Barred branch begs for ‘a chance’
THE ANC’s Gedleyihlekisa branch in Durban, whose members include presidential hopeful Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, say they have pleaded with party secretary-general Gwede Mantashe to be given a chance to participate in the elective conference.
The branch failed to meet the Sunday deadline to convene a nomination meeting and would therefore be barred from taking part in the crucial conference in Johannesburg next month.
Branch chairperson Mfundo Dobe said the prospect of not going to the conference was painful.
“It is very painful that while we are members of the ANC we cannot go to the conference. We have pleaded with the provincial dispute resolution team to engage the secretary-general to extend BGM deadline for outstanding branches,” he said.
The branch was disbanded by the eThekwini Region in December last year, but lodged an appeal to the ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal executive committee. “Therefore the disbandment is lifted pending the appeal.”
Dobe said branch leaders were dismayed that they would not send a delegate to the conference.
“The region has led us down because they did not send a deployee to convene the BGM for us,” he said.
Dobe said they had on Thursday informed the regional secretary, Bheki Ntuli, about their intention to hold the BGM on Sunday at 2pm at Clarewood Hall.
“We wanted him to send us a deployee to preside over the nomination process. We gathered, and registered people, and we waited for the deployee until 5 pm but the deployee never came.
“Around 5.30, a member of the REC came saying he had been sent by the secretary to check what was happening in Ward 32, he said he was not a deployee,” Dobe said.
He accused the region of having failed the branch.
“The constitution says it is the branch that should write to the region requesting a deployee,” he said.
Meanwhile, the eThekwini region, the ANC’ s biggest region in the country and a stronghold for Dlamini Zuma, has welcomed the closure of the nominations process.
Regional secretary Bheki Ntuli said of the 110 branches eligible to go to the national conference, 88 have managed to hold their nominations branch meetings, with 16 of them being disputed.