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State/party separation not the aimRecent reports suggesting that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is moving toward a greater separation between state and party in respect of its cadre deployment in the civil service, have been based on wrong interpretations of apparently conflicting statements by people in leadership positions.
If anything, the ANC aims to strengthen its grip on the public service.
Through strengthened, centralised control, the ANC hopes to improve the quality and integrity of deployed ANC cadres in order to better service delivery and root out corruption, self-enrichment and the promotion of factional or group interests.
At the same time, it should serve to strengthen the position of the ANC as the strategic centre of power.
What has come under attack within the ANC itself is the abuse of, wrongful application of, or bypassing of the ANC’s system of cadre deployment.
In a report to the ANC national executive committee (NEC) last weekend, ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe said the party's deployment policy was being attacked "for the wrong reasons" because "mistakes committed by our structures in deploying cadres have opened the movement to criticism".
Among others, ANC President Jacob Zuma also recently made similar remarks. These remarks caused many observers to assume incorrectly that the ANC wants to end the system of political cadre deployment in the public service.
Here is what Mantashe said:
In his report presented to a meeting of the ANC’s NEC last weekend, Mantashe warned that greed was engulfing an ANC beset with factionalism and lobbying for positions.
He further warned that the influence of money was changing the character of the ANC from a people-driven movement to one where power is wielded by a narrow circle of those who own and/or control resources.
In his report, Mantashe indicated that ANC recruitment was driven by narrow interests, the membership system was dysfunctional, gatekeeping was being practised in recruitment, lobbying and factionalism was rife, and more, and said the NEC had to be seen to lead a “normalisation process”.
Mantashe said that guidelines on lobbying proposed last year by the NEC had to be used for the ANC “to be liberated from being held hostage by strong lobby groups and factions.”
The ANC has a duty “to ensure that when a cadre is deployed, he/she meets the requirements of the post concerned by balancing political integrity and professional competence”, adding that “as long as deployment is based on the principle of political integrity and professional competence, there should be no problem.”
"If we ever drift into making deployment an exercise that seeks to make professional work representative of group interests, seeds of disaster are sown," he added.
"Many of our ministers continue to make senior appointments without even checking and balancing their ideas with the deployment committee.”
He proposed that the curriculum of the Public Administration and Leadership Academy, a government training body for the civil service, should include "the political and the philosophical content of the development agenda of the ruling party" to minimise tension between ministers and directors-general.
Mantashe also made it clear that the ANC deployment committees would decide “the deployment of premiers and replacement of mayors” in terms of a national conference resolution and that its alliance partners could not take over this function, but could only “participate in and influence ANC deployment committees."
He further cautioned those at provincial and municipal level against sidelining alliance partners when making such appointments.
Zuma said:
“We need to develop a new public sector cadre. There are those placed in positions of responsibility that do nothing to address the concerns of the people they are meant to serve, either through incapacity or unwillingness. Where people are found to be incapable of performing the tasks assigned to them, we must work with speed to either capacitate such people or replace them with more capable people. We have to study our public service regulations and ensure that they enable, and not hinder us in our drive to achieve these goals. The ANC, working together with our allies, will engage public sector trade unions and clarify our respective roles in building a new public sector cadre for a democratic developmental state;"
“One of the challenges in local government is the confusion between political and administrative roles. We are of the firm view that municipal employees should not hold leadership positions in political parties;”
“The ANC will continue to take firm action against ill discipline, corruption, incompetence and abuse of power in its ranks. In particular, we will be consistent and firm in acting against abuse of leadership positions for personal gain or factionalism. We will also manage the deployment and redeployment of cadres in a more objective and transparent fashion through our internal monitoring and evaluation processes;”
Zuma has repeatedly defended cadre deployment by the ANC as a democratic policy that “does not retard” the separation of party and state. Under Zuma’s leadership, thousands of ANC cadres have been deployed to every level of the public service and to every kind of body or organ, and have advanced the politicisation of independent institutions such as the Public Protector, ambiguously arguing that “no party would be able to abuse its power because the Constitution and these institutions are there as watchdogs in order to ensure that nothing goes wrong.”
What does all this mean?
The is ANC is simply saying that it wants to end corrupt and abused cadre deployment at local level and control it from the national level instead, so that it can oversee the “transparent” deployment of supposedly better quality, more service-orientated ANC cadres who are not merely trying to further their own interests or those of a particular group or faction;
The ANC wants to end the current practice – particularly at local government level – whereby people in leadership positions in the party are also appointed to key positions in the public service, again particularly in municipalities, as they often are incompetent for the position and abuse their leadership positions to secure these appointments in order to promote self-serving, factional and group interests rather than those of the broader public they should be serving. That is what Mantashe means when he says the ANC must ensure that only cadres who meet the requirements of a particular post by balancing political integrity and professional competence, are deployed;
The ANC’s top leadership also wants Cabinet ministers to adhere to ANC cadre deployment policy and procedures to lessen factionalism and “empire-building” by having their candidates for departmental posts screened and approved. This refers to recent factional power struggles in the ANC and the government around appointments such as those of CEOs in Transnet, Armscor and Eskom;
The ANC wants to centrally control all appointments to the public service and extend its own political culture and policy orientation throughout the public sector through cadre deployment and political education.
The recent statements and moves should be read together with the resolution adopted by the ANC at its 52nd national conference in Polokwane in December 2007, to create a single, centrally controlled and ANC-led public service for all spheres of government – a move that currently is gaining rapid momentum.
In the same vein, the ANC is pursuing the creation of a single police service for the entire country, a single courts system for the judiciary, and the possible scrapping of provinces. It even seeks to achieve this centralisation in the economic sphere by now also wanting to extend its political control to the South African Reserve Bank, which it sees as a key instrument for making and enforcing policy.
The ANC’s intentions are quite clear from the various resolutions adopted by the party at its Polokwane conference, where it “affirmed that the ANC remains the key strategic centre of power, which must exercise leadership over the state and society in pursuit of the objectives of the national democratic revolution”.
In essence, this again confirms the long-held view that the ANC has of itself as a “broad church movement of the people”. It views itself as custodian of the state, its institutions and powers on behalf of all the people of the country and all interest groups and factions, and therefore sees no conflict in the political convergence between the party and the state.
It merely seeks to improve the application and control thereof in order to improve service delivery and thereby strengthen its own position.
