-substitution policies. This insulation was reinforced when economic sanctions were implemented by the international community. In the post-1994 period, the South African government ensured the South African economy became globally integrated through the lowering of import tariffs and the lifting of capital controls. They also attempted to change the basis on which the South African economy’s accumulation strategy rested – to shift it from a commodity-based to an export-orientated economy.
In this chapter we argue that these two processes contributed to the four shifts. First, there are the strategies developed by the state, professional bodies and educational/training institutions to effect racial transformation in the composition of traditional professions. Second, distinguished from these broad measures are specific interventions in the regulation of some professions, with a key theme of access and equity. Third, there is a state-led project of the professionalisation of public services, with the twin goals of racial and gender transformation and as a strategy to raise standards of service delivery. Fourth, discourses have emerged of the professionalisation of new groups (for example, security guards) as a strategy for credentialing and organising better working conditions for employees. The theme of transformation, access and the removal of barriers underlie all of these developments.
Racial transformation in the composition of the traditional professions
Historically, the Apartheid state’s professional project operated as a form of social closure based primarily on race, that is, to the exclusion of black South Africans (by black we mean African, Indian and Coloured)1 and, to a lesser extent, gender and its intersections. White middle-class South Africans enjoyed superior and privileged access to professional education, training and labour markets. This shaped the ‘profile’ of the South African professions in very stark and particular ways.
South Africa provides one of the most explicit examples of forced or legislated social closure into professions based on race classification and identity that is in keeping with structural accounts of professional social closure (Murphy 1986). As will be demonstrated, these legacies still shape the post-Apartheid professional labour market despite efforts at transformation. On the other hand, post-structural accounts have suggested that there are subtler ways of achieving professional social closure and thus controlling entry into a profession, mobility within a profession and the ways in which different groups experience a profession. These forms of post-structural controls revolve around identities. In Western democracies, it is often about the ways in which racial and ethnic minorities, women and gay men experience entry and mobility within professions. For example, Rumens and Kerfoot (2009) describe the disciplinary power of professions on gay men’s sexuality and its consequences for mobility within professions. Bolton and Muzio’s (2008) work on gender segmentation in the law profession is another example. Examples from the global South that are published in English are fewer, but notable examples show the ways in which caste produces professional identities in India (Sidhu 2011) and the ways in which gender stratifies professions in Mexico (Ruiz 2012).
In Apartheid South Africa, universities served as an initial form of racialised social closure into professions. Tertiary institutions were segregated on the basis of race and ethnic group. Of the twenty-one universities, nine were for Africans (further segregated according to ethnic groups), two catered for Coloureds and Indians (one each), with the remaining fifteen for white South Africans (but divided between English-language and Afrikaans-language universities). Those allocated to black South Africans often did not offer the tertiary qualifications that would enable a professional qualification. For example, no ‘black’ universities were allowed to offer the Certificate in the Theory of Accounting (CTA), a qualification required by all those who wished to become chartered accountants (Hammond et al. 2012: 337), and only ‘whites-only’ technikons (technical colleges) offered qualifications in textile design, ensuring that no black textile designers were able to qualify (Bonnin 2013). The only black university that offered an engineering degree accredited by the Engineering Council of South Africa was the University of Durban-Westville (a university for Indians) (Engineering Council of South Africa 2014).
The Apartheid state did not want to play a direct role in the day-to-day or primary welfare of African people and thus allowed black South Africans access to certain types of professions that would allow ‘blacks to look after blacks’. It was uncomfortable with the idea of ‘white hands’ on ‘black bodies’ or ‘black hands’ on ‘white bodies’ in the fields of medicine and nursing, for example, hence they allowed black South Africans entry into these professions albeit in a controlled and segregated manner (Marks 1994). Black nurses were also not allowed to rise beyond certain ranks so as to avoid a situation where black nurses gave instructions to white nurses (Marks 1994). This ceiling on rank was also present in the other professions open to black South Africans. Other professions where blacks were allowed access included social work, teaching, and law. Professions outside the idea of ‘social welfare’ were not viewed as requiring black South African participation since they were not directly related to social welfare issues. This was in keeping with the ideas of separate development.
In 1957, there were 3,000 black nurses on the nursing register, in 2013, there were 129,000 nurses on the register, over 80 per cent of whom were classified as black South Africans (SANC). This is representative of South Africa’s larger racial demographics. Nurses are divided almost evenly between auxiliary and professional nurses, though less equitably between the public and private sectors, with most nurses (60 per cent) situated in the public sector (Wildschutt and Mqolozana 2008).
For social workers, the same racialised thinking applied in terms of the training and education of black social workers. The logic of Apartheid dictated that, given that South African welfare services were racially divided, it ‘made sense’ for black social workers to be trained separately since they would only service black communities (Mazibuko et al. 1992). Separate professional bodies, divided along racial and ideological lines, also existed for social workers as recently as 2006 (Sewpaul 2012). In 2006, there were 11,100 registered social workers in South Africa, of whom 50 per cent were black South Africans (Lund 2010). These numbers have not gone up significantly since then due to the limited intake of social workers by universities (less than a thousand a year of which less than 50 per cent graduate) [personal communication, Dr Rubeena Partab, Social Worker, 5 March 2015]. The National Association of Social Workers in South Africa no longer keeps race-based figures on social workers, so census data has to be relied on (Lund 2010).
Black South Africans could study law at any approved black university. Theoretically, they could then practise law anywhere in South Africa. The reality, however, was that black lawyers were forced to practise in black townships and ‘homelands’ only. In order to practise in an urban area – a synonym for ‘white area’ – black lawyers had to seek official permission from the state. The state would assess the case and issue a permit. These permits were rarely issued (Midgley and Godfrey 2007). Unsurprisingly, law as a profession became dominated by white South Africans and, as Midgley and Godfrey (2007) demonstrate, white male South Africans. The types of law that were practised also took on a racial element. Black lawyers primarily specialised in criminal and sometimes human rights cases. Establishing a lucrative practice was difficult given that the entire judiciary and legal personnel outside the black homelands were white.
However, blacks had to attend the university allocated to their ethnic group, which restricted the possible number of black graduates into those professions. For example, for much of the twentieth century, the University of Natal Medical School was the only institution which admitted black doctors (see Noble 2013). In 1976, Medunsa, a medical university, opened. Situated in the far north of the country, its role was to train African doctors, dentists and allied health professionals (Hayes and Lee 1995). In some cases, blacks could apply for ministerial permission to study at white institutions, but in order for the application to be successful the applicant had to argue that the course they wished to study was not available at their designated ethnic institution. Even then, there were restrictions; for example, black medical students at the University of Cape Town were not allowed to work with white cadavers.
Acquiring (and blocking access to) the requisite formal education was the first tool in creating social closure in the Apartheid professional labour market. The second tool was the professional bodies themselves. Gatekeeping into all professions was controlled through state policy – a key piece of legislation was the ‘job colour bar’, which reserved skilled occupations for whites and was controlled through Clause 77 of the 1956 Amendment to the Industrial Conciliation Act. This legislation formalised what had previously been the norm of reserving skilled jobs for whites. But professional bodies both supported and rubber-stamped the state’s racialised system of access into professions.
Black professionals, with the exception of those involved in health or welfare, were seen as ‘non-essential’ to the needs of the South African labour market and found it difficult to find employment within ‘white’ South Africa. Besides lawyers having to seek permission to set up a practice in ‘white areas’, Hammond et al. (2009: 710) make the point that professionals were ‘specifically targeted for deportation to the Homelands’. Furthermore, employers (often linked to international firms) actively participated in keeping the professions white through the utilisation of forms of closure that excluded blacks. Black professionals who were fortunate enough to graduate with an appropriate qualification and to find articles or a clerkship were then faced with individual prejudices that resulted in them being refused job experience once employed (see Hammond et al. 2009, 2012). Recounting their experiences, black clerks talked about sitting in the offices doing photocopying while their white counterparts were assigned to audit teams (Hammond et al. 2012).
The racialised legacies of these policies continue to resonate in contemporary South Africa, specifically in the engineering, accountancy and medical professions. For example, in 2000, there were only 220 black chartered accountants in South Africa (Hammond et al. 2012: 335); by 2010, this number had increased to 1,738 (Solidarity, 2012: 6). The work of Hammond et al. (2009) demonstrates that, while many accounting practices introduced ‘new South African programmes’ in order to increase the number of qualified black accountants, the cultures of professional closure mitigated against the success of these projects.
In order to bring about racial transformation the state has developed a number of policies – the main components are around employment equity, black economic empowerment (BEE) and sector transformations. The Employment Equity Amendment Act (2014) (first passed in 1996) requires companies employing more than fifty employees to put in place measures to increase the representation of designated groups (i.e. black, women and disabled people) as well as submit an annual report to the Department of Labour indicating progress. In their 2013/14 Annual Report, the Employment Equity Commission reports that over the last three years an increasing number of employers have not only complied by submitting reports but have submitted accurately completed reports. BEE legislation (the Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment Act was passed in 2003) and policies require companies to submit various information indicating employment demographics, ownership and shareholding structures, supplier demographics, etc. in order to receive a BEE rating. Their BEE rating will provide an indication of the extent to which companies have ‘transformed’ and enable them to qualify for contracts, etc.
While the state has some influence (through legislation, for example) in regulating and promoting racial transformation, given that many of these professionals work in the private sector, the roles of employers, professional bodies, education and training bodies and organised labour are pivotal in this process. Professional bodies and training institutions have implemented a number of joint programmes to bring about transformation. For example, the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) has developed a Chartered Accountancy Profession Charter (see Perumal et al. 2012) to identify measures that need to be implemented to bring about racial and gendered transformation in the profession. The SAICA has also established the Thuthuku Programme, which manages a bursary and education fund for the training of black accountants. The project has two components: supporting maths education at school level through focusing on scholars with aptitude and providing bursaries and support at tertiary level for the education and training of black students who wish to enter the accountancy profession.
Whilst state legislation (employment equity and black economic empowerment legislation) can and has acted as a catalyst to increase quantitative racial diversity by forced compliance (through employment equity legislation, for example), very little is known about the qualitative experiences of black South Africans attempting to cross or who have crossed the ‘colour bar’ into the traditional (i.e. law, accountancy, engineering and medical) professions. Quantitative measures indicate progress, albeit slow, in the racial transformation of the labour markets for these four professions. A recent study (2012) by the Solidarity Trade Union (a more politically conservative trade union grouping) provides us with the following figures. In 1999, approximately 350 African attorneys were admitted, by 2008, the number had increased to approximately 430 annually. The total number of African charted accountants increased from 301 in 2002 to 1,738 in 2010. When looking at professional engineers, the number of black engineers increased from approximately 20 registering in 1994 to 50 registering in 2008. Examining the number of medical practitioners registered, one notes that there were just over 5,000 African medical practitioners registered in 2007 and this had increased to just over 7,000 in 2010. Interestingly, Solidarity makes a great show of these numbers, showing how the number of black chartered accountants has increased by 477 per cent and the number of attorneys by 37 per cent, thus making a case for the significant advancement of blacks in the professions (Solidarity 2012). However, we would suggest that such conclusions are incongruous given that the starting base of Africans in almost all the professions is so low that such percentage increases are in fact not as significant as the figures might suggest.
Looking more closely at the legal profession, one finds that racialised patterns remain today despite the legislated deracialisation of the profession. As Midgley and Godfrey (2007) state, most law firms are white-owned and offer internships or ‘articles’ to white law graduates. He further contends that, despite the racial democratisation of training and education in the professions, black law graduates are faced with more barriers in seeking employment than white graduates. Professional bodies have been asked to intervene in this regard. For example, in 2011, of all first-year law students, 78 per cent were black, 22 per cent white, 54 per cent were women and 46 per cent men. In the same year, of the 3,751 LLB graduates, 68 per cent were black, 32 per cent white, 59 per cent women and 41 per cent men (Nel 2013). At the level of advocates who fell under the umbrella of the General Council of the Bar (as at April 2012), 1,367 were white men, 366 white women, 295 African men, 89 African women, 47 Coloured men, 37 Coloured women, 114 Indian men and 69 Indian women. There seems to be greater equity at the rank of attorney. Of the 20,077 practising attorneys in 2011, 36 per cent were black and 64 per cent were white. Women constituted 34 per cent and men 66 per cent (Nel 2013).
What is needed is a more nuanced understanding of why the total numbers of black professionals in these fields is so low. Here the sociology of professions can contribute to understanding how social closure or gatekeeping (racial and gendered) in these professions occurs. A study by Hammond et al. (2009, 2012) gives some indication of the way in which the lived experience of professional closure has discouraged black articled clerks from qualifying as chartered accountants. Drawing on the theoretical framework postulated by Murray, Hammond et al. (2009: 706) identified the informal colour bar as manifested through language and cultural competencies as key components of professional closure. Furthermore, they demonstrate that the class inequalities created under Apartheid persisted in post-Apartheid society ‘making it increasingly difficult to discern whether racial barriers or class barriers limited opportunities for blacks in public accounting’ (Hammond et al. 2009: 717). A later study by Perumal et al. (2012) indicated differences of opinion between managers and trainees on the effectiveness of transformation measures. But such studies are a rarity; a lot more are needed in order for us to understand the challenges facing the deracialisation of the professions.
Furthermore, very little is known about the career mobility of black professionals once they are credentialed into these professions. The work of Hammond et al. (2009, 2012) does give some insight when they inform us that most black accountants, once qualified, left the ‘Big Accounting Firm’ in which they had served their articles, given the hostile atmosphere they had encountered there. Such experiences and the limited research in this area is a further challenge to the sociology of professions in South Africa.
New developments in the state regulation of professions
One of the concerns in the professions literature is the control of work by professionals themselves as well as their ability to self-regulate the profession (Adams 2015). A recent review (Bourgeault et al. 2009: 479) indicates that ‘issues of work organisation, organisational change / restructuring and relations with the state / regulation were the most frequently cited macro issues examined’. The professions in South Africa have not escaped these concerns.
The most obvious example has been the state’s focus on equity and the demands for professions to address this through affirmative action or a particular focus on training and access to resources for black and female professionals, as discussed above. There have been a number of debates within various professional bodies in recent years. The medical profession has been increasingly unhappy about the introduction of a year of community service prior to recently graduated doctors being able to register – this is in addition to two years’ internship once they have completed their university degree (Erasmus 2012). In many cases, the community service is being used to respond to the shortage of doctors in small towns and rural areas, but the medical profession claims there seems to be little benefit in terms of the training of the doctors.
A more recent controversy in the medical profession relates to the recent signing into law of Sections 36 to 40 of the National Health Act, which state that all health professionals who wish to open a private practice will need to apply to the Department of Health for a ‘certificate of need’, which will give them permission to work in their chosen location (‘Docs to be told where to work’, The Times, 23 May 2014). The acquisition of such a certificate will be compulsory from April 2016. The purpose of the legislation is to ensure that health professionals are not over-concentrated in affluent urban locations, thus speaking to the need for access to health care. While the Act was passed ten years ago, this section was not originally promulgated (in 2005, doctors had marched to Parliament in protest), until the President did so unexpectedly. This generated substantial criticisms from health professional organisations, including the biggest doctors’ organisation, the South African Medical Association. However, acting on the advice of the state law advisor, the Department of Health has asked the President to withdraw the promulgation of this section (Kahn 2015). Nevertheless, it appears the reprieve is only temporary, with the Department of Health saying it needs more time to craft the regulations (Kahn 2015).
There have also been recent interventions by the state in the regulation of the law profession (‘Controversial Bill ends legal fraternity’s self-regulation’, Mail & Guardian, 13 November 2013). In 2013, the Legal Practice Bill was passed by parliament and promulgated by the President in November 2014. Amongst a number of controversial aspects, the Bill will abolish the current law societies (divided between attorneys and advocates2) and replace them with a ‘legal practice council’, many critics argue that this will ‘erode the independence of the legal profession as it brings an end to the long tradition of self-regulation by the legal fraternity’ (‘Controversial Bill ends legal fraternity’s self-regulation’, Mail & Guardian, 13 November 2013). Initially, the Bill sought to remove the distinction between the professions of advocates and attorneys, and only after urgent pleas by professional bodies were these professional distinctions retained. Nevertheless, attorneys would dominate the new Council and many in the legal profession are concerned that a Council dominated by attorneys (with the Chair and Vice-Chair nominated by government) would be making regulations for advocates. Others, like well-known human rights advocate George Bizos ‘were opposed to a situation where the executive would be granted far-reaching powers to control important aspects of the functioning of the profession’ (‘Controversial Bill ends legal fraternity’s self-regulation’, Mail & Guardian, 13 November 2013). For the government, the Legal Practice Bill was part of ensuring transformation in the legal profession and allowing government to ensure that citizens have a voice in the policies and practices of a profession that affects their daily life (Brand South Africa 2014). The Legal Practices Council came into effect on 1 February 2015, which brought into effect the transitional body, the National Forum on the Legal Profession, in preparation for the formation of the Legal Practice Council.
These developments point to an interventionist state that is wanting to have a say in the way professions regulate themselves, particularly with regard to access to professions by those who have been previously excluded, as well as to ensure that professions serve the public good.
State-led project of professionalisation
The Apartheid state implemented a racialised public service professionalisation project, which culminated in a white Afrikaner-dominated public service. The interventions, primarily affirmative action but also educational bursaries and preferential employment, shifted working-class white South Africans into middle-class professions within the state bureaucracy. To address this history, the post-Apartheid state project of professionalisation is targeted simultaneously at racial and gender transformation and the professionalisation of the public service. This is implemented through legislative reforms that target affirmative action favouring blacks and women and remove legislated barriers to employment. But it is also a class-based project in its attempt to grow a professional African middle class.
State intervention in the public sector
Apartheid policy ensured a white, and primarily Afrikaner, male-dominated public sector. It was a primary source of employment for the white population and was used as a mechanism to empower (economically and politically) Afrikaans-speaking whites. For much of the twentieth century, only white males and single white women were allowed to be employed in the public service. It was only in 1961 that the Public Services Joint Advisory Board recommended that married women could retain their jobs, and only in 1977 (in the wake of the Soweto crisis) that the South African Cabinet approved a policy that allowed ‘non-whites’ to be employed by the public service – with the proviso that this was only done on an ad hoc basis to meet the needs of the moment (see Swanepoel et al. 2005: 173). The idea that blacks could not be placed in a position of authority over whites prevailed. As with other areas of professional service work, separate departments were created to allow blacks to serve blacks. Nevertheless, there were large wage differentials between occupations at the same level in these racially separate departments.
By the time of the political transition in 1994, this legacy of race and gender discrimination remained. A 1999 study by Muthien (cited in Swanepoel et al. 2005) showed that even though women were able to compete freely against men for posts, a glass ceiling remained. A gender breakdown of the public service showed that women were at a much lower skill level than men and mostly located in the nurturing positions associated with the female gender. Black employees were primarily located in their ‘own’ departments within homelands and black townships, while the public service in urban locations was still dominated by whites. In an effort to address this, the Transitional Executive Council froze all vacancies and promotions and then advertised 11,000 posts in a major affirmative action drive (Swanepoel et al. 2005).
A slew of legislation aimed at transforming the public service and removing the effects of decades of legislated occupational closure based on race and gender was introduced in the post-1994 period. This included legislation that was specifically aimed at public services; for example the White Paper on Transformation in the Public Service (1995), the Public Service Law Amendment Act (1997), the White Paper on Human Resource Management in the Public Sector (1997), the White Paper on Public Service Training and Education (1997), as well as the more general employment equity legislation discussed above. The purpose of these state interventions was not only to remove the barriers to access and discriminatory measures that had ensured blacks, women and the disabled were not able to access these occupations in the same way as whites and men could (for example in the 1997 Public Service Law Amendment Act) but also to actively change the employment profiles of the public service. This was done through the implementation of a rigorous affirmative-action policy. The 1995 White Paper set targets for all government departments; these stated that there should be at least 50 per cent black representation at management level by 1999. Additionally, 30 per cent of all new appointments to middle and senior management were to be female. According to Thompson and Woolard (2002: 2), these goals were seen as minimum national targets. A more comprehensive affirmative-action policy was outlined in the 1998 White Paper on Affirmative Action in the Public Service, the Public Service Regulations stipulated that each department needed to include in their annual report precise information regarding their progress for the preceding year. Guiding all this legislation was the South African Constitution (Act No 108 of 1996) that stated that ‘public administration must be broadly representative of the South African people, with employment management and personnel practices based on ability, objectives, fairness and the need to redress the imbalances of the past to achieve broad representation’ (South Africa 2014: 29).
The question that arises is how successful were these measures. A study by Thompson and Woolard (2002) shows that by 2001, there had been a large increase in the total number of managers in the public service as well as an increase in the absolute number of Africans employed. While all race groups experienced an absolute increase in the total number of managers in the public service during this period, Africans show the greatest increase. By 2001, 63 per cent of managers were black. However, when one examines senior management specifically the picture is slightly different. In 1994, senior management (i.e. Director to Director-General level) was 94 per cent white and 95 per cent male (South Africa 2014). By 2001, whites still occupied a significant number of senior management posts, 45.5 per cent, which, as Thompson and Woolard (2002) observe, is out of proportion with their 12.3 per cent representation in the total population but still a significant shift from the position in 1994. Thus, as they observe, the proportion of whites in these senior management positions had been slowly decreasing since 1994.
By the end of the following decade, according to the Presidency’s Twenty Year Review (South Africa 2014), the transformation of the public service had made further significant progress. A total of 1.3 million people were employed between national and provincial government. Of these, 57 per cent were female and 43 per cent male; 91 per cent were black (80 per cent African) and 9 per cent white (South Africa 2014: 29). The situation at senior management level had now changed significantly, even within the past decade: by 2011, 87 per cent of senior management were black. However, the position of women was still less than representative, and women were still to be found in the lower levels of the public services. While women made up 57 per cent of public service employees, only 38 per cent of senior managers are female (South Africa 2014: 30).
State attempts to professionalise the public sector
There is also a recognition by the state that the public sector has to become professionalised, and public service workers at managerial levels need to adopt and engage in ‘professional’ milieus and certification as a strategy to improve service delivery (see South Africa 2014: 31–38). The Twenty Year Review by the Presidency (South Africa 2014: 20) refers to the National Development Plan (NDP) in its admission that there is, what it terms ‘an unevenness in capacity that leads to uneven performance in the public service’.
The term ‘professional culture’ is a key theme running through the NDP developed by the National Planning Commission in 2011 and subsequently adopted by the state (in particular, see Chapters 9, 10, 13 and 14). It contends that there is a need to build a more professional culture amongst educators, health workers and public sector workers. Whilst professionalism and professional culture is not explicitly defined in the NDP (professional status, skill, certification and competence seem to be at the heart of its discussion on professionalism), these are related to improving the accountability and service delivery of the state. Thus the NDP correlates effective public service delivery with inculcating a new professionalism (through training) and professional culture amongst public service workers. On the 8 March 2013, Public Service and Administration Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, taking her cue from the NDP, stated that the state has a vision for a professional public service that does not include cadre deployment (Daily News, 8 March 2013). A Human Sciences Research Council study (Daily News, 8 March 2013) shows that only 0.4 per cent of managers employed by the public services have the requisite professional qualifications to effectively practise their jobs. This supports research findings in the Department of Health identifying a lack of professional managerial qualifications in the health sector as a major contributor to lack of public health. A consequence was that 100 hospital chief executives were replaced by candidates with ‘professional’ qualifications. In addition, the Department of Health has recently put in place minimum competency requirements for hospital managers (South Africa 2014: 32).
Another area that has recently fallen under the spotlight has been the competencies and qualifications of municipal managers and municipal chief financial officers (CFOs). Following concerns about the competencies of municipal managers and CFOs, the legislation governing their appointment and conditions of service was amended in 2007; after a period of grace in which they could ensure their qualifications would be in order (see ‘Gordhan throws municipal staff a lifeline’, Sunday Independent, 6 April 2014), those who have not complied now face dismissal. The daily newspaper The Sowetan (‘Municipal managers to lose jobs’, 10 March 2015) reports that the Minister for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Pravin Gordhan has indicated that action will be taken and at least thirty-six under-qualified municipal managers face dismissal. There are strong correlations between dysfunctional local municipalities and under-qualified municipal managers and CFOs. In this respect, the professional project is about producing a capable state through professionalisation (Bonnin and Ruggunan 2013).
The sociology of professions has drawn empirically from the development of professions in the global North to make theoretical points about the state and its role in the development of professions globally. While there is some recognition of differences between the USA, Europe and the UK, there is a tendency to theorise this particular role as normative. The limited but growing literature that examines the way in which race, caste and gender influences professional closure in post-colonial settings (see Hammond et al. 2009: 706), suggests that the role played by the modernising enlightenment state or the welfare state is just one trajectory amongst others. While this is an area that requires more research to understand the way in which the colonial and post-colonial state intervened in the development of professions in the South, the literature needs to acknowledge the specificity of the theoretical arguments around the role of the state.
Emergence of new groups of professionals/occupations
A fourth trend in the South African professions landscape is that the discourse of professionalism extends beyond what have traditionally been seen as expert or high-skill occupations. New occupational groups have emerged that are attempting to professionalise through strategies of credentialing, organising through new ‘professional bodies’ as opposed to union-based organising.
The professionalisation of new groups (those groups that sit outside the classical and traditional professions) in South Africa is occurring at three levels. The first is the professionalisation of blue-collar low-skilled/low-status occupations such as security guards; the second level targets occupations that require some tertiary education such as a diploma or undergraduate degree, such as media professionals, public relations professionals and air traffic controllers; the third level consists of occupations that require postgraduate or professional postgraduate qualifications, such as MBAs or other management-type qualifications. Common to all three levels is the belief that professionalisation will protect the status (symbolic or material) of these occupations.
Professionalisation of low-skilled occupations
South Africa has one of the largest private security industries in the world, but traditional attempts by unions to service security guards have not substantively increased their symbolic or material conditions of work. The formation of the professional body’s register of ‘qualified’ security guards may be viewed as an alternative to unions in its attempt to organise security guards with regard to certification, industry-standard wages and codes of conduct. However, as work by Sefalafala and Webster (2013) has demonstrated, professionalisation of low-skilled/low-status occupations is often a top-down approach servicing the needs of employing bodies rather than workers themselves. The industry gets guards with some level of training who have complied with security checks and are credentialed by the professional body, and the guards themselves have the status of working for a ‘better’ company at industry-set wages. In this sense, professionalisation serves as a strategy of discipline and control.
In some cases, professionalisation processes represent attempts by both the state and/or existing professional bodies to incorporate and regulate occupations that lie outside of their control. An example of this are attempts to regulate and accredit professional healers and traditional surgeons (involved in traditional circumcisions) by the state. While the Traditional Health Practitioners Act was signed into law in 2008 and the Interim Traditional Health Practitioner Council of South Africa was inaugurated in 2013, the current struggle is more about internal regulation for human resource management purposes than recognition by the wider community. While these trends are not unique to South Africa (see, for example, the work on homeopaths by Saks (2003)), it is suggested that, in the context of a society that excluded and marginalised many of these occupations on the basis of the race of the practitioners and/or ideas of cultural superiority, these developments could add a different nuance to the existing literature.
Professionalisation of higher-skilled occupations
For occupations that require higher skill levels but don’t necessarily enjoy high status, such as public relations or media occupations, attempts to professionalise are targeted at increasing social capital (networking) and symbolic capital (prestige) of these occupations. This is achieved by attempts to control who can gain access to practise these occupations.
High-skill and high-status professions such as those in the management field are also under transition in South Africa. For example, generic management as a discipline, profession and practice is giving away to more specialised forms of professional management, such as supply-chain management, human resources development management, marketing management and financial management. Each of these sub-fields of management is trying to establish itself as a unique profession and epistemic centre of its own. Business schools in South Africa are observing a decline in students registered for general management studies and an increase in students wanting to pursue more specialised forms of management, as these specialist forms of management potentially enjoy more symbolic and economic capital. In this sense, South Africa is following similar trends to Western countries.
We would suggest that this strategy is about both increasing status and cornering access to a labour market for both management professionals and security workers. These strategies acquire urgency given that so many are denied access to decent work, employment and protection in the labour market.
In this chapter we identified and discussed four shifts in the professional milieu in South Africa. We argued that the theme of transformation, access and the removal of barriers underlies all of these developments. From these discussions, three trends have emerged. The first is that race structures professions in very material ways. For South Africans, race determines access to professional labour markets and it determines where people are positioned within these markets. This does not discount post-structural accounts of race as one of many identities used to negotiate or deny entry into labour markets, but in the South African context, race has been reified in very material ways. Despite the efforts towards transformation, this continues to be the case in the post-Apartheid era.
Second, we observe an active project of racial and, to a lesser extent, gendered transformation which is led by an interventionist state. This is a state-led attempt to control and address historic forms of social closure based primarily on race but also around gender. The success of this project is variable, with the public sector experiencing rapid and deep racial transformation whilst the private sector has experienced a much slower transformation of professions. These interventions go beyond labour market legislation and we see the state intervening in the regulation of some of the traditional professions. The South African case is different from most other projects of achieving equity in workplaces and professions in that the emphasis is not on the representativeness of minorities in these professions but the representativeness of the majority of the country’s demographic groups in these professions.
Whilst the legislated social closure of the South African case could be viewed as exceptional, it nevertheless resonates with Witz’s (1992) arguments that the state is an agent of professional closure. She contends that professional projects can be projects of professional closure led by a mostly patriarchal capitalist state. Whilst her work examines the gendered nature of how these projects are articulated, it does support our argument that the Apartheid state very much engaged in a racialised and, to a lesser extent, patriarchal professional closure project. The post-Apartheid state continues to engage in a professional project; however, its agency is devoted to democratising this in terms of both race and gender.
Third, whilst we can quantitatively measure how ‘transformed’ certain professions have become through labour market statistics, South African sociologists know little about black or female professionals’ qualitative experiences of professional trajectories and entry into these professions. What is needed is a more nuanced understanding of why the total numbers of black professionals in these fields is so low. We know because of the disproportionate numbers of black and female professionals that social closure has found new forms in post-Apartheid South Africa, but we do not know how this becomes operational and how it might intersect with class. This remains an important task for the sociology of professions in South Africa.
Furthermore, this discussion shows that there needs to be a wider exploration of the role played by the post-colonial state in the professions. The story of professions and the modernising enlightenment state or the welfare state is but one amongst others.
Notes
1In Apartheid South Africa, all South Africans were classified by the 1950 Population Registration Act according to their ‘race’. Those of African descent were known as Africans; those who originated from the Indian sub-continent were called Indians; those of mixed-race were known as Coloured; and, those of European descent, white. Collectively, Africans, Indians and Coloureds were called black – this was a political term used in opposition to Apartheid terminology which over the years changed the various terms.
2White South Africans are over-represented amongst ‘advocates’.
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