Cadre deployment the root cause of SA woes

THERE is a commonly held misconception that the idea of state capture is something that began and ended with Zuma and the Guptas, and that this chapter is now behind us.

But that is entirely wrong. The Guptas did not capture the state through Zuma and his allies in the ANC. The capturing part had happened a long time ago. What the Guptas did was simply loot this captured state with the help of a weak and greedy president.

They were simply opportunists who spotted a gap to siphon money off state contracts, and in Zuma they found their useful inside man – a crooked security guard who would let them into the vault.

None of that would have been possible had the state not already been captured by the ANC. And that project had started all the way back in 1997, at the party’s Mafikeng Conference where the policy of cadre deployment was officially adopted.

Cadre deployment does not even try to disguise its objectives. It states upfront that the aim is to extend ANC control over all levers of power in the state.

This includes the civil service, all state-owned entities, the Reserve Bank, the NPA and Sars, the electoral commission, as well as chapter nine institutions such as the public protector and the human rights commission.

Shortly after adopting this policy, the ANC even boasted about its power to transform the judiciary and the Office of the Auditor-General without constitutional changes.

With no hint of shame or recognition of wrongdoing, the ANC freely admitted that this was a project intended to subvert the essential democratic principle of the separation of party and state.

It has been allowed to continue, unabated, for the past 30 years, resulting in virtually every problem we face today.

Because the only criteria for deployment is loyalty to the party, our state has been completely hollowed out and is today just an empty husk of ANC yes-men and women.

Cadre deployment has entrenched a culture of impunity, as those who fail at their jobs or who are caught stealing from the public are simply redeployed elsewhere, as with former Mayor of eThekwini Zandile Gumede, and the disgraced former Amathole Municipal Manager Mr Thandekile Mnyimba, who had no qualifications. THULANI DASA | DA Activist, Khayelitsha