‘Certain individuals must go’: ANC stalwart slams cadre deployment policy

Outspoken ANC stalwart Mavuso Msimang has expressed abhorrence at the party’s cadre deployment policy, saying it has proven to be a disaster and promotes incompetency and tender corruption.

He said the best option was a system in which skilled civil servants were accountable to the state instead of the party.

In an interview with Ann Bernstein, executive director of the Centre for Enterprise Development, Msimang, a former member of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) high command and the famous MK Luthuli Detachment, said cadre deployment created many problems, including promoting tenderpreneurship.

Tenderpreneurs is a term coined to describe party loyalists who are offered government contracts despite often not being skilled or resourced adequately to deliver.

They are often part of corrupt patronage networks that steal public funds via tenders.

Msimang, now chair of Corruption Watch, said cadre deployment came about because the ANC had no money and as a result it decided to hand out patronage.

This encouraged corruption. But he stressed that, initially, the approach was well intended.

“The first tier was good because they had good political backgrounds and could not be pushed around by their ministers,” he said.

But he added that it was demoralising for people that there were still senior leaders in the ANC national executive committee and Cabinet that had been implicated in corruption and had not been arrested, tried and jailed.

He said that while this could be explained by the fact that the entire criminal justice system was hollowed out during Zuma’s “nine wasted years”, there were still factors that made people wonder if the ANC was serious about fighting corruption.

Msimang expressed concern about the sense of impunity at the highest level. In an apparent reference to
suspended ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule and others, he said the ANC should not tolerate people who violated their conditions of suspension and that those who supported those individuals undermined the party.

“Sooner or later the [ANC’s integrity] commission should determine that certain individual should not be in the ANC,” he said.

– ericn@citizen.co.za