DA demands IT expert look at ANC’s “crashed” cadre records laptop

The DA has launched legal action seeking a court order finding the ANC in contempt of court and compelling the ruling party to hand over a “crashed” laptop with cadre deployment records to an independent IT expert.

DA MP Leon Schreiber filed an urgent contempt-of-court application with the demand in the Johannesburg High Court on Monday, 4 March 2024.

Schreiber said the application sought an order for South Africa’s governing party to be held in contempt of court and declared in breach of an order upheld by the Constitutional Court.

The legal action comes after the ANC handed over limited cadre deployment records from 2013 to 2018 to the DA in February 2024.

During that period, President Cyril Ramaphosa was ANC Deputy President and chairman of the ANC’s cadre deployment committee.

The handover came in the wake of the DA winning a Promotion of Access to Information (PAIA) case first launched in 2021.

The Supreme Court and Constitutional Court dismissed the ANC’s appeals against the PAIA request.

The DA argues that the full records would show the ANC and its policies are the root causes of state capture and service delivery collapsing in South Africa.

The ANC has repeatedly defended cadre deployment, including arguing it benefits race-based transformation.

In the records the ANC did hand over to the DA, it redacted the names of numerous individuals and relevant information, which it previously argued was because of the Protection of Personal Information Act.

It also excluded specific meeting minutes from the documents and “mistakenly” destroyed related information on computers while the trial was underway.

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula previously said the laptop of  Thapelo Masilela, strategic support manager in the deputy secretary-general’s office, had crashed in June 2023.

He had also deleted emails that likely contained cadre deployment data during the year to free up space in his inbox.

“During 2023, my personal email, which I used for the deployment committee, was full,” Masilela said in an affidavit directed to the DA.

“In an attempt to free up space, I sorted sent emails by size and deleted the majority of the big files. A number of emails which relate to the deployment committee were included.”

Masilela also said his laptop crashed in June 2023 and that some data relating to the cadre deployment records was lost as a result.

Mbalula must be held personally liable

The DA argues that the redactions and deletion of information meant the ANC had failed to comply with the court order.

“By refusing to be bound by an order upheld by the Constitutional Court, the ANC risks triggering a full-blown constitutional crisis,” Schreiber said.

“The only way to avert this urgent risk to our constitutional order on the eve of a general election, is for the DA’s application to succeed and for the ANC’s Secretary-General and officials involved in the destruction of information to be held personally accountable.”

In summary, the DA’s urgent contempt-of-court application is seeking the following:

• The cadre deployment records in an unredacted form “so as to ensure all names of people are legible”.
• All the information relating to the processes and decisions made by the cadre deployment committee between January 2013 and January 2021, including: minutes, draft minutes, notes, attendance registers, communication and “decisions of the committee whether prepared by or communicated to staff members” by ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, members of the committee or government officials.
• Emails, WhatsApp messages, and social media communication between and among committee members and government officials from:
  • January 2013 to May 2018
  • 21 May 2019
  • 6 August 2018
  • 22 March to 19 August 2019
  • 19 November 2019
• Legible copies of the above.
• Thapelo Masilela’s hard drive, laptop and personal emails to a third-party IT expert agreed to by the DA “for the purposes of extracting information required to be disclosed by the court order”; and
• The laptop of Lungi Mtshali, ANC digital communications manager from October 2015.