DA rejects ANC pleas for more time on cadre deployment records

DA leader John Steenhuisen has revealed the ANC is pleading for more time to release its cadre deployment records. 

The Constitutional Court gave the ANC until Monday February 19 to release its cadre deployment records to the DA. 

The records in question are of ANC’s secret meetings where decisions on appointments of critical executives in government departments and other state departments took place. 

The DA approached the ConCourt to force the ANC to release the records from 2013 when President Cyril Ramaphosa was the head of the deployment committee. 

It was in these meetings, the DA believes, where the collapse of the state took place with the ANC choosing its most loyal cadres over qualified candidates. 

Steenhuisen revealed during the launch of his party’s election manifesto that the ANC has come “crawling” pleading to be given extra time. 

Steenhuisen however told the ANC his party rejected its request. 

“After delaying for more than three years following the DA’s initial request for these records to be made public to expose Ramaphosa’s role in state capture, the ANC yesterday came crawling back to the DA, begging us to give them more time,” said Steenhuisen. 

“I’d like to take this opportunity to respond to Ramaphosa and the ANC directly. No, you cannot get more time not to hand over these records, and not in government.”

Steenhuisen said the ANC has wasted enough of South Africa’s time over these records. 

“You will comply with the Constitutional Court’s order by handing over these records by 5pm on Monday,” he said. 

If the ANC failed to meet this deadline, Steenhuisen said, the DA would approach the ConCourt for a contempt of court order and jail time for ANC leaders. 

“If you fail to do so, the DA will use the precedent set in the [former president Jacob] Zuma case to go back to court for a contempt order that includes prison time for each and every one of the ANC’s leaders,” he said. 

“The ANC is so desperate to hide Ramaphosa’s cadre secrets that they are now threatening to trigger a constitutional crisis to protect him — just like they did with Zuma.”

The DA believes its case is important in fixing governance as the deployment committee is directly responsible to the mess the country finds itself in as they were directly appointing people to critical positions. 

The available deployment committee minutes showed, charged Steenhuisen, that the ANC ran an off-book process to appoint executives at SOEs, board members and government officials including deputy director-generals. 

This process disregarded or at least overruled the decisions of the appointment panels in government and key to the committee’s decisions was whether the recommended person was an ANC member or at least affiliated to the party.

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