Court hears of ANC battle

Judgment on EC elective conference expected next week

THE Grahamstown High Court will decide on Tuesday next week whether or not to nullify the outcome of the ANC’s Eastern Cape provincial elective conference.

This is just four days before the party’s national elective conference is due to kick off.

At issue is whether or not the provincial elective conference was legitimately convened in the first place and whether – even if it were – it could lawfully have been allowed to continue after violence broke out and some 46% of the delegates withdrew.

Several ANC members from the O R Tambo, Joe Gqabi and Amathole regions are asking a full bench of the high court to set aside the election of the new provincial executive committee including that of Oscar Mabuyane as provincial chair.

Advocate Phillip Zilwa, SC, yesterday argued that the conference had been improperly constituted in the first place and its outcomes stood to be set aside as a result. Zilwa said a conference could not proceed until ANC branch disputes over accreditation had been resolved. This required delegates at the conference to approve the credentials of those present before the conference proceeded. This, said Zilwa, never took place.

Instead the conference had descended into chaos and violence with delegates hurling chairs at each other. Phumulo Masualle, who was the provincial ANC chairman at the time, and his supporters walked out.

Zilwa said that even if the court found the conference had been properly convened, once chaos erupted, it ended. The resuscitation of the collapsed conference by remaining delegates and members of the national executive committee was therefore improper.

But Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, arguing for the ANC, dismissed all of Zilwa’s contentions. He said the report on the delegates’ credentials had in fact been adopted. He said Masualle’s supporters had created the chaos with the direct intention of collapsing the conference. The delegates remaining behind consisted of 54% of the total delegates at the conference and they had every democratic right to proceed.

“Those who tried to instigate the collapse left. Those, who were in the majority, decided to proceed. The NEC, the highest decision-making body, endorsed that decision.”

Ngcukaitobi said the ANC members had in any event resorted to the ANC with their complaints about the conference and whether its outcomes were valid. By doing so they had triggered the party’s internal remedies and these should be exhausted before they could legally resort to court.

“The ANC is fighting all-out territorial war. Why are the courts getting engaged when the matter is being dealt with at political level?”

Zilwa said it was vital the matter be resolved before the national conference kicked off in mid-December.

He says if it was found the election of the PEC was tainted, those delegates would be voting delegates at the national conference – which would in turn taint the election of the NEC.

Judgment will be handed down in Grahamstown on December 12.