DA set to expose minutes of provincial and regional ANC cadre deployment committees

16 February 2022

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

In the wake of our successful efforts to expose the minutes of the ANC’s national cadre deployment committee, the DA has today filed applications in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) to also obtain full minutes and all other records of meetings by the ANC’s nine provincial deployment committees, as well as of the dozens of regional ANC deployment committees. 

These latest PAIA applications were submitted to all ANC provincial leaders and forms part of our ongoing efforts to inform the South African people of how cadre deployment is the fundamental cause of state capture and collapse at national, provincial as well as municipal level. In terms of PAIA, the ANC has 30 days within which to hand over the records to the DA.

The minutes of the national deployment committee, exposed by the DA last month, have confirmed the existence of dozens more local deployment committees at provincial and regional level. Like a deadly metastasized cancer, ANC cadre deployment is not confined to the national level, but has infected every sphere of the state.

Following a recent ruling by Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, the ANC has no choice but to make public its provincial and regional cadre deployment minutes. In a letter to the ANC’s lawyers on 21 January 2022, which was sent in response to efforts by the ANC to keep the minutes of its national deployment committee hidden, Judge Zondo ruled that:

“It is in the public interest that it be known how the deployment committee of the ruling party influences decisions that are made by state institutions or government functionaries in regard to certain appointments.”

This ruling by the most senior jurist in the land has created a powerful legal precedent that compels the ANC to hand over all of its cadre deployment records – including at provincial and regional levels. It is plainly in the public interest for the people of South Africa to know how their local governments were captured by the ANC, who use cadre deployment to appoint incompetent and corrupt officials into national, provincial and municipal administrations on the basis of their loyalty to the ANC, rather than on the basis of merit.

This ruling by Judge Zondo also makes it clear that the ANC’s opposition to our court application to expose the minutes of the national deployment committee dating back to 2013 – when President Cyril Ramaphosa became its chairperson – is doomed to fail. For a political party that is already too bankrupt to pay its own employees, the ANC would be well advised to not make the same mistake twice by forcing the DA to also take it to court to obtain minutes of provincial and regional deployment committees. The legal precedent that the ANC must make all cadre deployment records public has already been firmly established, which means that the DA will win any such court cases – and we will ask for expensive costs orders against the ANC in each and every case.

It is time for Ramaphosa’s party to realise that the cadre deployment jig is up.

The ANC’s efforts to hide the truth about cadre deployment from the DA and the State Capture Commission has failed. It is now time to come clean about how every provincial and municipal government under the control of the ANC has been destroyed by unconstitutional interference in appointments by provincial and regional cadre deployment committees.

Issued by Leon Schreiber, DA Shadow Minister for Public Service and Administration, 16 February 2022