Letter: Cadre deployment is to blame - The Star

Your report, `Ramaphosa admits to defeat of New Dawn' 11 July , draws attention should it be needed to the unresolved crises that have dogged South Africa since the incumbent president assumed office.

What is not reflected is the reality of state capture. This was not just something perpetuated by one family or a coterie of the malign and criminal. State capture has been the unambiguous and acknowledged policy of the ruling party since the late 1990s, albeit under a different name: cadre deployment.

Cadre deployment was introduced with the express intention of bringing all 'levers of power' under the control of the ruling party. This included those such as the civil service, the judiciary and the security services that were constitutionally enjoined to be independent and meritocratic. This was counter-constitutional and illegal from its outset.

More than two decades of doing so has not only undermined the functioning of the institutions it has infected, but has facilitated corruption. Understand corruption here not only as the extraction of resources, but as the corrosive repurposing of those institutions. While the practice has been condemned from numerous quarters over the years, the unambiguous denunciation by the Zondo Commission should have ended the debate as to its permissibility.

Yet, the President himself has defended it. This ensured that the 'New Dawn' would always be a false dawn. Ending state capture requires abandoning cadre deployment, totally and without qualification.

The president and the ANC have shown no inclination to do so, and so the country's failings are perpetuated. Indeed, any other political formation aspiring to govern will be judged by this; any attempt to institute such a system for any new set of beneficiaries will simply compound South Africa's agony.

Terence Corrigan, Institute of Race Relations