Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen has denied former DA mayor in the Midvaal Local Municipality, Bongani Baloyi's claims that the DA also practises cadre deployment.

This follows the DA's victory in its case in the Constitutional Court where the African National Congress (ANC) was forced to release the records of the cadre deployment committee when President Cyril Ramaphosa was chairing the committee.

"The DA cannot insulate itself from the cadre deployment policy because when I was mayor of the Midvaal Local Municipality between 2013 and 2021, the municipality couldn’t conclude a senior staff appointment without the approral of Fedex (Federal Executive), it was standard procedure that all mayors apply to get the approval of Fedex before the municipality would conclude the appointment, this practice hasn’t changed and if they have nothing to hide, they must release the minutes of Fedex and you will see that they practiced the same cadre deployment that the ANC practiced,” Baloyi said.

However, in the midst of all these claims, Steenhuisen has described Baloyi as a disgruntled former member who is making unfounded allegations.

"The DA has never interfered and selected municipal managers or senior municipal managers in any municipality ever, there are no minutes that would record that because the deliberations and considerations did not take place, the sole thing that the mayors were required to produce was to indicate the process that was followed.

We have never asked for the political affiliations for municipal managers or any other senior staff in any municipality where we are at, such would be a violation of the Public Service Act, but would also be a violation of the principles which we believe have underpinned our ability to produce a government that produces clean accountable governance across all government departments that spend money on the people and not politicians and which gets basic service delivery absolutely right," said Steenhuisen.

Meanwhile Steenhuisen has also revealed that the DA will appeal the judgement of the High Court in Pretoria that rejected their application on Thursday the 22nd of February 2024 to declare cadre deployment unconstitutional and unlawful.