Andile Mngxitama
The DA has just won a High Court decision, basically against cadre deployment. The ruling party is now expected to reveal internal party processes to put its trusted cadres in the public service.
This is in a quest to “depoliticise” the public service.
Ending cadre deployment is unfair to the ruling party and robs society of a lever to hold accountable those it votes into power. How do they hold a minister accountable for lack of performance when they have no say on who should be their advisers and director-generals?
Senior public servants must necessarily be ruling party deployees and in this way the voter is justifiably able to demand results from the ruling party. Senior public servants help to implement ruling party policies. Imagine a pro-DA director-general in the Department of Land Affairs.
Such a senior public servant shall block any moves to implement a radical policy such as land expropriation.
The High Court decision follows a long list of pro-DA decisions including those against B-BBEE.
The DA is ruling through the judiciary, the most powerful arm of the state which stands above the legislature, to subvert the wishes of a democratic majority.
The courts have become a front in the battle to roll back the gains of democracy. Until the system of democracy is reverted to parliamentary supremacy, our society shall remain ruled by a minority through its influence and ideological affinity with the judiciary. A claim that we are gravitating towards a judicial dictatorship seems more and more credible.
If ruling parties can’t place their trusted cadres to manage the implementation of their policies, then the public service is put above the political principals.
In such a system elected ministers merely play a symbolic role. It’s a system of eunuch ministers.
This roll-back of democratic accountability for the dictatorship of the bureaucracy must be resisted if we want accountability from elected politicians.
*Andile Mngxitama is PresIdent of Black First Land First.