Gwede Mantashe confirms that the ANC corruptly uses cadre deployment to influence government appointments. You can help the DA end this evil practice

15 April 2021

Note to Editors: Please find attached a soundbite by Dr Leon Schreiber MP

Although he carefully cloaked his testimony in front of the State Capture Commission in the language of denial, former ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe yesterday confirmed the warnings about cadre deployment that the DA has issued for more than a quarter of a century. It is time to accept that cadre deployment – which gives the ANC the power to influence civil service appointments that are supposed to be non-political in nature – is a fundamental cause of corruption and state capture.

But it is also not enough for political parties to complain about the problem. We need solutions – which is why the DA has already gazetted our intention to publish the End Cadre Deployment Bill.

During his testimony yesterday, a visibly uncomfortable Mantashe attempted to dismiss a cadre deployment memorandum which had apparently been issued by the ANC in June 2020, and which the DA had earlier submitted to the Commission as part of our request for cadre deployment to be interrogated, as “fake.”

However, in his subsequent testimony, Mantashe inadvertently confirmed the contents of the memorandum, which instructed ANC “comrades” that no appointment of a Director-General, boards of state-owned enterprises, board chairpersons or CEOs should be “taken to cabinet without passing through the deployment committee first.”

In another instance, Mantashe confirmed that he had personal experience of how the cadre deployment committee interfered with the appointment process. In one case, he says he submitted “five names” on a “long list” of candidates to the committee. But the ANC’s cadre deployment committee disapproved of the gender composition of the list, with Mantashe then admitting that he took the committee’s response as a “directive” to revise the list.

Although he may be too ideologically blinded to see it, this single example already amounts to smoking gun evidence that the ANC uses cadre deployment to exercise unconstitutional influence over government appointments.

The DA hopes that the Commission will continue to delve into the role of cadre deployment in facilitating state capture. In the wake of Mantashe’s revelations, it is now even more urgent that ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa is compelled to answer the questions we have submitted to the Commission on Ramaphosa’s role as the chairperson of the deployment committee between 2013 and 2017.

Mantashe has confirmed that the committee interferes in government appointments. Now we need to know how Ramaphosa aided and abetted this unconstitutional process.

The DA has also put a solution on the table. Our intention to introduce the End Cadre Deployment Bill (formally called the Public Administration Laws General Amendment Bill) to Parliament has officially been published in the government gazette for public comment. We invite South Africans to read and comment on the Bill by going to the following link.

All comments on the Bill must be emailed to [email protected] and copied to [email protected] before the end of April.

The End Cadre Deployment Bill will make it illegal for any person who holds office in a political party to be employed as a professional civil servant in the state, and directs the Public Service Commission (PSC) to enforce the requirement that all appointments be based strictly on merit. The Bill makes it a criminal offence to appoint a civil servant on the basis of political loyalty rather than demonstrated merit.

The DA’s End Cadre Deployment Bill will bring an end to the violations that Mantashe’s testimony has confirmed. Brick by brick, the Bill will rebuild the separation between party and state that the ANC has completely erased through their evil policy of cadre deployment.

Issued by Leon Schreiber, DA Shadow Minister of Public Service and Administration, 15 April 2021