President Cyril Ramaphosa’s active role in the implementation of the ANC’s cadre deployment policy will come under the spotlight if the DA manages to get hold of the 2013-2018 minutes of the ANC cadre deployment committee, which he chaired during that time.
The minutes could reveal whether the committee had a role in the appointment of what the Zondo commission of inquiry has called the “facilitators” of state capture in the government, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and state entities.
The ANC deployment committee is chaired by the ANC’s deputy president, a position Ramaphosa occupied when state capture took hold.
The DA has applied to court to get access to these minutes and hopes to have a court date in February. Its case might be strengthened by the fact that the Zondo commission has placed the minutes of committee meetings from May 2018 to May 2021 on its website after the DA made an application to it under the Promotion of Access to Information Act.
The DA believes ANC cadre deployment is at the heart of state capture and corruption and wants to know whether the committee under Ramaphosa’s chairmanship conducted itself in the same manner as it did during 2018-2021 when it played a central role in the appointment of members to the boards of SOEs, judges, chapter 9 institutions and senior officials of government departments.
At a media briefing on Wednesday, DA spokesperson on public service & administration Leon Schreiber — drawing from the minutes — said in those three years the committee had been involved in the appointments to 88 national departments, SOEs and agencies. At least 29 ministers and deputy ministers as well as the president had appeared before it for the approval, input and sign-off of appointments.
One mechanism by which the committee operates, he said, is to instruct ministers on specific names of people to appoint and the other is to divide appointments between the committee and a minister, particularly for the SOE boards such as Transnet.
“It is not only ministers that account to the cadre deployment committee. We now have evidence that public servants, who are supposed to be nonpolitical appointments, also account to the cadre deployment committee. Support, membership and loyalty to the ANC [are] key criteria for appointment,” Schreiber said. ANC cadres have an inside track to appointments.
“The truth is that instead of the ANC’s cadre deployment committee recommending and ministers appointing, it is often the other way around.
“The legally defined selection processes are overruled or bypassed or ignored and then the wishes of the political party are carried out.”
In April 2021, Ramaphosa as president of the ANC defended the party’s cadre deployment policy in his testimony before the commission, saying it was an integral part of ensuring that the governing party implemented its mandate. While conceding that, at times, people had been appointed to positions for which they were not qualified, Ramaphosa said the political deployment of party members to the public service is practised widely by many governments in the world for good reason.
“It is the ANC’s view that the practice of cadre deployment should not be inconsistent with the principles of fairness, transparency and merit in the appointment of individuals to public entities,” he said.
“Cadre deployment cannot be faulted in principle. But we would concede that there are weaknesses in its practical implementation that make the case for greater clarity, both within political parties and the state.”
Ramaphosa echoed the evidence of ANC chair and mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe, who said that “in identifying suitable candidates for positions in public entities, the ANC does not seek to circumvent the established and often legally mandated processes for the appointment of individuals to these positions. Candidates are still expected to submit their applications, meet the necessary requirements and be subjected to the normal processes of recruitment, selection and appointment.”
However, even with these requirements, there were “several instances” where individuals appointed to positions may not have been “fit for purpose” or may not have had the necessary experience or qualifications.
Mantashe said the ANC’s 54th national conference recognised that problem and resolved that “the merit principle” must apply in the deployment to senior appointments “based on legislated prescripts and in line with the minimum competency standards”.
The DA plans to ask speaker of the National Assembly Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula for a debate on cadre deployment and has tabled a private member’s bill, which seeks to end the practice. It is also preparing a bill to set up an independent anticorruption commission and has asked the Public Service Commission to review all the highlighted public service appointments and to instruct that they be redone where they have been illegally influenced. It also hopes that the later reports of the Zondo commission will deal with cadre deployment.
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