Cadre deployment not what it was
WHEN South African Native National Congress was founded on January 8 1912, to become the African National Congress (ANC) 11 years later, its vision was twofold: first, to unite all Africans in a single organisation, and second, to increase the limited rights of Africans. It failed the first, and succeeded spectacularly with the second. Eighteen years into what it calls the national democratic revolution, how has that vision changed, what has it become?
This is why the 54 pages of recommendations from the ANC’s fourth national policy conference take on particular importance. The party is especially seized with its need, as it sees it, to control all the levers of power, and that includes those that affect the economy.
The ANC concedes that its policy of cadre deployment has failed — though it can’t bring itself to say quite that. But the principle underlying its cadre policy remains central to its attempt to ensure its continual rebirth as the country’s natural and only government.
So, the next 10 years will be the Decade of the Cadre. And the next generation of cadres will be better than the originals because they will have “attributes that accord with the tasks of the national democratic revolution in the second phase”. They will be subjected to “systematic aca-
the demic, ideological, and ethical training and political preparation” and will be underpinned by “a rigorous system of monitoring and evaluation of performance”.
You can see what this portends. ANC cadres are meant to infiltrate every aspect of society, not merely the public service. If the party has its way, its cadres will be found in every walk of life, including the shrinking private sector. The boundaries between society and the ruling party will become so blurred they will merge. SA will become a seamless copy of the Soviet Union, and we all know what happened to that after time and kilometres of pain.
I wonder, though, if the architects of this James Barrie Neverland took account of two factors. The first, and probably least important, is the National Planning Commission. It has told the government and the ruling party that the role of the Public Service Commission must be strengthened in the recruiting of senior officials; a hybrid approach to top appointments must be adopted to reconcile what is needed administratively and what the politicos want; a public service head must be established to manage the career progression of departmental heads; and senior officials must have “full authority” to appoint their staff.
That’s a middle finger to cadre deployment. But the commission is toothless so it will be ignored.
The second factor is the Municipal Systems Amendment Act (7 of 2011) which prevents cadres from holding senior management jobs in municipalities. It goes further — it bars the employment of senior municipal managers who can’t demonstrate they have the basic skills, and their appointments have to be submitted to the co-operative governance minister. The act took effect on July 8 last year.
Now that really is a middle finger. If the Decade of the Cadre is to be implemented the way the authors of Neverland imagine, then this will have to be repealed.
There’s a lot more in the recommendations about which to get miserable. Since I’ve started, let me make your day. No more “media sensationalism”. It must be “tempered with concrete examples of government at work delivering services”.
Rental boards must be reintroduced “to regulate rental amounts particularly”. You can imagine what that will do to the property sector. Oh yes, and the state must intervene in the housing “finance value chain so as to improve access to finance by poor and working class households”. What does that sound like? Does “subprime” ring any bells?
Helen Zille and the Democratic Alliance (DA) are a pain. So “provinces (are to be) reformed, reduced and strengthened.”. That means two things. Efforts will be made to rejig the Western Cape to ensure the DA can’t win — though given the inroads it is claiming in the Northern Cape and Eastern Cape that may be wishful thinking. And a strengthened provincial structure goes against the ANC’s traditional predilection for centralisation. Fireworks if this is carried through.
By the way, the make-up of the Cabinet makes interesting reading. Ten of its 36 members are or were members of the Communist Party; another 17 are of a pinkish hue; nine might be centre or centre-right. Ask yourself why a party that has never fought an election nevertheless occupies nearly a third of the seats at the Cabinet table.
E-mail: david@gleason.co.za Twitter: @TheTorqueColumn