R373 million salary increase for top ANC cadres while 73% of phone calls and emails to government departments go unanswered

29 May 2022

The DA today reveals the findings of a research project into the effect that ANC cadre deployment corruption has had on two of the most basic functions of any government department: answering the telephone and corresponding with the public via email. The full analysis can be viewed here and here.

The analysis reveals that:

1. ANC cadre deployment corruption has led to a near-complete collapse in government capacity wherever the ANC governs, with 7 out of every 10 phone calls or emails to national or provincial departments run by the ANC going unanswered.
2. The only exception to this collapse is the one province where cadre deployment has been defeated, namely the DA-led Western Cape, where not a single call went unanswered.

It is worth emphasising that, in the DA-led Western Cape, 100% of phone calls were answered. But in the other eight ANC-run provinces, only 22% of phone calls were answered. This wide discrepancy makes it clear that, wherever ANC cadre deployment is practiced, service delivery collapses to the point where the most basic functions of state cease to exist. Conversely, eradicating ANC cadre deployment as the DA has done since first winning power in the Western Cape in 2009, holds the key to improving service delivery to world-class levels.

These findings come at the same time that a parliamentary question asked by the DA revealed that the Minister of Public Service and Administration, Ayanda Dlodlo, regards a R373 million salary increase to the ANC cadres who destroyed most departments as a “just, equitable and efficient use of public money in the current economic climate.”

The DA categorically rejects the ANC’s fantasy that wasting R373 million on cadres who cannot even answer a telephone is “just, equitable and efficient” at a time when millions of South Africans can no longer afford fuel or food. Instead, the findings of our research confirm that cadre deployment corruption must be urgently uprooted and outlawed to repair our broken state.

The research

Over the past three weeks, the DA tested the basic capability of 140 national and provincial government departments to answer telephone calls. From the South African Police Service to provincial departments of roads and infrastructure, we systematically made at least three phone calls to each of these departments in order to ask a tailer-made question related to the work of the department. The contact information was principally sourced from the government contact directory. In each case, we rang the phone for at least 30 seconds.

At the same time, we also sent emails with questions that members of the public would realistically ask to 37 national government departments. For example, we asked the Department of Social Development for information on the current list of available grants. In the case of the Department of Mineral Resources, we asked for information on how to apply for a mining permit. And at the Basic Education Department, we enquired whether a learner could be expelled from school because she is pregnant. In cases where the initial email was not answered, we followed up with two additional emails.

At the end of this process, each of the 140 national and provincial departments had received at least three separate phone calls, while each of the 37 national department also received three emails. In total, the DA made 420 phone calls and sent 111 emails to ensure the accuracy of our analysis.

National government departments

In national government departments, where ANC cadre deployment corruption continues to run rampant thanks to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s impassioned defence of this practice at the State Capture Commission, 59% of the 37 departments did not respond to any of the three emails. Additionally, 65% of the departments failed to even answer the phone after three separate attempts.

This even included the Presidency nor the Department of Communications, which both failed to answer the phone or respond to email.

Emails

In total, 22 out of 37 national government departments failed to respond to emails. In seven of these cases, the department did not even have working email address at all. This means that emails from members of the public would never even reach the inboxes of these department.

The 7 departments without functional email systems are:

1. Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
2. Arts and Culture
3. Energy
4. Public Enterprises
5. Rural Development and Land Reform
6. Sports and Recreation
7. Water Affairs

In addition, the following 15 departments failed to respond to emails:

1. Communications
2. Basic education
3. Government Communications and Information System
4. Health
5. Home Affairs
6. Independent Police Investigative Directorate
7. Labour
8. Mineral Resources
9. National Intelligence Agency
10. Public Service and Administration
11. Science and Technology
12. Social Development
13. The Presidency
14. Trade and Industry
15. Transport

Telephone calls

The following 24 national departments failed to answer the telephone after three separate attempts:

1. Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
2. Arts and Culture
3. Communications
4. Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs
5. Defence
6. Basic education
7. Energy
8. Environmental Affairs
9. Government Communication and Information Systems
10. Health
11. Home Affairs
12. Human Settlements
13. Independent Police Investigative Directorate
14. Justice and Constitutional Development
15. Labour
16. Mineral Resources
17. National Intelligence Agency
18. Public Service and Administration
19. Science and Technology
20. South African Police Service
21. Sports and Recreation
22. The Presidency
23. Transport
24. Water Affairs

Provincial government departments

The situation is even more dire in the eight ANC-run provinces, where cadre deployment corruption has hollowed out provincial administrations to such an extent that only 22% of the 91 departments in those eight provinces have the capacity to answer a phone calls after three separate attempts. In contrast, 100% of calls to the Western Cape Government’s 12 departments were successful.

The nine provinces ranked as follows:

1. Western Cape: 100% (12 out of 12 departments answered)
2. Mpumalanga: 45% (5 out of 11 departments answered)
3. Limpopo: 40% (4 out of 10 departments answered)
4. KwaZulu-Natal: 31% (4 out of 13 departments answered)
5. Free State: 18% (2 out of 11 departments answered)
6. North West: 18% (2 out of 11 departments answered)
7. Gauteng: 15% (2 out of 13 departments answered)
8. Northern Cape: 10% (1 out of 10 departments answered)
9. Eastern Cape: 0% (0 out of 12 departments answered)

Conclusion

The DA’s analysis offers a vivid and alarming demonstration of the true extent to which even the most basic elements of service delivery collapses wherever ANC cadre deployment festers. But perhaps most striking of all is the finding that this damage was entirely reversed in the one province where the DA replaced the ANC as governing party. By replacing cadre deployment with professional, merit-based appointments in the public service, as the DA did in the Western Cape, we have been able to replace a failing state with a capable state that provides effective service delivery to residents.

These findings further strengthens the resolve of the DA to fight back against ANC cadre deployment until it is outlawed once and for all, and to replace corrupt ANC administrations with capable DA governments in more provinces as well as nationally in the 2024 election. For voters, the message is equally striking: in every upcoming by-election and in the 2024 national and provincial elections, vote to replace ANC cadre deployment corruption with DA good governance, so that we can fix what ANC cadres have broken.            

Statement issued by Dr Leon Schreiber MP - DA Shadow Minister for Public Service and Administration, 29 May 2022