The DA is taking the ANC to court over the governing party’s evil policy of cadre deployment. In papers that will be lodged with the South Gauteng High Court this week, the DA will ask the court to compel the ANC to hand over complete records of all deliberations and decisions taken by the ANC cadre deployment committee since 1 January 2013 when current president Cyril Ramaphosa became its chairperson.
The DA has been left with no choice but to approach the court after the ANC earlier this year refused to comply with an application we submitted in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) to obtain these cadre deployment records. We also know these records exist because the ANC has previously indicated as much in their correspondence.
This court case is of seminal importance in the DA’s quest to build a capable state staffed by competent professionals.
For a quarter of a century, the ANC has used the evil policy of cadre deployment to circumvent the Constitution’s injunction, contained in section 197 (3), that no public servant may be favoured or prejudiced because they support a particular political party or cause. The DA has long held that the ANC’s cadre deployment committee unethically interferes with government appointment processes by conferring an unfair advantage on candidates who are deemed “loyal” to the ANC.
If we win this case and obtain unfettered access to the records of the ANC’s cadre deployment committee, the DA will finally be able to prove our argument and, in the process, hopefully kneecap the entire system of cadre deployment. Victory in this case has the potential to undermine one of the most evil policies that the ANC uses to promote its National Democratic Revolution at the direct expense of service delivery to South African citizens.
It is due to cadre deployment that utterly incompetent and corrupt officials have been systematically appointed to positions of power throughout the state. In return, they abuse their positions to funnel tenders and the proceeds of corruption back into the pockets of the party that has given itself the unconstitutional power to appoint them. It is this vicious cycle, with cadre deployment at its core, that has brought our state to its knees. The DA’s court case now gives us a chance to begin undoing the near-fatal damage it has inflicted upon our state.
This court application is also of fundamental importance to South Africa’s ongoing reckoning with state capture. With the brave exception of Barbara Hogan, every senior ANC official who has testified in front of the State Capture Commission so far – including Jacob Zuma, Gwede Mantashe, and Cyril Ramaphosa – has tried to deny the role played by cadre deployment in facilitating state capture.
During his testimony, Ramaphosa even explicitly stated that his cadre deployment committee “would not have dealt with” the appointments of, among others, Dudu Myeni, Brian Molefe, Siyabonga Gama, Phetolo Ramosebudi, Anoj Singh, Matshele Koko, Ben Ngubane, Arthur Fraser, Tom Moyane, Berning Ntlemeza, Shaun Abrahams, Iqbal Sharma, Mafika Mkhwanazi, as well as the boards of Denel, SAA, and PRASA.
Ramaphosa wants us to believe that despite being the chairperson of a committee that exists for the sole purpose of appointing ANC cadres to positions of power, he somehow had no knowledge whatsoever of these appointments.
The DA does not buy Ramaphosa’s fantastical denials for one second.
That is why, should we win this case, we will be cross-checking every single word of Zuma, Mantashe, and Ramaphosa’s testimony in front of judge Zondo against the hard evidence contained in the cadre deployment records. Needless to say, if Ramaphosa’s denials in front of judge Zondo that he was involved with or had any knowledge of the appointment of state capture looters is proven untrue by the ANC’s own cadre deployment records, Ramaphosa could be liable to prosecution for the crime of perjury.
The stakes could scarcely be higher.
At stake is the right of every South African to know how the decisions that were taken in the smoke-filled backrooms of Luthuli House while Ramaphosa was the chairperson of the deployment committee facilitated the collapse of our state and the theft of trillions of Rands. At stake is also the credibility of our country’s effort to deeply reckon with the true causes of state capture, and to interrogate the roles played by the people who are still in power today in driving our state to the very verge of collapse.
The DA looks forward to fighting this battle to the very end on behalf of every citizen who wants to see an end to corruption, state capture, and failed service delivery, and the rise of a capable state free from political interference that gets things done.
Local Government Elections are coming up in 2021! Visit check.da.org.za to check your voter registration status.
I might not be able to see all of you in front of me right now, but I know you’re there. This virtual rally is connecting us from every corner of the country.
We have watching parties in Bloemfontein and Rustenburg and Upington and Lusikisiki and Richards Bay and Polokwane and Saldanha Bay, and Soweto. This blue wave is spreading far and wide today.
I know there’s a buzz in all our provincial DA offices, and at homes where people have gathered to follow this rally online. I have felt this buzz of anticipation in the weeks leading up to today as I traveled across the country and spoke with our branches, our caucuses and our staff.
Of course we all miss doing these things live, in person. I’d much rather be standing in front of you right now. But if there’s one thing we’ve come to learn about our party this past year, it’s that we adapt to whatever challenge is put in front of us.
We innovate to find a way around, over or through, and then we get on with it. Because we know we have a big and urgent job to do, and there is no time to waste.
We have our eyes firmly set on a target, and that target is the 27th of October. Nothing will deter us.
But not everyone seems to share this urgency and this eagerness to go to the polls in October. Our opponents are trying their best to wriggle their way out of it.
They’re either simply not prepared for this campaign, or they fear what voters might say to them on the day. And so they talk about postponing, and they make up excuses.
But we will have none of that. The DA is marching confidently towards 27 October, ready for the challenge and the contest. We started our preparations a long time ago, when others were still asleep, and we are ready to take our message to South Africans in every community across the country.
Our public representatives are standing by. Our activists are standing by. Our staff members are standing by. We know this won’t be a normal campaign, but nothing this past year has been normal. And the DA has risen to the challenge, consistently, like no other party.
We have done our homework, we have built up our momentum, and we’re now ready to take on the ANC in municipalities across the country, as well as defend our own municipalities.
But I also want you to be aware of the responsibility that comes with this challenge. You must know that the DA is the only hope for turning South Africa around. We are the only party with the size, the reach, the vision, the policies and the people to be able to speak seriously and realistically about change.
We simply have to succeed, and we have to do so soon. Every municipality, every ward, every voting district that turns blue in October is one step closer to this goal.
South Africa needs this election, this year, because change cannot wait.
It’s no secret that many of our towns and cities are literally falling apart.
The list of municipalities in critical condition is now longer than the list of those that still function properly.
Service delivery has collapsed in hundreds of towns. Taps are about to run dry in the Eastern Cape. Budgets are being slashed everywhere, from housing to street maintenance to school toilets.
Municipalities owe billions and billions to Eskom and are on the brink of being disconnected.
The massive local government failure in recent years has left many communities almost unliveable. And people have had enough of this.
They’ve had to watch as politicians live it up in luxury, but then turn around and say to them: “Sorry, we just don’t have the money to replace the pit toilets at your child’s school with proper, safe toilets like we said we would. Maybe next year.”
“Sorry, but there is nothing we can do right now about the raw sewage that’s been running down your street for months.”
Or, as we read in a report just released: “Sorry but the almost R40 billion given by Treasury to municipalities over the past six years to fund free electricity to poor households has just disappeared without any of this electricity having been supplied.”
There are hundreds of stories like this of local government failures that have made people’s lives incredibly hard. Never before has it been so clear and so visible in so many places that South Africa needs change.
People are angry, and they have every right to be. We see service delivery protests every single day, right across the country.
Sometimes, just before elections, these protests actually bring some results. When the governing party realises that their failures could be punished, they quickly spring into action with a few visible projects or promises.
However, for the rest of the time – for the other four and a half years in between elections – these communities don’t see or hear from their government. Their pleas and protests are simply ignored.
But there is another form of protest that is guaranteed to get better results, and that is the protest you register with your vote.
That simple little action of drawing a cross in a block on your ballot paper carries more power and brings more change than a thousand tyres burnt and a thousand stones thrown.
That’s why this year is so critical. Millions of South Africans who have been left to fend for themselves – to find their own water, to clean up their own sewage, to cook without electricity, to do all the things their local government was employed to do – have this small but powerful window of opportunity every five years to say: No, that’s not good enough.
Once every five years they get to do a performance review of their local government. And if they’re not satisfied with what they’ve seen, they can say to their government: You had your chance to do your job. In fact, you had many chances, but you blew it. And now we’re firing you, because there must be consequences for failure.
That’s how you bring change.
If you don’t use this opportunity, then things will stay the same for at least another five years.
Albert Einstein once said “Nothing happens unless something is moved.” He may have been talking about physics, but this principle applies to everything in life. If you expect to see an action, a result or a change, then something first has to be moved.
And the way a democracy works is that you have to do the moving. You have to set in motion the change. No one can do that for you.
The very first words written down in the preamble to our Constitution are: “We, the people….”
Because that’s where everything starts, and that’s where all the power and all the responsibility lies: We, the people.
But this line also means something else. “We, the people” means that that we are one people, united in our rich diversity. Our future and our strength as a country depends on this. We cannot slip back into separate little corners of racial or cultural or language identity.
We have to find our common ground and our shared vision for South Africa.
But even more importantly, we have to fight for each other and speak up for each other. We’ll only ever be as strong as the most vulnerable among us, and so the plight of the poorest is also everyone’s plight.
The poverty that has swept across our country, ruining lives and ripping families apart, should offend and anger each and every one of us.
That is our crisis. That is our number one enemy. That’s what stands in the way of our progress as a nation.
And it is a crisis so big and so daunting that our government doesn’t even know where to start fixing it. Or how.
30 million South Africans live below the poverty line. That’s half our population.
42% of working-age South Africans don’t have jobs. That’s almost half our adult population.
And this poverty affects people in a terrifying way. It overshadows every aspect of their lives. It takes away their dreams and it threatens their very survival.
We dare not become accustomed to it. We dare not accept it as a given in our society – a problem so big and entrenched that there’s nothing we can do to solve it. Because poverty and unemployment do have solutions. We’re just not doing those things right now.
Our economic landscape has to change. It has to be reformed, but not in the way government wants to do it.
It doesn’t have to be a zero sum game, where one person loses so that another person can win. That kind of thinking will never change the lives of 30 million poor South Africans. It will only ever replace a few wealthy people with a few other wealthy people.
The only meaningful way to reform our economy is to lift millions of South Africans out of poverty and into jobs and opportunity. To give them a stake in their own future and the ability to build for themselves a life of dignity and independence.
If a solution isn’t aimed at doing this, it’s not a solution. Or at least, it’s not a solution to the crisis we should be solving.
Everything we do – every intervention, every policy, every line item in our budget spend – has to be judged by its impact on poverty and unemployment. And by this I mean its real-life impact, not its stated intention.
We have to be brutally honest when we assess these things. And that begins with asking the right questions, even if the answers are not what all of us want to hear.
Is this intervention targeted at poor South Africans, or is it really aimed at re-empowering the already-empowered?
Will this policy make South Africa a more attractive place to potential investors, or will it scare future business away?
Will these rules make it easier for a business to start up and survive or does it demand the impossible of employers?
Does this legislation protect the unemployed too, or only those who already have jobs?
Does this policy build non-racialism, or does it further divide us?
Only when we start answering these questions honestly, will we be in a position to start winning the war on poverty.
This crisis won’t be solved by who says what at the Zondo Commission.
It won’t be solved by who steps aside in the ANC and who doesn’t.
It won’t be solved by keeping dying state-owned companies afloat with billions of Rands that should be spent on more important things.
And it most certainly won’t be solved by doing all the same old things that got us into this situation in the first place.
Don’t expect to see a change if you don’t make one.
Fellow Democrats, our party is the one that has to make this change.
Only the DA understands that economic growth and job creation have to trump all other priorities and ideologies if we want to beat poverty.
Only the DA stands for values that protect and advance the rights of all the people of South Africa, and not only a certain group.
Only the DA respects the sanctity of public money and doesn’t tolerate corruption and mismanagement of funds.
Only the DA is committed to building a capable, fit-for-purpose state.
Only the DA has a national footprint big enough to be able to represent every person in every community, and to challenge the dominance of the ANC.
And, importantly, only the DA has already been handed a mandate, by voters, in metros and municipalities to demonstrate how it would govern differently from the ANC. And this has given us a track record of excellence that no other party can claim.
We don’t have to speak about what we would do in government, like every other party. Because frankly, that’s easy. Anyone can do this. The DA speaks about what it has achieved in government, and those achievements put ANC governments to shame.
The top 5 best-run municipalities in South Africa are all governed by the DA. The best-run metro is governed by the DA. And the best-run province is governed by the DA. That’s not my opinion – that’s according to independent audits and rankings.
This doesn’t mean these places are perfect. We know that there are still many challenges we need to solve and areas we need to improve on. But it is a matter of undisputed fact that where the DA governs citizens are better off and have a better chance of living a life of opportunity and dignity.
And that is what we now need to build on – to bring this DA difference to even more communities and people.
We’ve got a record of action and a promise of more.
But it is not something we can do alone. We need to harness the power of the people. We have to remind voters that “We, the people” speaks about them and their responsibilities in our democracy.
I know many South Africans are tired of politics. They’re tired of governments that don’t work and politicians that don’t do what they say. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We need to reignite the flame of democracy.
Every South African has a role to play in bringing about change. And so I encourage those who want to be part of it to go to time4change.org.za – that’s time4change written with the number 4 – and sign our pledge that says “I’m committed to getting South Africa working again”.
Let us all become active citizens and take ownership of our future.
Let us make sure our names are on the voters’ roll on the registration weekend of 17 and 18 July.
Let us declare poverty the enemy of the people, and let us not rest until every South African has dignity and security.
Let us find our common ground and stand united for a common cause. Because when we join hands we will discover that there are millions of us who want the same thing for our country. Millions of us who want change.
Let us rediscover the power that the people have in our democracy, and let us take it back from a government that has long ago stopped caring about the people.
The time for change is now.
Thank you.
Local Government Elections are coming up in 2021! Visit check.da.org.za to check your voter registration status.
The DA calls on the Department of Health to clearly communicate on the Electronic Vaccination Data System (EVDS) errors and implement mitigation strategies. The EVDS system that is responsible for registering individuals to get the vaccine is riddled with system errors. This is the main tool leading the vaccine rollout and with such failures, it will cause even more delays and confusion.
The DA has been inundated with queries and concerns regarding the system with community members stating that they either did not receive their SMS, got sent to an incorrect location or received someone else’s appointment SMS. Further issues included the EVDS system sending people to location that were far from their residence or being sent appointment notifications just hours before their appointments.
The Department had 6 months to prepare for these technical issues and yet they can still not deliver. As of the beginning of this week, 520 vaccination sites are still needing to be approved and registered on the EVDS portal. Phase 2 started on the 17th of May and government is still registering vaccination sites. The department must get its act together and properly communicate system errors and the potential need for re-registration as this will not merely lead to an ineffective rollout but essentially is a life-or-death situation.
This week the DA-run Western Cape government announced that it will be taking over the local SMS scheduling for Covid vaccines. It is currently offering a 3-day lead time with SMS’s that will soon to be a 5-day lead time so that vaccine recipients can properly prepare.
The DA calls on government to clearly communicate EVDS system errors and implement mitigation strategies as soon as possible. The National Health Department should learn from the Western Cape Government and place a focus on proper implementation of the vaccine rollout plan
Local Government Elections are coming up in 2021! Visit check.da.org.za to check your voter registration status.
Please find attached soundbite by Veronica van Dyk MP.
The DA has written to the Chairperson of the National Arts Council (NAC), Her Royal Highness Princess Celenhle Dlamini, and the Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture, Nathi Mthethwa, to request that the criteria used to determine which applications would successfully receive funding from the Presidential Economic Stimulus Programme (PESP) be made public.
The Mail and Guardian recently reported that 46%, a staggering R128 million, of NAC PESP funding went to only 12% of the beneficiaries. The other 1 142 recipients would have to be content for the remaining R150 million to be divvied between them.
To add insult to injury, a report by the South African Roadies Association (SARA) found that 20% of the top 140 of recipients in a list made public by the NAC were either not registered on the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) database or government’s nonprofit organization (NPO) database, or deregistered or in the process of being deregistered and did not have tax certificates.
The DA also notes NAC spokesperson Tsepho Mashiane’s statement that two separate processes of investigation need to take place regarding the NAC PESP funding – one with independent adjudicators investigating the process of awarding the grants, and another into the fiduciary role of the NAC council in the PESP funding. The DA would support such investigations, provided that they are independent and above reproach. In the past we have called for an independent forensic, and a Special Investigating Unit (SIU) investigation.
The NAC must also reveal how it monitored whether disbursed funds were indeed used in aid of pitched projects. There can be no room for malfeasance. Especially not when deserving artists are literally starving.
The NAC and the Department needs to take South African artists into their confidence. The parliamentary portfolio committee on sports, arts and culture has still not been updated on what transpired during the Public Protector’s mediation, despite the DA’s request to the Minister to account to the committee.
The South African arts and culture sectors are under enormous pressure and have had to face the Covid-19 pandemic with minimal and ineffectual intervention from the NAC, as well as Minister Mthethwa and his Department.
Local Government Elections are coming up in 2021! Visit check.da.org.za to check your voter registration status.
A written reply to a DA parliamentary question has revealed that the Department of Defence and Military Veterans (DDMV) has spent over R1 billion, in the past 10 years, paying Cuban service providers to maintain and repair its defence equipment under Project Thusano.
With South Africa’s local defence industry caught in a death spiral and job losses an ever present concern, it is inexplicably curious why the ANC government has been outsourcing defence contracts to Cuban companies at the expense of local defence contractors.
The DA will be submitting follow-up questions to ascertain whether there are any steps that the Department is taking to ensure that most of its Prime Mission Defence Equipment repair and maintenance budget is spent locally. We cannot afford to have the wilful decapitation of our defence industry by shifting the defence equipment maintenance budget offshore.
Over the years, our men and women in uniform have watched the force’s operational capabilities decline due to relentless budget cuts. Meanwhile, allocations to defence contractors have remain steady or even increased, confirming that the ANC government will rather subsidise its Cuban friends than build our defence capabilities.
This R1 billion spend by the DDMV on Cubans is just but one of the many instances where the government has been splurging scant taxpayer money on services that can be procured locally. The time has come for South Africa to have a genuine national conversation about how the ANC government is forcing taxpayers to bankroll its ideological friendship with Cuba.
Local Government Elections are coming up in 2021! Visit check.da.org.za to check your voter registration status.
Please find attached a soundbite by Siviwe Gwarube MP.
The DA has received and accepted the resignation of Phumzile Van Damme as a Member of Parliament and from the Party.
We extend our best wishes to Phumzile and thank her for her extraordinary service to the DA in Parliament and by extension, the country.
From taking on Bell Pottinger, fighting for an independent SABC and her tenure as DA National Spokesperson – Phumzile demonstrated her talent as a political communicator and a parliamentarian.
The DA wishes Phumzile well in her future endeavours.
Local Government Elections are coming up in 2021! Visit check.da.org.za to check your voter registration status.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) takes note of the significant misinformation being spread on social media in relation to events that unfolded at the Atlantis Police Station earlier this morning. We wish to put the following on record:
This morning, Councillor Nora Grose, who serves as the Sub Council Chairperson of Sub-Council One (Atlantis) availed herself at the Atlantis Police Station in order to be formally charged in relation to a Hawks investigation that is currently underway. This was a procedural process.
It must be stated upfront that in availing herself to be formally charged, the Councillor did not plead to any charges.
As the Councillor and the City’s legal team have not been provided with the case docket by the Hawks, we are unable to comment on the veracity or the merits of the charges.
The investigation currently underway by the Hawks is multi-faceted and concerns a case of TERS fraud allegedly committed by an ex-DA member, as well as the procedural processes that were followed in the distribution of Covid relief grant funding.
Over the past year, the City of Cape Town has allocated R39 million to an emergency food relief programme, going above and beyond its municipal mandate to assist those who’ve fallen on hard times due to the global pandemic and national lockdowns.
Sadly, there seems to be a deliberate attempt from certain quarters to sub-join and conflate what are clearly two separate matters.
Councillor Grose has and will continue to cooperate with the authorities concerned as this investigation runs its course.
Please find attached a soundbite by the DA Leader, John Steenhuisen MP.
The DA does not agree that a review of this year’s Local Government Election date is necessary, and we reaffirm that the DA and South African voters are ready to go to the polls this year. For the DA, the election must proceed on 27 October 2021. We are ready.
South Africans facing increasingly dire circumstances are crying out for change, which can only come through the ballot box at regular and timeous elections. It is, in fact, every citizen’s constitutional right to participate in regular elections to make their voice heard and to vote out failing and corrupt governments. Our participatory democracy rests on the IEC’s mandate to conduct free, fair, and regular elections.
The IEC has shown, through the series of by-elections over the past seven months that it can hold completely free and fair elections, in spite of the Covid-19 pandemic. By-elections since November last year have seen good, and in some cases, above-average turnout which shows that voters are keen to come out, safely, and cast their ballots despite the pandemic.
During these by-elections campaigning has been free and fair, political operations have adapted as required, and voters have been reached by their parties on the ground through digital media and an array of other communication platforms.
The IEC has, to their credit, run very successful Covid-19-compliant by-elections in all instances. Queues have been social distanced, masks have been mandatory, and equipment has been sanitised, which bodes well for the 27 October local government election in every ward across South Africa. The IEC has already proven that elections can be held during a pandemic. There is no reason why it cannot proceed with this year’s Local Government Elections as planned.
Being ready for the election later this year means that the DA is well underway with our planning and preparation for the campaign, and we will be first party out of the blocks this weekend as we hold our Time for Change Rally – the first national DA rally in the lead-up to our campaign. We are excited and very proud to hold our Time for Change Rally on Saturday, connecting thousands of DA members and supporters in over 400 watch parties in locations across the country.
Our rally this Saturday is a bold statement of intent: The DA is ready for Election 2021, and our preparation toward 27 October is proceeding at full steam.
The unnecessary review of the election date, announced by the IEC today, is not about empowering voters, it is about an unprepared, weak, and divided ANC which has no momentum to campaign, and an increasingly irrelevant EFF which has failed to adapt campaign operations during the pandemic. The IEC should not bow to the whims of these party-political issues. The Constitutional right of each and every South African to cast their vote should not be determined by any party’s preparedness in any election season. This election is about South Africans and the future of our country, not the ANC.
South Africa needs this year’s local government election to proceed, to give effect to voters’ rights to choose their governments, and to ensure accountability at local government level. South African voters desperately want change. The IEC must give them the right to it.
Local Government Elections are coming up in 2021! Visit check.da.org.za to check your voter registration status.
Please find attached soundbite by Baxolile ‘Bax’ Nodada MP.
The DA can reveal that more than 135 195 learners do not have access to scholar transport, despite qualifying for this service.
In answer to a written parliamentary question from the DA, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga revealed that the DA-run Western Cape is one of only two provinces where all deserving scholars have access to scholar transport. The other is the Eastern Cape.
ANC-run KwaZulu-Natal is the biggest offender with 117 248 learners being left in the lurch.
The ANC government and the Department of Basic Education should be ashamed that they are failing thousands of learners who are now forced to walk vast distances in school. In many cases they are also missing school because of government’s failure to provide access to this essential service.
Government’s failure is denying these learners their basic right to education and potentially robbing them of future opportunities. Government clearly lacks the political will to provide basic services to communities and would rather let another generation suffer in poverty than roll up its sleeves and address crucial issues.
Local Government Elections are coming up in 2021! Visit check.da.org.za to check your voter registration status.
Please find attached a soundbite by the DA’s national spokesperson, Siviwe Gwarube MP.
The DA continues to show that it’s stabilising and moving towards a trajectory of growth.
The DA retained all three wards that we contested in Tshwane, with voters rejecting the chaos and corruption of the ANC and instead endorsing the DA-led government as led by Mayor Randall Williams. Mayor Williams was recently re-elected after the DA won court action which we had taken against the ANC’s illegal administration in the metro.
The results of yesterday’s by-elections are a further demonstration that the DA is the most diverse political party in South Africa, with the party growing in a number of communities. Only the DA truly represents the interests of voters from all walks of life.
It is notable that the ANC continues to lose ground in Gauteng metros. The ANC dropped back from 22% in 2016 to 16% of the vote in this round of wards which they contested against the DA. This is a clear indication that South Africans are tired of ANC corruption and poor governance and are ready for real change that will bring about good governance, basic service delivery and an enabling environment for jobs and opportunities.
In Johannesburg where we contested three wards yesterday, our voting outcome was influenced by our previous coalition government. It is message from our voters that we take seriously. This is why we will continue to rebuild trust and our support in these wards as we head towards the local government elections.
This coming weekend, through our #TimeForChange rally, the DA will bring its party structures together in the largest virtual rally ever in South Africa. This is part of campaigning for the Local Government Elections later this year for which the DA is ready.
Local Government Elections are coming up in 2021! Visit check.da.org.za to check your voter registration status.