The African National Congress (ANC) will turn to the Constitutional Court in a final bid not to hand over its cadre deployment records to the Democratic Alliance (DA). This comes after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) dismissed its appeal bid citing “no reasonable prospects of success” adding that there were no other compelling reasons as to why an appeal should be heard.
In the absence of the above appeal, the deadline to hand over the records would have been the 11th of September 2023.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) will not get its hands on the governing party’s full cadre deployment records dating back to January 2013 just yet. This as it received communication from the ANC’s lawyers that it is approaching the apex court – a move that the DA says is only delaying the inevitable.
“Like all of the ANC’s previous attempts, the final turn to the Constitutional Court is doomed to fail … (there) simply exists no legal grounds for the ANC to keep its cadre deployment records secret because the entire reason why cadre deployment exists is to enable the ANC to interfere in appointments to positions to the public sector. Cadre deployment, therefore, directly impacts on the public issues like load shedding and widespread service delivery collapse,” says Leon Schreiber, DA MP.
In a brief statement, the ANC confirmed to SABC News that it will be heading to the Constitutional Court.
But how successful will this bid be following the SCA’s decision?
“The biggest issue for the ANC in the Gauteng high court was that it did not offer any meaningful denials that the cadre deployment were required for the purposes that Mr Schreiber had set out. It thus was no surprise that the Supreme Court of Appeal ordered that there are no reasonable prospects of success on appeal and that there is no compelling reason why an appeal should be heard, rather an appeal to the Constitutional Court, in my view, is likely to suffer the same fate,” says Benedict Phiri, legal analyst.
Schreiber’s bid to gain access to the cadre deployment records dating back to January 2013 forms part of the DA’s bigger bid to have the long-standing ANC policy declared unconstitutional.
Video: ANC cadre deployment court bid dismissed:
