The 1997 ANC conference in Mahikeng is often remembered for the changing of the guard: Nelson Mandela, after only one term as democratic South Africa’s founding president, handing the reins of power to Thabo Mbeki — who’d been straining at the leash to be number one. But little remarked on is the fact that it’s also where the ANC’s notorious cadre deployment policy, perhaps its most egregious and deleterious decision, was concocted — in effect where the country’s goose was cooked.
Polokwane in 2007 is often regarded as the place where the wheels came off for the country, with Jacob Zuma beating Mbeki for the ANC presidency, setting in train developments that would culminate with what we now understand as state capture. But Polokwane was a sequel.
It was on the rocks of Mahikeng where in 1997 our hopes crashed. It laid the groundwork for what happened in Polokwane and beyond, pointing the country towards the quagmire in which it now finds itself.
The ANC was feeling its oats going to Mahikeng. Three years earlier it had won the first all-race elections in a landslide, achieving the goal it had spent generations fighting for. Being only the second conference since that momentous achievement, the mood was buoyant, triumphant and celebratory. In that giddy atmosphere, the party was ready to take on all comers. It had the power to do anything. Everything had fallen into place.
A year earlier, in May 1996, a new constitution containing everything the party had wished for had been inaugurated by the constitutional assembly. It was on that occasion that Mbeki made his famous “I am an African” speech, thus stealing the thunder from Cyril Ramaphosa who, having been overtaken by Mbeki to be Mandela’s deputy, had immersed himself in drafting that groundbreaking document. FW de Klerk had also played a bit part, reacting to the new constitution by taking his National Party out of the government of national unity. With the Nats gone, the ANC felt less inhibited. It had more room to flex its muscle.
Equality is the central plank of the constitution. The ANC has instead brought back a new form of apartheid under the guise of transformation
The party does not see its role as merely winning elections in order to govern; it sees itself as a movement whose mission was to transform society. Needless to say, so far that transformation agenda has been a spectacular success. It has transformed the country into a sorry mess.
It is an outcome that started with Mahikeng. But cadre deployment was not a decision taken on the spur of the moment. The paper on it prepared for the Mahikeng conference refers to a decision taken at the 1985 ANC conference in Kabwe, Zambia, where the policy was first mooted. The document — which the conference endorsed — called for a policy decision to embark on a deployment strategy to identify and take control of “key centres of power” in order to transform society. Such centres of power would include the public service, parastatals, security services and even the private sector.
We now know for instance that the party even tried to influence the appointment of judges. No sphere of life, it seems, was to be left to chance. The policy also called for the establishment of deployment committees from branch, regional, provincial and national levels to implement the strategy. Then-deputy president Zuma chaired a deployment committee that advised the national executive committee. The broad sweep and the horrendous consequences of this decision received little, if any, attention at the time. Like the state capture phenomenon that it gave rise to, cadre deployment simply sailed under the radar. It’s also no coincidence that it was Zuma who presided over this boondoggle. He of course initiated and benefited from state capture, which has left the country in dire straits.
The Zondo commission declared cadre deployment unlawful and unconstitutional. That’s always been a no-brainer. In fact, the ANC has stolen a leaf out its predecessors’ book. The first thing the Nats did on coming to power was to reserve jobs in the railways, the post office, parastatals and public service for poor Afrikaner workers. Cadre deployment is no different from Verwoerdian job reservation. At least the Nats were looking after their poor; the ANC are taking care of their well-connected and often pampered cadres.
Instead of serving the needs of society as a whole, the state — and its institutions — has principally become an employment and financial bonanza for its officials. Like before, South Africa is divided, with a tiny minority of insiders enjoying all the lucre while the majority can’t get a look-in. Equality is the central plank of the constitution. The ANC has instead brought back a new form of apartheid under the guise of transformation. No wonder Ramaphosa had a hard time trying to explain the deployment policy to the Zondo commission. No-one can honestly argue that cadre deployment is not discriminatory.
But the ANC has found it easier to impose its cadre deployment diktat because of the type of electoral system that we have. The electorate votes for the party, not the individual. Every one of their MPs or public representatives has been reduced to a party deployee. Their allegiance is to the party, not the voter, which tells them what to do, say or how to vote. The ANC can therefore rightfully argue that it is its prerogative to give or withdraw those favours from members who are basically its vassals.
Cadre deployment will go ... it is going. But nothing much will change unless we introduce a type of electoral system that puts the voter right at the centre of our democracy.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.