Note: The following article was written in September 1999 by James Myburgh, while he was employed as a researcher for the Democratic Party in parliament.

The ANC’s Cadre deployment strategy—the ANC policy of deploying party members to take control of “key levers of power”— involves a systematic attempt to eliminate the distinction between party and state.

The ANC has sought to deflect criticism of the document “Cadre Policy and Deployment Strategy”— which stated (inter alia) that the ANC “programme of prioritising key centres of power for deployment should continue”-- by claiming that it is merely a discussion document designed to “contribute to debate within the ANC and society at large.”

In fact it is a progress report on the implementation of a policy decided upon at the ANC’s 50^th National Conference in November 1997—that organisations highest policy making body.

At Mafikeng the ANC noting the need to “deploy cadres to various organs of the state, including the public service and to other centres of power in society” resolved to “put in place a deployment strategy which focuses on the short, medium and long term challenges, identifying key centres of power, [the ANC’s] strategy to transform these centres and the attributes and skills we require from our cadres to do so effectively.”

The ANC also resolved to establish “Deployment Committees” from national to local level which would deploy “comrades to areas of work on behalf of the movement including the public service, parastatals, structures of the movement and the private sector.”

These Deployment Committees would, after consulting the individuals concerned, have the final say on where that individual would be deployed or redeployed. The Conference stated “decisions of the organisation [on deployment]... are final and a breach of this policy shall constitute a serious offence.”

In line with this policy the ANC has established deployment committees at national and provincial levels. It has also appointed its Cadres to “key centres of power” such as the National Prosecuting Authority, the Intelligence Services, the Reserve Bank, the Public Service, Foreign Service, Nedlac, the GCIS, SARS, Denel, Transnet etc.

The ANC has not (yet) altered the Constitution to facilitate this process, not out of any respect for the Constitutional State, but because it has had no need to. In May last year Kgalema Motlanthe, the ANC secretary general, stated that his organisation would use a two-thirds majority to review the Judicial Services Commission, the Reserve Bank and the offices of the Attorney and Auditor General. In the event, the Constitution proved no obstacle, and the ANC appointed its cadres to head up the Reserve Bank and National Directorate of Public Prosecutions. The ANC caucus proved dominant on the JSC. By the end of the year the ANC was boasting that it did not need any constitutional changes to “transform” the judiciary and the office of the auditor general.

But while the ANC has not altered the letter of the Constitution, its Cadre Policy represents a massive subversion of its spirit and particularly the doctrine of the Separation of Powers.

In The Federalist James Madison wrote that the “accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

For Madison, the problem presented by the doctrine of the Separation of Powers was to ensure that each different department had a degree of constitutional control over the others, while at the same time ensuring that none should possess or be able to acquire, whether directly or indirectly, an overruling influence over the others. Clearly setting out the boundaries of these departments in the Constitution was clearly insufficient. As Madison said they were “parchment barriers against the encroaching spirit of power.”

For Madison the greatest security against the gradual concentration of power in one department lay in giving “to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others...Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.”

It is in this sense that the ANC cadre policy subverts the separation of powers. The ANC’s cadre policy creates a parallel authority to that of the state. It demands that Cadres remain loyal to the Party hierarchy (not the Constitution) even once they have been appointed to positions in the State or the legislatures. The whole Deployment Policy is designed to ensure that ANC Cadres remain accountable to the senior party hierarchy.

The Mafikeng Conference explicitly stated that it expected “maximum political discipline” from its Cadres. It also endorsed the Leninist doctrine of democratic centralism—although debate is allowed within the Party, once the Party has reached a decision “no criticism whatever can be permitted in its ranks.”

Democratic centralism is clearly incompatible with the principle of the separation of powers. If deployed party members are bound by the decisions of the ANC leadership they cannot exercise their constitutional obligations properly.

The Cadre Policy also opens up massive powers of patronage to the party hierarchy. New vistas of ambition are opened up. The ANC hierarchy (already able to expel MP’s from parliament) is now able to dangle before lowly members of the legislature the possibility of promotion to the commanding heights of the state.

Thus instead of ambition counteracting ambition to prevent the encroachment of power, ambition (for ANC members) is dependent on keeping in favour with the senior party hierarchy. Loyalty to the party will be rewarded with further and higher “deployment”, disloyalty punished by “redeployment.” Their ambitions become integrally bound up with the further extension and consolidation of ANC power.

For ANC members deployed to positions in the state or Parliament there is no personal motive to resist encroachments by other departments. The interest of the Cadre is not connected with the constitutional rights of the place he has been deployed to, but to the Party that appointed him there.

Instead of exercising oversight and control over other departments there is every incentive to turn a blind eye to the abuse of power.

ENDS