By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Deputy President Paul Mashatile has defended the ruling African National Congress (ANC) controversial cadre deployment policy.
Mashatile appeared before the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) to answer questions for oral reply on Thursday.
DA MP Hildegard Boshoff had asked Mashatile whether, with reference to his role to implement rapid response on service delivery interventions, cadre deployment had led to the lack of service delivery as many officials within the municipalities do not possess the prerequisite qualifications to undertake the necessary maintenance of infrastructure that is leading to excessive sewer spillages.
Mashatile said it was “incorrect” to link cadre deployment with service delivery challenges faced by the country’s municipalities.
“Nobody is deployed in government unless they go through a very rigorous process,” he said. “We don’t just take anybody from the street because they are ANC members and say, ‘go and be a DG’. No, it’s never done,” he said.
“Don’t be worried about cadre development policy. It’s a very good policy because it ensures that you prepare your people for these tough processes, you train them and a lot of people are being trained in the ANC.”
He said they were trained at the party’s OR Tambo Leadership Academy.
“We train people all the time because we want the best of the best to go and do the job”.
Mashatile explained that the ANC established a cadre development policy and a deployment process after the democratic breakthrough in 1994 to safeguard democracy and good governance, while assuring rapid and purposeful transformation.
“The ANC was very conscious right from the beginning that we needed to provide our people with the necessary skills and capacity to be able to transform this country.”
The logic behind the process was to ensure the most suitable practices were used in recruitment and prioritising appropriate placement of skills, especially during the transition period and beyond.
Last month, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) dismissed its application to appeal a high court judgment ordering the governing party to release its deployment committee records to the Democratic Alliance (DA).
The DA initially lodged a request for the ANC’s records in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) in 2021 as part of the party’s pursuit to have cadre deployment declared unconstitutional and illegal.
The ANC deployment committee’s minutes from 2018 to 2021 revealed how the party ran a parallel process to fill specific positions at several government departments, agencies and SOE boards.
According to the minutes from a meeting held on 22 March 2019, the committee preselected the appointment of judges for vacant posts in the judiciary.
DA’s fight to see the ANC’s cadre deployment records has gone to the Constitutional Court.
DA MP Leon Schreiber wants access to the ANC’s deployment committee records to enrich his anti-cadre deployment draft bill, to which the ANC is opposed.