Abstract:
South Africa has been identified by the World Bank as one of Africa’s ten slowest-growing economies in 2012. This pronouncement exacerbates the prevalence of unemployment amongst black youth, the countries qualified university graduates, which manifest itself in the socioeconomic environment in which up to 10 million people do not receive wages, or any form of remittance or social grants. The Public Service is regarded as a professional field with its own unique practice and on the job training in this unique sector. However, there is an idiosyncratic space, which does not necessarily find resonance in the link between university graduates, the massification internship programme, and the developmental HRD Strategic Framework Vision 2015. The DPSA acknowledges the many inherent challenges and the efficacy of the internship programme. This paper interrogates the link between the HRD Strategic Framework Vision 2015 and the gaps in the internship programme in a developmental Public Service and posits the question whether the public service is meaningfully aligning its internship programme, training and absorption of university graduates in terms of meeting the HRD strategy; or is the Public Service a complete outlier in terms of relevance.
