ANC’s loyalty rewards programme is not working

Cadre deployment – the ANC’s loyalty rewards programme – is not working … and, in turn, the places where the comrades have been deployed are not working either.

Even the ANC is being forced to concede that may be correct, after decades of accusing anyone who criticised the hallowed principle of being racist.

Playing Captain Obvious last weekend, the party’s secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, said the ANC would have to look into deployed councillors because it was clear that a “lack of governance” was at the heart of the problems in our towns.

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We have a little tip for you, Chief: it’s not just the councillors – it’s every unqualified, incompetent loyal ANC member you put into crucial management positions in municipalities as you purged white incumbents in the name of transformation.

To fill in the competence gaps left by these deployees, towns and metros have significantly upped their spending on consultants.

In many cases, these overpaid experts are being used for basic administrative work, like the submission of VAT returns. Still, though, councils are failing to meet targets for service delivery – and are lying about it. That’s not us saying that, it is straight from our national fiscal conscience, Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke.

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She told parliament yesterday that the government needed to urgently “prioritise local government through a professionalisation framework”. In other words, employ the right people for the job, regardless of political affiliation – or race.

The original intent of cadre deployment was to ensure that the ANC’s policies dominate our social and economic landscape. But it was also a golden opportunity for the lazy and incompetent to earn good, taxpayer-sourced money and, even better, for them to get their hands of more loot, via bribery and corruption.

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Will the ANC ever change that policy? A party which is powered by cronyism and patronage?