Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe has accused the Democratic Alliance (DA) of racism and said the party was obsessed about cadre deployment policy of the African National Congress.
He said the DA must end its obsession with cadre deployment as it was not serving any purpose.
Mantashe said when he was working in the mines, the director-general (DG) in the department of energy back then was a white man with Matric as his highest qualification.
The minister was participating in the debate in Parliament on Thursday during the adoption of the Electricity Regulation Amendment Bill, that will reform the electricity market when the issue of cadre deployment was raised.
The ANC and the DA have been attacking each other over cadre deployment with the ruling party saying the DA was practicing cadre deployment in the Western Cape and municipalities where it was in charge.
The ANC said the DA cannot claim to be innocent on this issue.
Ministers and senior leaders of the ANC have said cadre deployment was practiced all over the world.
Mantashe said the DA must stop its obsession with cadre deployment.
“I think the DA must get rid of the obsession about cadre deployment Let me tell why? Because when I joined mining my DG was a white male having Matric as the highest qualification.
“But in the eyes of the DA that was competence. I am sitting with a DG now who is an engineer and MBA. In the eyes of the DA that engineer DG is cadre deployment, Don’t be obsessed,” said Mantashe.
He said during apartheid Eskom supplied electricity to only a section of the population in South Africa.
When the ANC took over in 1994 it electrified communities that were excluded by the apartheid regime.
“You had an entity that supplied 34% of citizens, mainly white citizens. Today, that 93% of citizens of the country have access to electricity and blacks is cadre deployment.
“Please get rid of the obsession. It is racist actually. That obsession is racist,” said Mantashe.
He said the focus must be on other things.
The debate over cadre deployment gained momentum when the DA won its case in the Constitutional Court that the ANC must hand over records of the deployment committee when it was chaired by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa chaired the deployment after he became deputy president of the ANC at the Mangaung conference in December 2012. He stepped down in 2017 when he was elected president of the ruling party and David Mabuza became his deputy.
But the DA said the ANC has failed to give it records of the committee during that period and has gone to court to seek a contempt order against the ANC.
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