ANC has five days to make cadre deployment records available to DA

The ANC has five working days to hand over its cadre deployment records to the DA after the Constitutional Court dismissed its application for leave to appeal a lower court judgment on the matter.

The apex court on Monday rejected the ANC’s application, saying leave to appeal was not in the interests of justice.

The judgment signals the end of the road for the matter as ConCourt rulings cannot be appealed.

DA MP Leon Schreiber, who brought the case, said this means the ANC is compelled to make public its complete cadre deployment records from January 1 2013, when President Cyril Ramaphosa became chair of the cadre deployment committee.

“In terms of the judgment, the ANC has five working days to hand over to the DA all meeting minutes, CVs, e-mail threads, WhatsApp discussions and other relevant documents relating to the cadre deployment committee, dating back more than a decade,” said Schreiber.

“The ANC has run out of road and must now expose the secrets it was so desperate to hide.”

The ruling comes after the ANC appealed to the ConCourt in a last-ditch attempt to hide its “dirty cadre secrets” from the people of South Africa, he said.

An earlier judgment by the Johannesburg high court ordered the governing party to hand over, within five court days, the records of the national cadre deployment committee for its work from January 1 2013 to January 1 2021.

It was upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeal which dismissed the ANC’s application for leave to appeal in September 2023 on the grounds that there were no reasonable prospects of success in an appeal.

The DA applied for the records using the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA).

The party is also awaiting a ruling on its second court application, asking the Pretoria high court to declare ANC cadre deployment unconstitutional and unlawful.

Schreiber said the ANC’s cadre deployment committee interferes in appointments in the public sector.

“Today [Monday] marks one of the great victories in South African legal and democratic history. This ruling will ensure transparency by forcing the ANC to reveal how Ramaphosa’s cadre deployment committee laid the foundation for state capture by interfering in public appointment processes.

“It also sets a powerful new precedent that empowers South Africans to use the PAIA to force the ANC to reveal how it interferes in appointments.”

Schreiber said the DA encourages South Africans who have been overlooked for public-sector jobs to use this precedent to force the ANC to reveal how it uses cadre deployment to block skilled applicants from being appointed to favour its chosen cadres.

“The records are set to reveal, once and for all, that Ramaphosa was personally involved in the state capture project in his capacity as cadre deployment chair.

“The state capture commission has already confirmed the ANC deployment committee was a key cog in the machine that corrupted and collapsed the public sector because it was this committee that illegally intervened to ensure the appointment of people who captured the state.

“Thanks to this ruling, the people of South African will get the opportunity to see the full scale of the ANC’s complicity in state capture.”

TimesLIVE