Link: SA needs to shift from an ‘age of accountability’ to ‘accountability now’
In the AI age, failure should never arrive as a surprise.
South Africans are hearing a great deal lately about us finally being in “the age of accountability”. The phrase appears constantly in headlines, political commentary and social media outrage. It suggests a country finally waking up to consequences — a society no longer willing to tolerate incompetence, corruption and institutional decay.
However, the phrase unintentionally reveals the problem. An “age” suggests something historical, retrospective, slow-moving and retrospective- We speak of the Bronze Age, the Industrial Age, the Information Age — periods measured across decades or centuries. But modern governance failures unfold in real time. But in too many cases the accountability age arrives years or decades after the impact has been felt.
After the child drowned in the pit latrine.
After the hospital fails.
After children die in scholar transport accidents.
After billions disappear.
After professionals emigrate.
After outbreaks spread.
After infrastructure reaches the point of public humiliation.
As a society with a free press and a vibrant social media, we often know what is going wrong - but as a rule still much too late to prevent this from happening. None of this should be misunderstood as criticism of whistleblowers, activists or investigative journalists. Quite the opposite. South Africa owes an enormous debt to those individuals and organisations willing to expose dysfunction when institutions fail to respond. Without courageous whistleblowers, persistent civil society activists, investigative journalists and public-interest litigation, many of the country’s most serious governance failures may never have surfaced at all. They perform an essential democratic function.
South Africans seem to be addicted to watching satirical viral videos of exposing municipal failure (swimming in potholes, rowing in water leaks and fishing in public swimming pools) — followed by sudden emergency responses. But those failures did not emerge overnight. The problem is not that these actors exist. It is that they have increasingly become the primary trigger for institutional action — and usually only after the damage is already done.
When systems only respond after external pressure escalates, accountability becomes reactive, episodic and crisis-driven. Institutions begin managing reputational risk rather than operational performance.
That is neither fair to citizens nor sustainable for democracy itself. Whistle blowers, and investigative journalists should help strengthen accountability. They should not be forced to substitute for it.
The distinction matters because modern healthcare systems are much too complex, interconnected and fragile to depend on delayed reactions.
Healthcare systems do not fail in isolation, they are dependent on functional educational systems, transport systems, electricity supply, water systems and public safety systems. These are systems that deteriorate slowly, visibly and predictably — until one day the failure becomes impossible to ignore and we sit with hospitals with no water and electricity.
It puzzles me that we are repeatedly shocked by disasters we were already watching unfold in real time. The past few weeks have provided a perfect illustration of this problem. Global headlines became consumed with a rare Hantavirus outbreak linked to three deaths associated with international cruise travel. Meanwhile, a far more serious Ebola outbreak has been spreading in Central and East Africa, with the World Health Organization declaring it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Yet public attention has largely followed media amplification rather than actual public health risk.
This is not simply a media problem. It reflects something deeper about modern governance; we increasingly respond to visibility instead of vulnerability. We wait for crises to trend before systems react.
The reality is that the warning signs are almost always visible long before catastrophe arrives. An Ebola outbreak of this kind has long been considered likely. The collapse of donor funding to African health systems made containment predictably harder. Delayed detection was foreseeable.
The challenge is not around whether South Africa has accountability, it does, eventually, the problem is timing. Accountability seem to only activate once failure becomes politically embarrassing, financially catastrophic or socially unavoidable. That is an extraordinarily dangerous model in a world defined by rapid urbanisation, pandemics, climate instability, infrastructure stress and rising public distrust.
Given that we now live in the AI age, it is time to say goodbye to the age of accountability and embrace something much more radical real-time accountability.
This means systems capable of identifying deterioration early and responding continuously — before collapse occurs. Medicine has operated this way for decades. Intensive care units rely on continuous monitoring, early warning systems and rapid intervention before collapse occurs. Modern public health governance and accountability should function similarly. Not through commissions five years later, inquiries after avoidable deaths, or audit reports after the money is gone.
Real-time accountability means:
Visible performance indicators.
Continuous monitoring.
Transparent public dashboards.
Early warning systems.
Rapid corrective action.
Continuous oversight.
And measurable consequences while there is still time to prevent harm.
Part of the challenge may also lie in something surprisingly subtle: who institutions are designed to be accountable to.
Walk into many South African government buildings and one of the first things you will often see are portraits of political leaders - ministers, deputy ministers, MECs, mayors or senior political office bearers. The symbolism matters because institutions eventually orientate themselves around what is made visible and important.
Behavioural science has repeatedly demonstrated that environments saturated with symbols of hierarchy and authority tend to encourage compliance, caution and upward deference rather than initiative, adaptability and operational problem-solving. People become more focused on avoiding political risk than resolving practical failures quickly.
Ironically, South Africa has recently taken important legislative steps intended to move in the opposite direction by professionalising the public service and clarifying the distinction between political leadership and administrative implementation. Politicians should set policy direction. Professional civil servants should implement policy and remain accountable for operational performance.
That distinction is critically important because modern systems fail operationally long before they fail politically.
A recent visit to China made this contrast strikingly visible.
In museums, transport facilities and public spaces, detailed organisational displays identified the actual individuals responsible for practical delivery. The photos and names were of who manages each floor, who oversees maintenance, who supervises cleaning backed up by a dedicated counter for handling visitor complaints. Telephone numbers were publicly displayed in both Mandarin and English. Complaint desks were visibly staffed. In one city, even the local police officer responsible for a particular neighbourhood block was publicly identified together with clear channels citizens could use if standards were not being maintained.
The message was unmistakable: someone specific is operationally responsible for this environment right now and if you are concerned there is an immediately available system for raising that concern.
If this sounds radical, it is because the scale and speed of modern societal risk now demand radical rethinking.
Every major policy, operational plan and public programme should be revisited and be linked to measurable indicators, real-time monitoring systems and AI-assisted early warning mechanisms capable of detecting deterioration long before collapse becomes visible to the public. Much of the required data already exists. The real failure is that it remains fragmented, hidden, delayed or politically filtered instead of being used proactively to protect citizens.
Most importantly, this information should not remain buried in internal reports and committee meetings. It should be publicly visible through transparent dashboards that allow citizens, communities, journalists and oversight bodies to see whether systems are functioning before disaster strikes.
The goal is not surveillance. The goal is societal proactive resilience. Something very different from the after the disaster “South Africans are resilient” platitudes we have to swallow.
In such a system, whistleblowers, investigative journalists and viral activists would remain critically important - but they would become the exception rather than the primary operating mechanism through which failure is detected.
Societies should not need leaked documents, public humiliation or social media outrage to discover that hospitals have no water, ambulances are failing, outbreaks are spreading or infrastructure is collapsing.
The warning signs should already be visible. The corrective action should already be underway.
That is what accountability now means or as one of my colleagues called it radical accountability, but I do not think this is such a radical suggestion. It is achievable, promotes prevention, identifies the weak links and will save us a fortune compared to accountability years later once commissions are established, reports are written and damage has become irreversible. Most importantly it would lessen the suffering and disenchantment of our citizens.
Visible and transparent real time accountability will lead to accountability being embedded into the daily functioning of society itself. I am sure we will quickly get use to it; it is technology enabled and feasible, we quickly adapted to email instead of letters.
And if achieving that requires us to fundamentally rethink how we as a society measures performance from our public and private institutions, how we expect such institutions to communicate with citizens, and how operational responsibility is monitored in the AI age, then that is precisely the conversation South Africa now needs to have.
Dr Wolvaardt is the Founder of the Foundation for Professional Development and has recently stepped down as Managing Director.