Ramaphosa questioned on ANC cadre deployment committee

Wednesday (August 11) saw Cyril Ramaphosa appear before the Zondo Commission of Inquiry to give evidence on state capture in his capacity as president and former deputy president of the Republic of South Africa.

He previously gave evidence in his capacity as president of the ANC (on April 28 and 29).

Previous discussion on cadre deployment

Evidence leader Paul Pretorius gave an overview of what had previously been discussed with Ramaphosa before the commission.

There is a hard and a soft definition in regard to the deployment committee. The hard definition is that the committee instructs and commands in relation to appointments. The soft definition is that it merely makes a recommendation to the appointing authority or entity, and no more.

Pretorius said they had also discussed other forms of appointment:

• Those where the deployment committee imposed its will on the appointing authority, simply by the exercise of its leadership.

• And those where there is no intervention by the deployment committee at all, for example where the previous president, and even Ramaphosa, had made an appointment.

Pretorius put it to Ramaphosa that the soft definition of deployment is not borne out by the facts.

He added that strong evidence has been led before the commission that the deployment committee commands and instructs and at times makes the relevant appointments.

Pretorius said that deployment committee minutes would have represented a “contemporaneous decision” that the deployment committee made in any particular period.

However, the commission was told that there are no deployment committee minutes for the years 2012 to 2017.

Pretorius asked Ramaphosa if these minutes had been lost or destroyed, or whether minutes were not kept.

Ramaphosa carefully considered this and said that he did not recall having gone through the minutes of previous meetings when he was chair of the committee.

He said the deployment committee was an organisation always “on the go”, and dealing with “so many issues”, and that this was merely “an unfortunate record-keeping process”.

“We always dealt with the issues at hand,” he said.

“The ANC had so many committee meetings, one after the other …”

Pretorius finds it improbable that minutes were not kept. 

Further dissection of cadre deployment

Pretorius put the following suppositions to Ramaphosa, and asked for his comments:

• The deployment committee prescribes and instructs.

• The appointing authority recommends, and the deployment committee makes the decision, and this is the predominant way the deployment committee goes about its work.

• On many occasions ministers come to the deployment committee to seek permission to proceed with the appointment process.

• Ministers are called to account by the deployment committee when they present names to fill vacancies without having been supervised or directed by the committee.

• There are several occasions where loyalty to the party, party membership, and compliance with party prescripts is relevant to the appointment.

• Ministers’ recommendations are sometimes sent back to the deployment committee for refinement.

• Occasionally the deployment committee would insist that it is notified even before the placement of an advert for a position.

Ramaphosa said it is “sad that the hard definition of the deployment committee is what has always prevailed”. But at the end there is a “safety process” and the “legally mandated governance process must be followed”.

Ramaphosa explained that the committee is elected to institute a particular mandate, and “we appoint people to synchronise that mandate”.

“They will have independence to execute actions, but within a broad mandate,” he said.

Commission chair Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo said it seems to him that the real decisions are taken by the party, and asked what the principle is in regard to the deployment committee.

Ramaphosa answered in a roundabout way: “Our democracy is such that the political party is the vehicle through which the people support the party. The party plays a key role, but it is just one of the actors in our democracy. It is not the only actor.”

He then tried to explain that the party will take a stand where there is no gender balance in an appointment, and will not agree to that appointment. As well as where there is no demographic balance, or where youth need to be appointed. “The party plays an important role and is the standard bearer of the values that we wish to see in society.”

Transparency

Pretorius referred to a meeting of the deployment committee on March 22, 2019, regarding vacancies in the judiciary.

The deployment committee recommended two justices to fill vacancies in the Constitutional Court, and recommended a judge to fill a position in the Supreme Court of Appeal, and in other capacities as well, including that of deputy judge president.

Pretorius asked Ramaphosa what the committee is doing recommending appointments to the judiciary, saying: “This must have been intended to influence the committee.”

This set Ramaphosa off into a paroxysm of laughter. Still laughing, he explained that at best the deployment committee knows it can only recommend, it cannot appoint. More laughter.

Settling down, Ramaphosa, straight-faced, said: “It could never ever have a judge appointed … we need to have a gender balance … we need to have a demographic balance …”

Ramaphosa distinguished between influence and appointment, saying “in the end the ANC deployment committee is not the appointing structure”.

Zondo suggested that if the party or the deployment committee wants to influence the appointment of certain people within government, it should do so transparently, so that everyone knows.

Zondo said the influence of the deployment committee can be quite weighty on the members of the Judicial Service Commission, who are ANC members of parliament, and they would not want to go against such an important structure of the ANC.

Ramaphosa did finally concede that the idea of transparency appealed to him.

In reply to Ramaphosa’s generalisation of international norms of dominant political parties making key appointments, Pretorius replied that South Africa’s Constitution demands the highest standards, even when compared with international standards.

Discipline and accountability

Pretorius referred to instances of corruption within the ranks of the party, and that the ANC was to identify the areas where the party has done its homework, and where it did not do the things it should have. This is necessary to see what should be put in place in the future, he said.

Pretorius said the commission has called for ANC records of disciplinary procedures. There is no record of any ANC member being disciplined in relation to corruption.

Despite the prevalence of corruption since the 1990s, the party has not found anyone guilty of corruption.

Ramaphosa said the ANC has drawn a line in the sand. The ANC is renewing itself, and corruption will be dealt with.