LETTER: Cadre deployment is dead — long live it?

The release last week of the official strategy for professionalising the state (A National Framework Towards the Professionalisation of the Public Sector) has received much positive attention for recommending the ditching of cadre deployment.

This is an unambiguously positive development. The Institute of Race Relations has argued — as have I personally — that renouncing cadre deployment is a not-negotiable condition for SA to have any chance of reconstituting its governance systems.

That cadre deployment deeply embedded in the ANC’s political and ideological thinking made us sceptical that the governing party would even consider dispensing with it. The stout defence of the practice by senior party members, including President Cyril Ramaphosa, suggested strongly that it was here to stay.

It is to the great credit of the cabinet that it has approved this document. But South Africans should remain vigilant.

Cadre deployment has been an assumption in government and a key element of the ANC’s governing strategy since the late 1990s. There is a risk that even with the policy officially rejected in the state, the considerable influence, often informal, of party structures may ensure its de facto continuation.

Like so much else in the country there may be a chasm between what policy promises and how it is delivered. On this issue above all others those concerned with the country’s future dare not allow this.

Terence Corrigan
Institute of Race Relations

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