Despite strongly condemning the ANC for its cadre deployment programme, the DA says its insistence on appointing its own candidates for top ministerial positions in the Government of National Unity (GNU), was to ensure that they hired the best people for the job and not cadre deployment.
The DA wanted 12 cabinet posts including that of the deputy president (DP) in the GNU.
It also demanded that the Directors General (DGs) in departments reporting to their ministers were selected by panels consisting of DA ministers, adding that their decision should not be withheld.
This was all mentioned in a letter of demands that was Sunday sent to the ANC’s secretary-general Fikile Mbalula informing him about their plans in the GNU.
In the letter, the DA also insisted on the termination of all current DG’s contracts in the departments that they wanted in favour of nominees that had been authorised by them.
Critics, including some members of the ANC, have slammed the DA for being hypocrites, saying they are attempting to exercise their own version of cadre deployment.
The DA recently called for the ANC to provide them with their cadre deployment records to prove that they did not employ people because they were their friends.
Responding to this, DA’s Richard Newton argued that there was a difference between employing someone because you are related and someone fit for the job.
To clarify this, he told IOL that all their demands would be approved by the president, Cyril Ramaphosa.
“There is also the proviso in this letter that selected candidates are submitted to the President for approval,” he said.
According to Newton, their quest to appoint the best person for the job, whomever that may be, was very different from the ANC cadre deployment.
He said the ANC would place people who were utterly incompetent in departments that crumbled due to their incompetence.
ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri told IOL that they have noted the DA’s demands but said this was premature because they have to wait for President Cyril Ramaphosa to announce his cabinet.
“The president should be allowed space and time to make the pronouncement on constituting his cabinet as it is his constitutional responsibility,” she said.
Public policy specialist at the Wits School of Governance, Dr Kagiso “TK” Pooe, explained to IOL that all political parties around the world including the DA in Western Cape or where they govern practice deployment of trusted bureaucrats to strategic levers of control.
According to Pooe, the ANC misused the concept and practice of deployment, stating that they have deployed comrades instead of cadres.
“In the late 1990s and 2000s, the quality of Director Generals and pipeline of leadership was better and stronger, however, the ANC long stopped looking for the best and brightest, and this is what parties like the DA criticise which is fine.
“But as their recent demands illustrate, they aren’t against launching their preferred folks into government. So, the issue is not deployment but rather allowing for the system to absorb the best and brightest and then negotiating the tension between political heads and technocrats,” he said.
Political analyst Professor Sipho Seepe said the DG’s appointed by the ANC were a result of cadre deployment and as such, they cannot be trusted to execute the mandate advanced by a new executive/political authority.
However, Seepe said the DA sees itself as having a copyright over what constitutes professionalism.
“Having projected itself as a custodian of political morality, it sees no contradiction between what it proposes and what the ANC has practised over the years,” he said.
He further mentioned that this would create a conundrum for Ramaphosa given that the career incidents involving DG’s fall within his office.
IOL Politics