The Constitutional Court on Monday handed down judgment in favour of the Democratic Alliance (DA) to compel the ANC to make public its cadre deployment records, dating back to 1 January 2013, when President Cyril Ramaphosa became chairman of the deployment committee.
In terms of the judgment, the governing party now has five working days to hand over to the DA all meeting minutes, CVs, email threads, WhatsApp discussions and other relevant documents relating to the cadre deployment committee, dating back more than a decade.
The ruling comes after the ANC had appealed to the Constitutional Court in a last-ditch attempt to protect its documents from the public.
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Earlier judgments handed down by the Gauteng High Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal both declared that the DA had the right to know how the ANC’s cadre deployment committee worked.
Responding to the ConCourt judgement, ANC national spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri said the party will study the ruling to ensure that it is adhered to accordingly.
“The ANC has noted the judgement of the Constitutional Court on cadre deployment which is a practice not exclusive to the ANC both in South Africa and abroad,” she said.
On its parts, the DA insisted that Monday’s ruling will ensure transparency by forcing the ANC to reveal how Ramaphosa’s cadre deployment committee operated.
“It also sets a powerful new precedent that empowers all South Africans to use the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) to force the ANC to reveal how it interferes in appointments.
“The DA encourages any South African who has been overlooked for a public sector job to use this precedent to force the ANC to reveal how it uses cadre deployment to block skilled applicants from being appointed in order to favour its chosen cadres,” it said.
Furthermore, the DA noted that it keenly awaits the outcome of a separate application in the Gauteng High Court to declare cadre deployment unconstitutional and unlawful.
