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Former departments
I think adding a section to the navbox for former departments would be a good idea.
Rationale
I have a bit of a "philosophical" problem with updates that erase history. It happens often with company articles that when the company changes its name or merges with another that the fact that it used to have a different name gets totally removed from the article. The same issue pertains to government departments and structures, history is deleted when "updates" happen. In the case of templates such as this - they generally contain only links to entities that currently exist - articles about abolished departments and structures become "orphaned" in the rush to keep up-to-date. A recent example is the Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities - it existed for just a few years, we never even got around to creating an article about it. If this template would contain a section for former departments there would at least be a redlink to remind us that there is a piece of history missing. The same applies to structures and departments that disappeared further back in history. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:34, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Does this have reference to my edit summary about Correctional Services? It is a former department but it is also a current "sub-department" (not sure if that is a thing) or "agency" (not sure if that word is correct either)? HelenOnline 10:23, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes indeed, little things like that sometimes set the wheels in my noggin spinning!
So what do you think of the general principle? BTW in the case of South Africa one must keep in mind that there is not necessarily a 1-to-1 relationship between (government/political) Ministries and (state/civil service) Departments. A single Ministry can be responsible for multiple Departments and a few Ministries don't have any Departments under them - those "in the Presidency". I have no idea how common such an arrangement is in other countries. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:20, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't given it a great deal of thought, offhand I think I would prefer an article with a list of former departments (which can be included in the template with a single blue link) to lots of permanent red links in a navigation template. HelenOnline 11:32, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I tend to agree with Helen, that the navigation template should contain the current departments and the former departments should be dealt with elsewhere - at minimum, the articles on current departments should include references to their former incarnations. - htonl (talk) 12:38, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, as to the status of the departments: technically Justice and Correctional Services remain separate departments for now; the most recent schedule to the Public Service Act still has them as separate. Generally these mergers after a cabinet reshuffle take quite a long time to be fully put into effect, because of the complexities of the budget process and so on. - htonl (talk) 12:45, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Dodger67 and HelenOnline: I know it's six years (and another major departmental reorganisation) later, but I've started working on an article at Draft:List of departments of the government of South Africa which lists the current departments as well as a history of the former departments (at least since 1994 - earlier than that and things get very confusing with the "own affairs" and "general affairs" nonsense). Your contributions would be welcome! - htonl (talk) 20:59, 9 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
htonl I've added a bit to the lead. Do you know how to effectively search government gazettes? I've tried the advanced search function at greengazette.co.za, but have not succeeded to find even one departmental shuffle or rename. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:47, 10 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Dodger67: I have access to Sabinet's government gazette archive, which makes it much easier to search the gazettes, so I don't know about the free services. What you are searching for is proclamations titled "Amendment of Schedule 1 to the Public Service Act, 1994" or something similar. I went through all the amendments from 1994 to date and made some notes, which I'm posting up on the talk page of the draft article now. Hopefully that will help. - htonl (talk) 16:14, 10 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
