Deputy Minister of Public Service and Administration Chana Pilane-Majake has denied that government was employing people based on their membership of the African National Congress (ANC).
She said proper selection processes were used when government was filling positions across the state.
Pilane-Majake, who was replying to members’ statements in Parliament on Tuesday, accusing the Democratic Alliance (DA) of trying to score cheap political over the cadre deployment policy of the ANC.
She said parliament has in the last two weeks passed two Bills that will deal with the professionalizing the public service.
President Cyril Ramaphosa raised this issue in his weekly newsletter on Monday that the new bills would foster the professionalisation of the public service.
The ANC and DA have over the last few weeks been at loggerheads over the records of the deployment committee when it was chaired by Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa began chairing the committee after he was elected deputy president of the ANC at the Mangaung conference in 2012. He stepped down after he was elected president of the ruling party at the Nasrec conference in 2017.
The DA has said the ANC has not given it full records of the deployment committee when Ramaphosa chaired it and wants the court to hold the party in contempt of the Constitutional Court’s order.
Pilane-Majake said the DA has been making a lot of noise over cadre deployment.
“It’s just a lot of noise that is meant to have political mileage. Regardless the fact that we have actually in the last two weeks passed the Bills of Parliament that properly take care of situations of this nature that have to do with deployment, deployments that might lead to the ruling party and I am not (saying) the ruling party as the ANC, whichever ruling party, to make it impossible for any ruling party to just deploy willy-nilly into senior management positions their cadres.
“There are two bills that have been passed, the Public Administration Management Amendment Bill and the Public Service Bill that take care of this and this is linked to the professionalisation of the public service framework that has been adopted by Cabinet, that is turned into public service policy directives,” said Pilane-Majaake.
“The DA should desist from continuing to make a lot of noise on an issue that is getting enough and proper attention from government and the impression, to all South Africans listening, shouldn’t be created that government employs people who belong to only the ANC.
“The public service regulations are there for proper recruitment, selection and appointment of public servants. Nobody is ever requested to bring any political party membership to interviews in order for them to be appointed.”
The DA has said it will continue to fight against cadre deployment as it has led to the collapse of the state and service delivery.
The ANC has said this policy was not unique to South Africa as many countries in the world practice it.
The ANC said the DA was also using cadre deployment in the Western Cape and municipalities where it governs in the country.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
IOL Politics