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Skeptical DA threatens further legal action as ANC hands over records

todayFebruary 20, 2024 117

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The Democratic Alliance (DA) has threatened to take legal action against the African National Congress (ANC) should it find that the governing party’s highly awaited cadre deployment documents were manipulated.

Yesterday, the ANC surrendered its cadre deployment committee minutes to the DA, after a protracted legal battle.

The governing party was ordered by the Constitutional Court last week to surrender the records after the Apex Court upheld a high court ruling, which had ordered the party to make the documents public.

The records date back as far as January 2013 when President Cyril Ramaphosa was still the party’s deputy president and chaired the ANC’s deployment committee.

However, the governing ANC maintains that there are no minutes recorded between December 2012 and December 2017.

In a statement, the governing party says a number of these records for the period between 2018 and 2021 were handed over to the Zondo Commission, which investigated claims of state capture.

A phenomenon the DA believes is a result of the cadre deployment policy.

DA Member of Parliament, Leon Schrieber, says the party will study the contents of the ANC’s report to ascertain whether the party adhered to the court ruling, which ordered that the governing party hand over complete minutes, including emails, WhatsApp conversations and CVs of those the committee had to decided to deploy to public institutions, including Chapter 9 institutions and State-Owned Entities (SOEs).

The committee, which set the DA on fire, was made up of top ANC leaders, including the likes of former deputy president David Mabuza, the late Jessie Duarte, Solly Phetoe and Susan Shabangu, to name but a few.

Schrieber says cadre deployment has laid the foundation for systemic corruption, rampant load shedding and failed SOEs.

“As soon as we have processed the voluminous documentation, the DA will fulfill our longstanding undertaking to make public the ANC’s dirty cadre secrets for every South African to see.”

The DA also wants the courts to affirm the Zondo Commission of Inquiry’s findings, which declared the ANC’s cadre deployment policy illegal and unconstitutional.

Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, who chaired the inquiry into state capture, found that Ramaphosa was dishonest in his testimony that the cadre deployment committee did not make recommendations on judicial appointments. The commission further revealed that the committee had been operating in secret.

However, no court ruling has yet been made on that, with the chairperson of the ANC, Gwede Mantashe, recently telling DA MPs that the governing party will continue with the policy, which he says, has transformed the country’s SOEs, courts and other public entities that were previously the preserve of white men.

The ANC has also reiterated that the deployment of members by political parties is not new to the party and South Africans.

The governing party says cadre deployment is a strategy designed to advance the constitutional goal of transformation.

The full bench of the Gauteng High Court is expected to soon decide on the DA’s push for the policy to be declared illegal.

Written by: Lindiwe Mpanza

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