Following a year-long grassroots campaign to identify South Africa’s top civil servants, the Accountability Lab will, on Friday 03 December 2021, present its six Integrity Icons for 2021 at an award ceremony in Sandton. Integrity Icon is an annual campaign driven by the Accountability Lab to “name and fame” civil servants who embody integrity, accountability and going beyond the call of duty to deliver quality services in the communities they serve. The campaign depends on local people identifying and lifting up local reformers from the civil service who work and inspire change in their communities. “Integrity Icon is more than an award show,” said Sekoetlane Phamodi, Accountability Lab’s Country Director for South Africa. “It’s a generative platform for change where all of society can
model the civil service that we want and deserve by catching government officials doing the right
thing.”

“From educators to metro police officers, municipal administrators and refuse collectors – all of us have to interface with civil servants doing their level best to make public goods and services work for us every day – and often under very difficult circumstances,” said Phamodi. “We often take the efforts of civil servants for granted, usually overwhelmed by very real service inefficiencies and disempowering narratives of wide-scale public sector corruption and maladministration.”

“Integrity Icon is an opportunity for a whole-of-society conversation about what it takes for the public service to really serve. It encourages us to reflect on the social norms, values and behaviours South Africa needs from all of us to strengthen social and public sector accountability. It calls on us to shine the light on the people and communities who live the values of accountability and integrity.”

This year’s Integrity Icons are the fourth cohort since Accountability Lab South Africa began the campaign in 2018. The winning Icons have gone on to gain further recognition in the public service, as well as lead local and sector-wide reform processes in their respective fields. How to vote for the People’s Choice winner, A national voting campaign for the 2021 Integrity Icon People’s Choice winner will begin on 15 November 2021 and close on 30 November 2021. Members of the public can vote for the People’s Choice winner on our voting platform: https://integrityicon.org/south-africa-candidate-voting-2021/

Meet the Integrity Icons

Sr Carmelita Kok is a beloved nurse in the community of Fish Hoek, and has been in service for
25 years. Throughout her career she has demonstrated extraordinary kindness to her patients
and co-workers alike. In the event of her patients missing any of their appointments, she is known
to call them to find out where they are or alternatively, physically go find them and bring them
back to the clinic. This is especially significant as many of these patients are unsheltered and
displaced persons.

Mncedi Mtengwana is School Principal at Solomon Mahlangu High in the bustling community of Uitenhage in East London. Even while the town has been overwhelmed by the problems of poverty and substance abuse, Principal Mtengwana turned this problem around in his school by successfully implementing the “one school: one social worker, one nurse, and one police officer” program and providing substantive social support to learners and the community. By combining a culture of discipline and compassion, he has propelled Solomon Mahlangu High to the number 1 position in the district in its Matric results year-on-year.

Vuyokazi Langbooi is a social worker in the township of Ibhayi in the Eastern Cape. Following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the emergency lockdown regulations and protocols which followed had considerable implications for unsheltered and displaced people in her district. Vuyokazi led the team that provided shelter, food, health and other social services for a dignified life. Through this work, she has been able to get unsheltered children enrolled into local schools, support foreign nationals who needed it registered for asylum with the Department of Home
Affairs, and locate and reintegrate many of the residents with their families and extended social support networks.

Joyce Buthelezi is a primary school teacher in the small town of Richmond, KwaZulu-Natal, with over 15 years in service. As a counsellor to the young learners, she provides a structured environment for them to overcome substantial social challenges which impact their learning outcomes including bullying, hunger and unstable home environments. As an extension of her work to give vulnerable young people and their families the best shot at a better life, she actively advocates for promising learners to access funding to study further and have access to better opportunities and outcomes.

Kavita Makan and Ziyaad Dangor are doctors at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Soweto and take a joint award. Each is a fitting Integrity Icon in their own right, but they have each had a particular impact on the Covid-19 response and recovery plan of the hospital, patient care, health worker safeguarding and the national health worker vaccination roll-out plan. Dr. Kavita Makan is as a rheumatologist at the hospital. In the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, when treatment options were limited mainly to supportive measures as well as ventilatory support available to patients, procured fairly “novel” therapies in the treatment of Covid to be administered to patients who might otherwise have gone on to have severe and debilitating disease. This was a major breakthrough for the face of treatment in Covid-19 disease at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic and a prime example of how Dr Makan stops at nothing to provide world class treatment to her patients. Professor Ziyaad Dangor is a paediatric pulmonologist and teacher at the hospital. He was appointed to head the Covid-19 paediatric response team and, in doing so, played a part in developing a model in which the vaccine roll-out program for healthcare workers would be
implemented at the hospital. Working with a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, Prof Dangor’s mass vaccination campaign for health workers was so robust and attuned to the various challenges experienced across our resource constrained public health system, it framed the standard model for getting health workers in South Africa vaccinated.

 

Article originally published in Stokvel Talk