The Democratic Alliance (DA) has followed through on its promise to take African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Fikile Mbalula to task over his failure to hand over complete records relating to the ANC’s cadre deployment committee.

The DA contends that the ANC is in contempt of the Constitutional Court order, which required the ANC to hand over complete records of its national cadre deployment committee dating back to January 1, 2013, when ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa was chairperson.

The DA claimed that the ANC had deliberately failed to hand over some records and redacted some information, and that there was overwhelming evidence that the ANC also had active provincial and regional cadre deployment committees in ANC-controlled provincial and municipal governments which subverted legal appointment processes.

“As the DA articulates in our urgent application, the ANC’s failure to comply with the court order amounts to an assault on the judiciary and the rule of law. By refusing to be bound by an order upheld by the Constitutional Court, the ANC risks triggering a full-blown constitutional crisis. 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,” said DA Shadow Minister for Public Service and Administration Leon Schreiber.

The DA’s court action against the ruling party will also ask for the laptop and hardrive from which the cadre deployment records were removed. The DA wants the hardware handed over to an independent IT expert.

The DA is adamant that the ANC is hiding information relating to Ramaphosa’s role in cadre deployment, which was supposedly used to facilitate State capture.

“We will use every single tool at our disposal to force the ANC to respect the rule of law and comply with the court order for it to expose all of its dirty cadre secrets, so that the people of South Africa can see with their own eyes how the root cause of State capture, of corruption and of collapsing service delivery, including loadshedding and water-shedding, is the African National Congress,” Schreiber said.