High court grants leave to appeal in ANC battle

A DISGRUNTLED ANC member who is challenging the outcome of the party’s 2015 OR Tambo regional conference has been granted leave to appeal by the Mthatha High Court.

Badanile Mntamo, a ward 24 member in Mhlontlo, and another party member, Mlandeli Ndabetha from Port St John’s, took the ANC to court last month seeking to have it nullified.

But their case was dismissed by Mthatha High Court Judge Selby Mbenenge, who ruled they had taken too long to launch their application to dispute processes that led to the election of the O R Tambo regional executive committee (REC).

While Ndabetha did not follow up on the matter, Mntamo filed an application for leave to appeal.

Yesterday, acting high court Judge Mpumelelo Notununu read out Mbenenge’s judgment on the matter.

“The applicant is granted leave to appeal to the full court of this division,” Mbenenge’s judgment read.

It also instructed the registrar to enrol the matter while stating that the cost of the application for leave to appeal will be included in the appeal itself.

Mthatha attorney Mvuzo Notyesi, who is part of Mntamo’s legal counsel, said they would now proceed with their appeal.

The Daily Dispatch has previously reported that Mntamo and Ndabetha wanted the 2015 conference declared illegal, claiming dead members’s names appeared as delegates in branch general meetings prior the regional elective conference.

The O R Tambo REC, the ANC provincial executive committee (PEC) and the party’s national executive committee (NEC) were cited as respondents in the case.

ANC O R Tambo regional chairman Xolile Nkompela claimed yesterday, however, that Mntamo was just a pawn in a political game played by those who lost in 2015.

“A grant to appeal is everyone’s right when they are not satisfied. There is nothing that bothers us with that because we know that all the processes in that conference were followed properly,” he said.

“The reality in that case is that it’s not Badanile [challenging the matter]. You can’t have a Badanile that I know in ward 24 who can hire three senior advocates.”

He alleged that Badanile’s so-called backers were the very same people who had lost out during the 2015 regional elective conference.

“What worries us is this foreign culture in the ANC of taking matters of the ANC to court because they [Badanile and his backers] followed all the internal processes and they were defeated.”

But Nkompela argued that the REC was ready to go to any court to present its case.

Newly elected Eastern Cape ANC provincial secretary Lulama Ngcukayithobi also said they welcomed yesterday’s ruling as “it gives us an opportunity to deal with the matter once and for all”. —