Court ruling to delay vote on Mahumapelo

North West Premier Supra Mahumapelo can sigh with relief as a motion of no confidence on his conduct will be debated and voted on only after the high court has ruled on whether the vote can be conducted by secret ballot.

Mahumapelo is a staunch ally of former president Jacob Zuma. As chairman of the ANC in North West he presides over a divided membership in the province. He has been linked to the controversial Gupta family and was criticised for defending their lavish Sun City wedding in his 2016 state of the province address.

Betty Diale, EFF chairwoman in North West, said the party would file court papers on Wednesday in its urgent bid to have a secret ballot.

There is precedent on the matter. In 2017, a Constitutional Court judgment allowed the speaker of the National Assembly to take a decision amid a clamour for a secret ballot in Parliament.

The North West motion against Mahumapelo was set to take place on Tuesday, but it was agreed by the various legal representatives that it would be dealt with after the court process had unfolded.

Diale said the EFF expected the motion to take place in about four weeks after the urgent court application had been decided.

“It was a postponement by consensus,” she said.

Mahumapelo seems to be fighting fires from more than one direction. He recently came under fire when Rapport newspaper reported that stateowned arms manufacturer Denel gave his son a R1.1m bursary. Denel has since denied that it was in contravention of the company’s policy, saying bursaries were awarded to two other students based on the same criteria.

The premier was also in the firing line after the provincial health department allegedly paid Gupta-linked company Mediosa R30m up front and made a further R180m available to the company in a questionable contract for mobile clinics.

Diale said that even though Mahumapelo did indeed have some breathing space the EFF would not “allow him to breathe”, as the party would be mobilising ANC members of the provincial legislature to vote in support of the motion.

“We could settle for four weeks rather than lose it with an open ballot,” Diale said.

She said the vote had to take place by secret ballot as Mahumapelo would still be premier of North West as well as ANC chairman if the motion failed. He would therefore be able to take action against those who openly supported the motion of no confidence.

Diale said the EFF believed that the corruption in the province was there for everyone to see and would not happen without Mahumapelo’s direct or indirect influence.