By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The African National Congress(ANC) said on Thursday evening it intended to appeal the ruling of Johannesburg High Court on Cadre Deployment committee records.
In short statement the party said, “It may in due course consider conveying its full position on the matter should such a need arise after having obtained conclusive advice from its legal team.”
On Thursday, Judge Willem Wepener ordered the governing party to hand over its cadre deployment committee records to DA public service & administration shadow minister Leon Schreiber within five days.
This comes after Schreiber lodged an application under the Promotion of Access to Information Act in 2021 for the ANC to hand over its cadre deployment committee records dating back to January 1 2013 when President Cyril Ramaphosa became its chairman.
In a statement after the judgment, Schreiber said: “South Africans will for the very first time be able to see not only Ramaphosa’s personal complicity in state capture as chairman of the committee, but they will also get to see the full truth of how the appointment of ANC cadres on the basis of loyalty to the party rather than on merit is the true cause of our country’s rapidly failing state.”
Wepener found the ANC’s decision unlawful and invalid and set it aside. He also ordered the party to pay the DA’s costs.
For his application to succeed, Schreiber had to convince the court he needed the information to protect certain rights.
He advanced three such rights.
The first is the DA wishes to enact legislation about cadre deployment and it, therefore, needed the information to understand what cadre deployment entails and what its impact could be.
Second, as an MP, Schreiber has an oversight duty over appointments in state organs.
And third, that people not appointed in the public service could use the information to challenge unlawful and irregular appointments.
Wepener was not convinced by the third ground but agreed with Schreiber on the first two.
“In my view, it is indeed so that the parliamentary oversight is best served with full knowledge of all the factors that go into the appointment of officials,” read Wepener’s judgment.
In his statement, Schreiber described the ruling as an historic victory for transparency and the rule of law in South Africa.
“For nearly three decades, the ANC’s cadre deployment committee secretly interfered in appointments across the state, directly causing the collapsing service delivery and load shedding crisis we all experience on a daily basis.
“That secrecy ends now, thanks to the DA’s relentless fight for the public’s right to know the truth about cadre deployment,” he said.
The DA is also awaiting the outcome of a separate application, in which it asked the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria to declare the ANC’s cadre deployment policy unlawful and unconstitutional.