‘Desperate panic to hide truth,’ says DA as ANC heads to SCA over cadre deployment ruling

The Democratic Alliance (DA) won’t be getting any records soon from the African National Congress (ANC) as the battle over cadre deployment continues.

The ANC had until the end of business on Tuesday to hand over its deployment committee records from 2013 to the DA.

The records include meeting minutes, emails and WhatsApp conversations, among others.

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But the governing party has since decided to turn to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).

This comes after the Johannesburg High Court dismissed the ANC’s leave to appeal bid last week Tuesday.

The high court had found that there was no reasonable prospect of success in an appeal.

‘Desperate panic’

The ANC’s move, however, has come as no surprise to the DA, with the party questioning why the ruling party wanted to conceal its records.

“It is clear that the ANC is now in a desperate panic to hide the truth about cadre deployment. If there was truly nothing nefarious about this practice – as the ANC likes to deceitfully claim – why is the party so desperate to keep it a secret?” DA MP Leon Schreiber asked on Wednesday.

Schreiber maintained the ANC’s attempt to hide the records was to prevent exposing how President Cyril Ramaphosa, who chaired the deployment committee, “illegally interfered in appointment processes to appoint the criminals who captured and corrupted the state”.

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He said the DA believed that the ANC’s petition to the SCA was doomed to fail.

“The ANC simply has no case for why these documents should be hidden from public view.

“The cadre deployment committee directly interferes in appointment processes to public institutions, which means the public has an inalienable right to know how this corrupt committee operates.”

The DA initially lodged a request for the ANC’s records in terms of Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) in 2021 as part of the party’s bigger pursuit to have cadre deployment declared unconstitutional and illegal.

The judgment in the matter was reserved by the Pretoria High Court.

The ANC defended its deployment policy before court in January this year, arguing that all political parties had the right to make suggestions on who should be appointed to key positions in the public service.

Committee minutes

The ANC deployment committee’s minutes, from 2018 to 2021, revealed how the party ran a parallel process to fill certain positions at several government departments, agencies and the boards of SOEs.

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.

The Constitutional Court (ConCourt) at the time had two vacant positions, while the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) had one.

READ MORE: ANC’s cadre deployment policy needs to go

Ramaphosa defended the deployment policy during his testimony at the State Capture Commission, arguing the policy was an important part of implementing the ANC’s mandate.

The president also said the deployment committee did not keep records of its meetings from 2012 to 2017.

It also emerged that the ANC had intended to obtain an interdict against the commission, chaired by Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, from releasing the ruling party’s deployment committee minutes.