Johannesburg - President Cyril Ramaphosa has to account for his role in the deployment of many questionable officials, who had been at the helm of state-owned companies during his stint as former president Jacob Zuma’s deputy in the ANC between 2013 and 2017.
This is according to DA leader John Steenhuisen, as the official opposition drums up its campaign against the ANC’s cadre deployment committee, which is chaired by the party’s deputy president.
“President Cyril Ramaphosa was for many years the chairperson of the ANC’s cadre deployment committee and had been responsible for a lot of the people that had gone on to serve on SA state-owned enterprises, and boards, the Hlaudi Motsoenengs, the Brian Molefes … all of them have gone through the deployment committee,” Steenhuisen said on Wednesday.
Steenhuisen said Ramaphosa could not always express shock at revelations of state capture without taking some accountability.
This comes as the DA is taking its opposition to the ANC's cadre deployment policy to the Commission of Inquiry into state capture, as it is pushes the inquiry to grill Ramaphosa about it when he takes the stand this year.
The DA on Tuesday prepared a list of questions which it called on Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo and the commission’s legal team to put to Ramaphosa.
Steenhuisen added that the president must explain why the governing party was still implementing the policy, which he said aided state capture through ensuring that state institutions were staffed by officials loyal to the ANC.
He blasted the policy as being unconstitutional as it favoured individual employees based on their political allegiance.
He said the country’s problems could continue if the commission failed to address the ANC’s cadre deployment policy, and how it helped cause state capture.
“The list of state capture scandals revealed by the Zondo commission extends far beyond the Guptas, but never beyond the ANC. The ANC is the common denominator in all state capture scandals because it is the ANC that captured the state, not the Guptas,” Steenhuisen said.
Steenhuisen said Ramaphosa had to be grilled about his role as the head of the ANC’s cadre deployment committee between 2013 and 2017.
ANC national spokesperson Pule Mabe and the party’s head of presidency Sibongile Besani could not be reached by the time of publication.
Ramaphosa had previously defended the ANC’s cadre deployment policy but stressed that competent people who were fit for purpose had to be deployed.
The governing party was drawn into controversy last year when a memorandum with its letterhead, and addressed to ministers, pointed out that all deployments of director-generals, chairpersons, chief executives and those on boards of state-owned companies had to be first run through the office of the party’s deputy general secretary.
The ANC, however, distanced itself from the memorandum, which received criticism from opposition parties.
Political Bureau