DA can’t back down on NHI and cadre deployment

Downriver there are two massive rocks on which the fragile government of national unity (GNU) faces being dashed to bits.

The first is National Health Insurance (NHI). The second is cadre deployment.

These are both “blink” issues. Who is going to blink first and back down?

And what are the consequences to the GNU and South Africa if neither does?

It’s the former, the NHI, that is the focus at the moment.

The DA joined the GNU on the understanding the Act’s contentious clauses, such as the scrapping of the medical schemes, would be re-examined. That’s not how it’s turned out.

Echoing President Cyril Ramaphosa, who before signing the Bill said NHI would be implemented whether the medical sector and organised business “like it or not”, hardline Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi said this week that even if it meant the end of the GNU, the ANC would not back down from its intention of scrapping the medical scheme structure.

The ANC has thrown down the gauntlet and the DA appears to be wavering.

In response to Motsoaledi’s threat, DA leader John Steenhuisen was quick to be conciliatory.

In what City Press describes as a “change of tune”, Steenhuisen indicated the DA might not proceed with its stated pre-GNU intention to challenge the NHI Act in the Constitutional Court. Instead, it was “working to find common ground within the GNU framework”.

It is understandable that the most visible threat, the NHI, commands the most public attention. But it is in fact the second boulder in the river.

This enormously toxic policy is the subject of a timely new book, The Super Cadres: ANC misrule in the age of deployment, by veteran News24 political commentator Pieter du Toit.

Du Toit not only details the insidiously destructive effect of cadre deployment, but he also traces how and why it’s been able to wrap its clammy fist around the nation’s throat.

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Cadre deployment is no minor adjustment mechanism, akin to the party appointments made in many democracies upon a new administration taking power.

In South Africa, it is the root and branch takeover of society by the ANC with the aim of total control of all administrative functions.

Du Toit tracks this history exhaustively but it’s his section on Ramaphosa that’s most germane in our present political context.

Ramaphosa was, and continues to be, at the heart of the cadre deployment machine. He chaired the ANC deployment committee for six years when he was also deputy president.

Writing about the extraordinary public and press optimism that Ramaphosa seems able to engender, Du Toit cautions that the ANC of Ramaphosa is no different from the ANC of Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki or Nelson Mandela.

“Ramaphosa, like Zuma, always [chooses] the ANC ahead of South Africa… [This] is an organisation that exists to attain and maintain political power led by cadres who are devoted to their cause.

“And it has become an organisation that provides cover and protection for patronage networks,” writes Du Toit.

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It’s a warning the DA needs to keep in mind as it tries to balance exactly the same imperatives: the interests of the GNU of which it is part weighed against the interests of the country.

No matter how tempting for short-term political gain, the DA cannot back down, as Steenhuisen has hinted, on the NHI in order to placate the ANC and cling to its place at the Cabinet table.

Nor can back down on its efforts through the courts to have cadre deployment declared contrary to the Constitution and outlawed.