LETTER: Who’s fooling who?
Cadre deployment by other names is common in politics and business
There is an expressive word in Afrikaans, skeinheilig, loosely translated as “holier than thou”, which comes to mind when listening to some of the discussions at the Zondo inquiry into state capture concerning cadre deployment.
The word captures the attitude of other political parties, including the DA, which say they do not indulge in this practice. Nonsense. They all do, and so do political parties the world over. One can debate the quality of deployed cadres, but not the fact of its use in practice.
And so does the private sector. Any CEO gathers about him or herself a team that is trusted and often already personally known, notwithstanding that there may (sometimes) have been an apparently open recruitment process.
Anthony Still
Johannesburg
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