The federal government’s push to privatise state-owned enterprises is being sold as an exercise in realism. Chronic losses, bloated payrolls, weak governance, political interference, and years of inefficiency, we are told, have left these entities beyond repair. The solution, therefore, is to transfer them to private hands, where incentives are clearer, accountability is sharper, and performance matters.
The logic sounds tidy. Perhaps too tidy.
Because if persistent losses, dysfunction, and failure to deliver basic outcomes are the benchmarks for privatisation, it is hard to avoid an uncomfortable question: should the same yardstick apply to the government itself?
Consider the criteria repeatedly cited in official briefs:
financial haemorrhaging that drains the exchequer,
inability to meet service delivery targets,
management structures driven more by patronage than competence,
decision-making paralysed by politics,
a widening gap between costs and outcomes.
By this definition, many state enterprises qualify for divestment.
But so does much of the governing apparatus.
Year after year, the public sector absorbs a growing share of national resources while producing shrinking returns. Development budgets are underutilised or misallocated. Policy reversals are routine. Reforms are announced with fanfare and quietly shelved. Citizens pay higher taxes, face weaker services, and are told to be patient while the system “stabilises”.
The real debate, then, is not whether certain enterprises should be privatised. Many probably should. The deeper question is why the standards applied to public corporations are not applied to the public authority itself.
If an airline or power company performs this way, the verdict is swift: management failure, structural inefficiency, an unsustainable model. Time to privatise.
Yet when the same patterns appear in governance, the response is different.
Committees are formed. Task forces are announced. Blame is shifted to predecessors, global conditions, or abstract “systemic issues”. The losses continue, and the bill is sent to the public.
The irony is difficult to ignore. The government argues it must exit businesses because it is not good at running them. But running the state is the one enterprise it cannot exit. That makes competence, efficiency, and accountability not optional ideals, but existential requirements.
Privatisation, at its best, is not about selling assets. It is about recognising failure and correcting incentives. If that recognition stops at state-owned companies and never turns inward, it becomes less a reform strategy and more a deflection tactic.
The real debate, then, is not whether certain enterprises should be privatised. Many probably should. The deeper question is why the standards applied to public corporations are not applied to the public authority itself. Why inefficiency is unacceptable on a balance sheet but tolerated in policymaking. Why losses matter when they are financial, but not when they are social, institutional, and generational.
No one is seriously proposing to privatise the government. But the question is still worth asking, because it exposes a gap in accountability. If performance metrics justify radical restructuring for enterprises, they should at least justify radical reform in governance.
Otherwise, privatisation risks becoming a convenient narrative. Sell the symptoms. Keep the disease. And ask the public, once again, to pay for both.
The writer is a freelance columnist.