The DA is trying to have cadre deployment declared unlawful. Cyril Ramaphosa says it shouldn’t happen. And I agree with both of them.
The showdown began when chief justice Raymond Zondo delivered his withering indictment of cadre deployment a month ago, declaring the policy unlawful and unconstitutional. The DA reacted quickly, putting together a court application to have Zondo’s opinion codified into law.
Ramaphosa and his government, however, have made it clear they will oppose the application, which brings us to the current moment, and my split loyalties.
To be clear, I believe cadre deployment is to governance and democracy what repeated blows to the head with a mallet are to being a rocket scientist. Jacob Zuma is remembered as the wrecker-in-chief, but there’s a strong argument to be made that it was Thabo Mbeki who first crippled everything Zuma eventually broke, by making it virtually illegal for municipalities and state-run enterprises to employ competent people.
The scope of the disaster, however, is what gives me pause about the DA’s plan.
The whole reason cadre deployment is such a train wreck, we all know, is because it’s wormed its way into every corner of every municipality in every province except the Western Cape. The cadres are everywhere.
If the DA were to get its way, however, and cadre deployment were to be declared illegal, it would surely require vast numbers of civil servants to be suspended on full pay, pending an investigation into whether they had been politically appointed.
I know what you’re thinking. Our bureaucracy doesn’t work anyway, so what’s the difference?
The difference, I suspect, is that, while I agree with you that a great many cadres are not working at all, they are, at the very least, still clocking in to sit at their desks and to stare resentfully at the junior cadres.
This then causes those junior cadres to sit at their own desks for slightly longer every day, which fractionally increases the chances of them listlessly reaching for the top of their IN-tray, which fractionally increases the chances of the public being served.
The difference, I suspect, is that, while I agree with you that a great many cadres are not working at all, they are, at the very least, still clocking in to sit at their desks and to stare resentfully at the junior cadres.
Repeat this phenomenon across every municipality beyond the Western Cape and you’ll see that, at least in theory, the mere presence of a senior deployed cadre means there’s a small chance that at least a few dozen South Africans will be served by the civil service every year.
Order those senior cadres to stay at home, however, and all you’ve done is take rank incompetence, moving at glacial speed, and replace it with inexperienced incompetence moving nowhere at all.
Of course, the DA is right. Cadre deployment is a crime against the people of SA, and should be criminalised. But without extremely gradual implementation and watertight planning, it’s also a one-way ticket to total collapse.
In fact, in some ways, it’s a little bit like the mythical tax boycott that gatvol citizens keep suggesting; a proposal that feels morally and politically sensible, until you start thinking through the practical ramifications: stop paying taxes and the first thing that dries up are the social grants, at which point the food riots start, at which point a state of emergency is declared, after which elections are postponed, civil liberties suspended, and in two years the country is in a far worse place than it was when the well-intentioned boycott began.
Luckily for all of us, we won’t have to choose a side right now. The DA will be ignored. And then, either in 2024 or 2029, the ANC will be voted out of power. And South Africans, blessed with far too much bitter experience, can tell the new regime exactly where they can shove their cadres.
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