Introduction

The Democratic Alliance (DA) is today launching a ‘Crooked Comrades Monitor', an online archive of those people aligned to the African National Congress (ANC) appointed either as public representatives or who occupy key positions in the public service, and who have dubious track records which suggest that they are unsuited for public office.

The monitor is hosted on the DA's website.

The full document from today's press conference is available at the DA Media Centre.

As it now stands, the Monitor contains 16 individuals, whose combined salaries cost the South African taxpayer just under R14 million a year. We will update the archive on a regular basis.

Why the Monitor

We believe that the ANC has subverted the public service and undermined public faith in its representatives in two ways.

The first of these is cadre deployment - a policy that has seen political loyalty and factional interests trump merit and expertise in the appointment of people to the civil service. The second is a warped understanding of the constitutional principle of accountability - maladministration is almost never acted upon with the result that corruption is tolerated and excused.

The combination of these two factors has resulted in a situation in which those people who abuse the public's good faith are not only protected from consequences but allowed to continue in their positions, often even being rewarded with promotion.

As it is public money that funds the often significant salaries paid to these individuals, the Democratic Alliance believes the public has a right to know who these people are, what positions they hold, their salary and their track record.

This then is the purpose behind the Monitor. It is part of the DA's oversight role and, we hope, it will serve to highlight this particular and significant problem.

How it works

The monitor focuses only on those appointments made or retained since Jacob Zuma came to power. It includes the person's name and the position they now hold, as well as their salary. Where it is not possible to determine the individual's exact salary (for example if there is a scale of salary attached to a post) the smallest figure has been used for the purposes of the totals column.

In order to qualify for inclusion in the monitor, the person must have been found guilty of corruption or wrongdoing by an official mechanism, be it a court, a commission of enquiry or a disciplinary hearing, for example, and must occupy a position in the public service or as a public representative.

Who is on the Monitor

As the Monitor stands, it contains the names of 16 people. The majority of these hold a position at national level. We have invited our public representatives at all spheres of government to supply us with any people whose names ought to be added to the Monitor, and in time we expect we will expand the Monitor to include more names from provincial and local government level.

Significantly, it now includes three portfolio committee chairs; a Speaker in a provincial legislature; a municipal manager; two Deputy Ministers; eleven Members of Parliament; a Ministerial Advisor and a Chief Operating Officer.

When the ANC announced its 2009 lists for Parliament, it stated that those people elected to represent the ruling party "...have been told that their organisation, and the people they represent, will hold them to the highest standards of integrity and accountability." Likewise, when President Zuma launched the Presidential Hotline, he stated that he wanted to create an "ethos of accountability".

There is clearly a disjunction between those sentiments designed to ensure the right people represent the public's best interest and political will necessary to make them a reality. It is the DA's hope that the ‘Crooked Comrades Monitor' will help close the gap between these two things, increase pressure on the ANC government to put merit, integrity and expertise ahead of political loyalty and, ultimately, improve governance and service delivery.

Statement issued by James Selfe, MP, Democratic Alliance federal chairperson, October 8 2009

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