The room at the Indaba Hotel & Conference Centre was full for two days running: executives, municipal officials, SOE heads, academics and business leaders, all wrestling with the same uncomfortable question: why does policy keep outpacing performance? If one word captured what surfaced again and again across those conversations, it was access.
That tension sat behind every session. With unemployment at 33.6% and service delivery dominating headlines ahead of local elections, and with Public Service Commission Deputy Chair Dr Zukiswa Mqolomba warning of a state that is "hollowing out" of the skills it needs to function, the stakes in the room were not abstract. This wasn't a summit about ideas in the distance; it was about a government running out of runway to close the gap between promises and delivery.
Under the theme "Turning policy into performance, promises into progress," the 2nd annual Public Sector Leaders Summit (18–19 August 2026) brought that gap into sharp, sometimes uncomfortable focus.
Setting the tone
Dr Mathews Phosa opened the summit with a keynote that was as candid as it was hopeful, direct about how far the state has drifted from an ethical centre, but firm in his belief that the country can still pull back from the brink. It was the kind of honesty that set the register for the two days that followed: no polish, no easy applause lines, just a room of people who came to work through hard problems together.
Deputy Minister of Transport Mkhuleko Hlengwa picked up that thread on day one, arguing that access begins with mobility, and that the government cannot keep grading itself on outputs while people's lived experience tells a different story. "Success cannot only be measured by raw numbers," he told delegates, a line that drew visible nods from municipal officials in the room who deal daily with the space between a KPI and a resident's experience.
The people doing the work
A panel on aligning strategy, culture and technology for citizen value brought some of the summit's sharpest thinking. Sanral's CFO, Pretty Makukule, made the case that finance leaders in the public sector need to move past cost-containment and start allocating capital strategically, pointing to climate-resilient infrastructure as an example of spending more up front to create far greater value over time.
Tahera Sayed Soror, director at the North West Provincial Treasury, pushed back on a common misconception: that compliance, service delivery and transformation operate in separate lanes. "We need to report on impact," she said, arguing that public officials who understand the why behind legislative frameworks are the ones who end up agile enough to actually respond to citizens' needs.
Dr Lulama Ngwenya, director of Kuhle Capital, called for a mindset shift given how constrained government resources really are, and made the case that leaning on private sector capability isn't a compromise; it's a necessity if the state wants to create more value with what it has.
And on a summit floor increasingly preoccupied with AI as the next great value driver, Prof. Rajesh Mahabeer offered a necessary counterweight: digitalisation will make government more effective, but only if human judgement stays in the loop. It was a reminder that ran through the whole event, technology is a tool for statecraft, not a replacement for it.
"We need to master statecraft"
It was Dr Mqolomba who put the sharpest point on the two days. Institutions, she argued, are only as good as the people inside them, and the state's struggle to attract and retain top talent is quietly undermining everything else on the agenda. "We need to master statecraft," she said, five words that distilled what every speaker before her had been circling.
Recognising those getting it right
Amid the hard conversations, the summit paused to celebrate the institutions actually closing the gap between promise and performance. At the Public Sector Leaders Icons Awards Handover, delegates watched some of the country's most recognisable public institutions take the stage: the Auditor-General of South Africa, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, CIPC, Brand South Africa, GCIS, Telkom, the IEC, SALGA and SARS, with new SARS Commissioner Dr Johnstone Makhubu on hand to accept the award in person.
It was the moment the room's energy shifted from diagnosis to proof of concept, a reminder that servant-leadership isn't theoretical; it's already happening inside institutions represented in that room.
See you in 2027
Two days, a packed agenda, and a room full of the people actually shaping how the state serves its citizens, the 2nd annual Public Sector Leaders Summit set a high bar for what this platform can do. Planning for the 2027 edition is already underway. If your organisation is doing the work of turning policy into performance, this is where that story gets told, and where the next Icons Award could have your name on it.
Click to view the PSL 2026 Gallery
