LETTER: Half the picture

David Lewis calls out the denunciation of cadre deployment by outraged opposition politicians in his most recent column (“Cadre deployment debate generating more heat than light”, March 27).

All well and good, but Lewis paints only half the picture. First, it’s not the mere nomination of cadres that the DA and other parties condemn, it’s the instruction to employ cadre X by a hidden committee of ANC power brokers, an instruction that renders futile any proper selection procedure at the enterprise level.

Second, the DA, for one, does not rest its case with the rejection of cadre deployment, but — crucially — also rejects prescribed ethnic composition in appointments. The default position of the ANC is to interpret as mandatory the constitutional injunction that employment broadly reflect our demography.

On this interpretation, I submit that we will seldom achieve the merit-based appointments Lewis posits. If members of minority groups are required by the dictates of demography to forever play in the margins, we have little means of comparison by which to assess merit. If, however, the constitution were interpreted not as mandatory but as exhortative, minorities would be in the game.

In fact, the ANC does at times depart from the mandatory interpretation — witness its appointment of André de Ruyter at Eskom. Any party that both condemns cadre enforcement (as opposed to nomination) and insists on a non-ethnic, merit-based shortlist process (with the constitutionally required demographic bias only introduced ex-post) is worthy of support.

Willem Cronje
Cape Town

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