Public Service and Administration Deputy Minister Chana Pilane-Majake has dismissed suggestions that there was cadre deployment in the public service.
“The public service does not have anything called cadre deployment. It is something that is an assumption meant for political point scoring to actually make the department and probably the leading organisation in government look bad,” Pilane-Majake said.
She was responding during an oral question session in the National Assembly when EFF MP Catherine Motsepe suggested that the ANC’s cadre deployment meant employment of black people regardless of their qualifications.
Asked what plans her department has put in place to limit political interference in the appointment of directors-general and their deputies to allow them not to worry about their political principals, Pilane-Majake said she had explained earlier clearly how employment was actually carried out in the public service.
The deputy minister was asked earlier if she found that the influence by the ANC deployment committee on the appointment of persons in the public service undermined the vision of her department of establishing a professional, productive and responsive public service.
She had gone at length to explain the legal prescripts followed in the appointments.
“The intention of recruitment is to ensure a transparent, fair and competitive process is followed to appoint the most suitable candidates who are fit and proper for advertised posts,” she said.
However, DA MP Mimmy Gondwe said the ANC cadre deployment committee had in January 2020 at St George’s Hotel directly interfered in the appointment of her department’s director-general and the principal of the School of Government.
“Given that your department is directly tasked with the responsibility to create ethical and non-political public service, is it appropriate for a minister to take instructions from a political party on who to appoint in the department?” Gondwe asked.
Pilane-Majake stood her ground, saying she earlier demonstrated processes in terms of appointments based on fair and non-discriminatory processes that were supported by legislation.
“I just read a number of pieces of legislation, including public service rules that are supposed to be adhered to in the appointment of personnel in the public service,“ she said.
But, NFP MP Munzoor Shaik Emam said all political parties whenever they governed employed their own people.
Shaik Emam also said President Cyril Ramaphosa had admitted to the Zondo Commission that the cadre deployment committee existed and people were appointed on its recommendations and that he could not do anything about it.
He then asked about measures to ensure there were independent bodies responsible for appointment and deployment all over the country in all spheres of government.
In her response, Pilane-Majake said the public service was an area meant to ensure that there was effective and efficient service delivery across government to the people of South Africa.
“Ourselves as the executive and as the leading party in SA, we take this very seriously because of the constitutional democracy that we work in. We will always remember that we are supposed to be guided by legislation and in whatever we do, we adhere to the prescripts,” she said.
mayibongwe.maqhina@inl.co.za
POLITICAL BUREAU