/ 11 December 2008

Cope: Public service should be depoliticised

It is improper for public servants to be appointed on the basis of political affiliation, Congress of the People (Cope) leader Mosiuoa Lekota said on Wednesday.

Addressing close to 300 people of the coloured community of Athlone in Cape Town, Lekota said Cope would do away with the practice of deploying party members in high-ranking government positions should it win the next elections.

”We will make sure that the public service is depoliticised … the men and women who will be appointed to run the administration of government will be appointed on the basis … that they have the best skills and expertise,” he said.

Only people who could deliver the best services to all South Africans would be appointed.

It was important to depoliticise the public service to avoid the Zimbabwean kind of a situation where senior civil servants dictated who should be elected to political office.

”If you do not do that you will end up with a situation in Zimbabwe where you find that the police, the armed forces and the intelligence services say — even if the people as a whole elect you — you will not come into the State House because we are going to compel you,” he said.

Lekota also criticised the current practice where civil servants were allowed to belong to unions affiliated to political parties.

He said civil servants should be non-partisan as all South Africans, irrespective of political affiliation, were paying taxes.

”You cannot have the police force allied to a political party because those of us who are not members of that particular party will not receive the same treatment at the hands of [such] policemen,” he said.

Cope will officially be launched in Bloemfontein next week, where it is expected to unveil its policies.

Meanwhile, African National Congress (ANC) secretary general Gwede Mantashe on Wednesday urged coloured people to stop thinking of themselves as a minority and slammed claims that they were underrepresented within the ANC.

Addressing about 500 people in the Austerville Community Hall in Durban’s predominantly coloured suburb of Wentworth, Mantashe said: ”When you get locked into the idea of minorities you think like a minority.”

He said he was against the term minorities ”because it divides people. We must see ourselves as one group.”

One resident complained he ”was not white enough under the apartheid government and not black enough under the current government”.

Mantashe responded: ”You are not absent. You are present within the ANC.”

Referring to the ANC’s bid to interdict Cope from using the name Congress of the people, Mantashe said that the 1955 Kliptown Congress of the People was ”a heritage that belongs to all of us. Nobody must steal that heritage that belongs to all of us.”

He said he was hopeful that there would be a successful outcome for the ANC in its Pretoria High Court bid.

He said, however, that the ANC ”is not preoccupied with the gang of three who have left the ANC”. — Sapa