ANC defies Zondo Commission by opposing DA court case to abolish cadre deployment

4 July 2022

Please find attached a soundbite by Dr Leon Schreiber MP.

Less than a week after ANC national chairperson, Gwede Mantashe, launched a verbal attack against the State Capture Commission’s vindication of the DA’s long-held stance that cadre deployment is unconstitutional and unlawful, the entire ANC has agreed with him by formally choosing to defy Chief Justice Zondo’s recommendation that this practice be abolished.

As recently as January 8, ANC president and former cadre deployment committee chairperson, Cyril Ramaphosa, still pledged that “the ANC will support government in effecting the measures required to eliminate conditions and conduct that enable state capture and systemic corruption.” However, now that the State Capture Commission has directly implicated Ramaphosa and his cadre deployment committee in creating “conditions and conduct that enable state capture and systemic corruption,” Ramaphosa’s ANC has undertaken a treasonous about-turn.

The DA can reveal that the ANC has filed court papers to oppose our court case that seeks to have cadre deployment outlawed and abolished in the North Gauteng High Court. We received official notification of this decision on 1 July from the ANC’s attorney, Krish Naidoo.

Given that the DA’s case against ANC cadre deployment (see the court papers here and here) is built on exactly the same constitutional and legal foundation as the State Capture Commission’s finding that this practice is unconstitutional and violates the Public Service Act, the ANC’s desperate decision to continue defending cadre deployment corruption in court amounts to open defiance of the Commission’s findings.

If the ANC were in any way committed to “effecting the measures required to eliminate conditions and conduct that enable state capture and systemic corruption,” the party would have supported the DA’s case to proceed unopposed so that South Africa could be freed from cadre deployment corruption as soon as possible.

Instead, as they have done so many times before, Ramaphosa, Mantashe and the ANC have treasonously put party before country.

Fortunately, the DA has always anticipated that the ANC, an organised crime syndicate for whom cadre deployment is the single most important mechanism to capture and corrupt the state, would choose its own corrupt interests over the needs of the country even if that meant defying the Zondo Commission.

That is precisely why we launched our court action against cadre deployment in advance of the release of the final volume of the Zondo Commission’s report. We have anticipated all along that the ANC would never voluntarily end cadre deployment corruption, and that it would ultimately be up to the DA to force the implementation of the Zondo Commission’s findings.

The DA is more than ready for this historic task. As far back as March 2000, the DA’s predecessor party warned in a discussion paper entitled “All Power to the Party” that the ANC planned to use cadre deployment to “eliminate the distinction between party and state and extend its hegemony over civil society.” Two decades later, the Zondo Commission has confirmed that this practice culminated in state capture that, by some estimates, cost our country over R1.5 trillion between 2014 and 2019 alone.

Following the creation of the State Capture Commission in 2018, the DA redoubled our efforts to use this opportunity to outlaw and uproot cadre deployment corruption. We wrote close to a dozen different letters to the State Capture Commission, encouraging it to investigate cadre deployment as the foundation of state capture.

We publicly exposed minutes of the ANC’s national cadre deployment committee for the period between 2018 and 2021, which showed how state capture continues unabated under the Ramaphosa administration, and we launched an ongoing court case to force the ANC to make public minutes and all other records from the period between 2013 and 2018 when Ramaphosa personally chaired the cadre committee.

Last year, the DA submitted our End Cadre Deployment Bill to Parliament, which would ensure merit-based appointments throughout the public administration and make it a criminal offence for the ANC to interfere in appointment processes through cadre deployment. Parliament it likely to vote on this vitally important Bill before the end of 2022.

All of this careful work over the past years is designed to culminate in a DA court victory that declares ANC cadre deployment unconstitutional and illegal. A DA victory in this case will constitute the single biggest breakthrough against systemic corruption in the history of democratic South Africa. The DA’s case against ANC cadre deployment corruption is the case of the century.

Although the ANC’s treasonous decision to defy the Zondo Commission by opposing our case against cadre deployment may somewhat delay our ultimate victory in court, there is simply nothing that will stop the DA from seeing this war against corruption through to the very end. We have been waging this battle for over 20 years, and a few extra months in court will not deter us.

While the ANC is clearly desperately looking for a way to protect the criminal syndicate it nurtures through cadre deployment, the DA will proudly keep fighting to free the people of South Africa from ANC corruption.

Issued by Leon Schreiber, DA Shadow Minister for Public Service and Administration, 4 July 2022