The Democratic Alliance has threatened to have President Cyril Ramaphosa and ANC’s top six held in contempt of court should the party fail to meet the constitutional court’s Monday deadline. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy
The Democratic Alliance has threatened to have President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ANC top six held in contempt of court should the party fail to meet the constitutional court’s Monday deadline compelling the ruling party to submit all records of its cadre deployment committee decisions to the opposition.
Speaking to the Mail & Guardian on the sidelines of the party’s manifesto launch in Pretoria on Saturday, DA MP Siviwe Gwarube said the leadership of the ANC — Ramaphosa and the entire top six — should be held accountable if they fail to hand in the documents.
The constitutional court last Monday ruled that the ANC should hand over the documents within five working days.
On Saturday, Gwarube said the DA was yet to hear from the ANC regarding the records but they were looking forward to receiving them.
“Ultimately if they refuse those records, they would be in contempt of court,” she said.
“They are accountable. It’s an organisation that they run and it is important that they abide by the court ruling. They would be in contempt of court if they don’t give those documents and it’s going to be a very difficult thing if they don’t,” she said, adding that a precedent has already been set by former president Jacob Zuma’s contempt of court order.
“[Zuma] was arrested and that precedent has now been well established that a contempt of court is a very serious offence. It’s going to be very interesting to see how they get around this because ultimately a court ruling has been set down.”
Gwarube said the DA would engage with their lawyers and hear what the situation was with the documents.
“Perhaps the matter has been delayed. I don’t think the ANC has abided by the court ruling, but we will be guided by our lawyers,” she said.
“We are not going to stop because we are of the view this is something that the court has ruled on and, if the ANC respects the constitution, then they should abide by the law as we expect them to.”
During the manifesto launch on Saturday, DA leader John Steenhuisen said that, even before entering government, the opposition party was already abolishing the cadre deployment — whether Ramaphosa and ANC national chairperson Gwede Mantashe liked it or not.
“The constitutional court has given the ANC to handover their skelm cadre deployment records. The ANC came back to the DA crawling yesterday and saying, ‘Please, we need more time.’ I am going to go back to them and say to them directly that ‘You cannot have more time,’” Steenhuisen said.
The ANC in September approached the apex court in a last-ditch attempt to avoid having to handover the records after the supreme court of appeal dismissed its application for leave to appeal an earlier ruling ordering it to hand over the deployment committee records.
DA MP Leon Schreiber noted in a statement last week that the judgement gives the ANC now had five working days to hand over to the DA all meeting minutes, CVs, email threads, Whatsapp discussions and other relevant documents relating to the cadre deployment committee, dating back more than a decade,
“The ANC has run out of the road and must now expose the secrets it was so desperate to hide,” Schreiber said.
Gwarube said the DA was awaiting the outcome of a second case against the ANC, through which the opposition has sought for cadre deployment to be declared unconstitutional.