DA exposes ANC’s desperate attempt to hide the truth about cadre deployment and state capture

28 March 2021

In the interests of transparency, the Democratic Alliance (DA) is today releasing the full set of correspondence between us and the African National Congress (ANC) following our submission of a request in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) last month.

Click here to download the correspondence.

The purpose of our PAIA application is to assist the Zondo Commission with its investigation by obtaining the full records of all cadre deployment meetings and decisions taken since President Cyril Ramaphosa became the chairperson of the committee in 2013 – including all meeting minutes, records of decision, attendance registers, documents produced or considered, Whatsapp and email conversations, and communication with government officials.

Unfortunately, and in contrast to Ramaphosa’s repeated claims that the ANC supports the work of the Zondo Commission, the office of secretary-general Ace Magashule has refused to grant the DA’s request to make public the cadre deployment records. Instead, Magashule’s office – through the ANC’s legal adviser – came up with a series of arrogant and dishonest excuses. In effect, the ANC’s response to our request was to pretend that the request itself does not exist.

The DA submitted our PAIA request on 22 February, which means that the ANC had until 24 March to grant or refuse the request. By responding with rank obfuscation and deceit, the ANC triggered clause 58 of PAIA, which clearly stipulates that a request is deemed to be refused if no decision around granting the request is communicated within 30 days.

The DA will now send our full correspondence with the ANC directly to the Zondo Commission. The ANC’s arrogant and dismissive response to our quest for transparency should make it clear to the investigators that the ANC is determined to hide the ugly truth about cadre deployment’s role in state capture from the Commission and South African citizens.

The ANC’s determination to hide the truth makes it all the more urgent that the Zondo Commission should immediately subpoena the ANC to make public all of the cadre deployment records that the DA has asked for. This must be done ahead of Ramaphosa’s scheduled appearance before the Commission at the end of April, so that the Commission can have all the relevant information at hand in demanding answers from Ramaphosa over his role as chairman of the deployment committee at the height of state capture looting between 2013 and 2017.

The credibility of the Zondo Commission and, with it, South Africa’s entire quest to eradicate state capture and corruption, depends on exposing the full truth of how the ANC used cadre deployment to circumvent the law in order to appoint corrupt loyalists into positions of power. Exposing and investigating the system of cadre deployment goes to the very heart of the Commission’s mandate, and the DA will use every avenue at our disposal to assist the Commission and ensure that the full truth of how this evil practice corrupted our state is exposed and eradicated.

Issued by Leon Schreiber, DA Shadow Minister for Public Service and Administration, 28 March 2021