DAVID LEWIS: Cadre deployment debate generating more heat than light

The angry denunciation of the practice of “cadre deployment” — allegedly an ANC invention — by outraged opposition politicians and the media has generated more heat than light.

Frankly, it is a gigantic red herring. That is, of course, if the objective of the breast-beating is to overcome the problem of inappropriate appointments to senior positions in the public service. 

The problem is not who nominates candidates for high public office. Quite the contrary, interested organisations — including business organisations, unions, civil society organisations and, yes, political parties — should be encouraged to seek out and nominate candidates for public office. These are precisely the sorts of organisations that one would expect to encounter people willing and able to lead our public service.    

Their nominations should be treated seriously. Indeed, the candidates nominated by the governing political party should be given particularly close consideration. After all, one should be able to presume that the candidates nominated by the governing party would be broadly supportive of the mandate of the government of the day. Securing the appointment of senior public servants who support the broad mandate of the governing party is the prerogative of a government that has legitimately acquired political authority. 

What does matter a great deal is how the nominees are assessed and how and by whom the decision to actually appoint candidates is taken. If there is one anticorruption measure that is broadly agreed upon it is that the processes whereby senior public officials are appointed requires urgent review and reform.

It is widely held that the principal instrument that enabled the Zuma administration’s state capture project was cadre deployment. However, it was the absence of acceptable appointment procedures that landed us with Moyane leading the SA Revenue Service, Molefe and Singh at Transnet and Eskom, and Abrahams at the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), thus enabling the state to be so easily captured. 

The political parties and other interest groups that are persistently, and, for the most part justifiably, aggrieved at the quality of those who lead government departments, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and other public entities would have done their cause far more justice had they focused on devising and advocating for effective appointment mechanisms and, where necessary, getting them through parliament, rather than preoccupying themselves with expressions of outrage at the quality of candidates deployed by the ANC.

Unrestrained by acceptable appointment procedures, what political party would resist the temptation to use this powerful instrument as a source of patronage? Not the ANC. Nor, it seems, any of the opposition parties.

Yet devising appropriate appointment mechanisms is not rocket science. Most people eligible to serve in the positions in question will have gone through similar procedures in the course of their careers. A position is advertised outlining the job specification and qualifying criteria, sometimes a headhunter comes knocking; an application is made accompanied by a CV; a shortlist is drawn up; the selection committee conducts interviews; an appointment is made.

In the case of a public sector appointment the long and shortlists should be made public, as should the CVs of the shortlisted candidates, the veracity of which must be established. In the case of some appointments it may be appropriate for the interviews to be observable by the public. 

The composition of the selection committee is of paramount importance. Senior human resource professionals should be appointed to a pool from which the core of the selection committees should be constituted. Framing revealing questions to job interviewees, deconstructing their answers and interpreting their body language are core competencies of experienced human resource professionals. 

The core of human resource professionals on a selection committee should be complemented by experts in the subject matter of the position being filled. For example, when appointing the CEO of Transnet you would want to have someone experienced in the management of large rail and port logistics companies involved in the selection. And you would want a number of board members on the committee. You wouldn’t want a representative of the shareholder ministry on the selection committee lest you give the ultimate appointee the impression that the appointee is accountable to the shareholder rather than to the board. 

For the same reason, when appointing second-tier executive management — for example the CFO — you would have the CEO on the selection committee but not have the committee dominated by board members or, worse, ministerial representatives, lest the newly appointed CFO conclude that she is accountable to the board or the ministry rather than the CEO. 

There are a few other basic rules that should be followed when making senior public service appointments. I’ll mention three:

• Above all, the selection committee must be charged with making a merit-based appointment. I don’t believe this is incompatible with race and gender transformation of our executive suites. Quite the contrary — we would have more competent black and women executives applying for senior public service positions if it became clear that merit was the principal criterion for selection. This applies as much to the appointment of lawyers to senior positions in the NPA as it does to senior appointments at SOEs. 
• A strict ceiling must be placed on the duration of acting appointments. There are more actors in the SA public sector than there are in Hollywood. For a variety of obvious reasons acting appointees lack the authority necessary to command a senior executive appointment. Imposing a ceiling would support appointments to senior positions being made expeditiously. Taking a year or longer to make an appointment demonstrates a lack of regard for the institution and for the office being filled. 
• Finally, avoid parliament. Parliamentarians have demonstrated time and again that their primary consideration in making key appointments is patronage. Parliament may one day earn a place in the process of appointment, but right now its extreme partisanship and venality means it should be shunned like the plague when it comes to making senior appointments. 

What is complicated about this? Only our political culture, which has bred a corrupt and incompetent governing party, one that would destroy the state rather than lose an opportunity for patronage. It has given birth to opposition parties that would rather take cheap shots at the governing party and grandstand in court than do the hard graft of trawling through the plethora of legislation governing senior public service appointments and advocating for effective appointment procedures. 

If effective appointment procedures were in place the ANC would find that candidates who were nominated for no reason other than their fealty to some or other party grandee would not be appointed, thus compelling the governing party to search for nominees of skill and integrity. 

To be fair, President Cyril Ramaphosa demonstrated his support for appropriate selection procedures when he eschewed his power to use his sole discretion to appoint the head of the NPA and rather appointed a selection committee to undertake the task. But this needs to be provided for in the legislation governing our law enforcement agencies, public entities and government departments.

• Lewis, a former trade unionist, academic, policymaker, regulator and company board member, was a co-founder and director of Corruption Watch.