ANC chair Gwede Mantashe was quick off the mark this week to defend the party’s contentious cadre deployment policy.
In parliament on Tuesday, he said the policy enabled the transformation of the public service and that it was here to stay.
But challenges to the policy are mounting: the Constitutional Court this week effectively ordered the ANC to hand over to the DA all records relating to its deployment committee since 2013; a high court judgment is pending on a DA bid to declare the policy unconstitutional; the ANC government itself claims it wants to “professionalise” the public service; and the disruption that the creation of coalition governments at provincial and national level this year would cause.
The ANC’s reluctance to ditch the policy is yet another manifestation of the way the party remains stuck in denial about changing reality until it’s far too late. The ANC, and Mantashe in particular, were slow to admit to the destruction Jacob Zuma was inflicting on the party and the country, but eventually the damage became too dramatic to ignore.
Will the same happen with cadre deployment? It seems likely.
The Constitutional Court this week rebuffed an ANC attempt to appeal against a high court order that it disclose the records of its deployment committee from January 2013 to 2021. At the time, the committee was chaired by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
DA MP Leon Schreiber has taken on the ANC over its cadre deployment policy and approached the courts to access the minutes, WhatsApps and any other communications related to the work of this committee. The ANC now has five days to hand those records over to Schreiber. (Provincial ANC leaders say that at least at their level such records rarely exist, as discussions are often informal.)
Judgment in the other crucial high court case, also lodged by Schreiber, to declare the policy unconstitutional, has been pending for just over a year now.
Schreiber brought the case after the state capture inquiry chaired by chief justice Raymond Zondo found that the policy was in violation of key sections of the constitution and contravened the Public Service Act.
The ANC portrays the policy as a benign practice with precedents around the world, but Zondo said it had paved the way for the wholesale capture of key positions in the state
The ANC portrays the policy as a benign practice with precedents around the world, but Zondo said it had paved the way for the wholesale capture of key positions in the state.
ANC Veterans League leader Snuki Zikalala tells the FM the original intent was to overcome the legacy of National Party governments. After 1994, it was important that “comrades who understood the mandate of the ANC and the imperative to create a better life for all, be deployed in government”.
“It should be recalled that in 1994 the bureaucracy was occupied by predominantly white people who had been appointed by the apartheid government,” he says.
Asked if the policy is still relevant, Zikalala says: “In this context some form of cadre deployment … [of] competent individuals” is needed.
The national framework for the professionalisation of the public service adopted by the cabinet in 2022 emphasises a merit-based recruitment and selection system, urging a rethink of the way cadre deployment works now.
Endorsing the policy in one of his weekly newsletters, Ramaphosa described it as among the “most significant developments in public sector reform since the advent of democracy”. But a year earlier, Ramaphosa had defended the cadre deployment policy before the Zondo commission.
The upcoming elections could upset the ANC’s deployment apple cart if the party is forced to enter coalitions with rivals that would demand the right to deploy their own cadres, as the Patriotic Alliance did in the City of Joburg.
To pre-empt such pressure, it might be in the ANC’s own interest to usher in a truly professional — and politically insulated — public service.
Even EFF leader Julius Malema over the weekend took a swipe at cadre deployment.
“We are not going to do cadre deployment here. People must be deployed on the basis of merit … What are they going to add?” he said at the EFF’s party list conference in KwaZulu-Natal.
A final incentive for the ANC is simply the urgent need to get the state functioning in the face of the country’s proliferating crises.
On Nkandla, on state capture and on Zuma, the ANC was eventually forced to do the right thing by public pressure, the actions of whistleblowers and rulings from the judiciary. In the case of cadre deployment, it will do the right thing only after its feet have been held to the fire.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.