Triple court blows for NDZ
ANC presidential hopeful Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma’s campaign has suffered a hat-trick of legal defeats – on the eve of the ANC’s crucial elective conference.
Every vote, every delegate has become crucial in the battle between her and rival Cyril Ramaphosa to win the party presidency this weekend, after last-minute talks to get the camps to agree to a unity or compromise slate collapsed yesterday.
In a day of high drama, the High Courts of KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and Mpumalanga – regarded as Dlamini Zuma strongholds where the provincial ANC have nominated her – barred the provinces’ top brass and several branches from participating in the conference, which is scheduled to start today at Nasrec, near Soweto.
The court decisions forced the ANC to call for a special meeting of its national executive committee.
As lobbying for positions entered the last lap before nominations, it has also emerged that proposals for consensus leadership to prevent a possible split after the party elections have collapsed, setting the scene for open warfare as the camps square up in a winner takes all contest.
The provincial executive committees of KZN and Free State were to have sent 54 delegates together. Now none of them can vote, should they attend.
In Pietermaritzburg, the KwaZulu-Natal High Court ruled that the ANC provincial executive committee remains dissolved, slashing 27 delegates in the process – who can now attend only as observers or branch delegates.
Yesterday the ANC in the province said it was deeply dissatisfied and disappointed, and warned that the judgment would have “huge ramifications for the ANC constitution and the functionality of the organisation in its entirety”.
It intends appealing the ruling.
In Bloemfontein, Ace Magashule, the long-standing Free State provincial ANC chair, was barred from attending the conference after the Free State High Court ruled that his re-election at last weekend’s provincial conference was “unlawful and void” and the conference itself was “unlawful and unconstitutional”.
Magashule, a key Dlamini Zuma supporter, is her choice to become the party’s secretary-general, but the High Court found his tenure as provincial chair had ended in April this year.
He and several members from at least 14 Free State branches were barred from participating this weekend.
It’s the second time he’s been barred from an elective conference: five years ago former Deputy ChiefJustice Dikgang Moseneke barred him from attending the 2012 Mangaung conference.
Reacting to the High Court ruling,the spokesperson for the disbanded Free State ANC, Thabo Meeko, said the ANC PEC was still “studying the judgment and its implications” and would comment later.
The Mahikeng High Court barred another 69 delegates, from an original list of 218 claimed to have been irregularly appointed. The court also ruled that the election of the Bojanala Regional Conference in September – seen to be supportive of Dlamini Zuma – was also “unlawful and unconstitutional”. The High Court also set aside the decisions of the regional conference.
The court set aside the nominations of delegates from 23 branches in the Madibeng sub-region, seven branches in Rustenburg and eight branches in the Moses Kotane sub-region – annulling a total of 38 branches.
ANC rebels have vowed to fight the participation of nearly 70 delegates at today’s elective conference.
The group has disputed ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe’s assertion that the court decision applied only to the regional conference held in September.
He suggested that if the ruling was interpreted as preventing delegates their right to participate at the conference, then the ANC would appeal it.
“We accept the judgment, we will nullify the region and rerun it,” he said.
Mantashe said the judgment did not affect the national conference but it was not necessarily a bad thing if the judiciary protected ANC members.
However, the representative of the 40 disgruntled ANC members in the North West’s biggest region, Gabriel Nkgweng, said that as far as they were concerned, all processes that flowed from the branch general meetings (BGMs) declared unconstitutional were null and void, including the provincial general council that announced Dlamini Zuma as its preferred candidate.
“The BGMs are declared null and void and their decisions are set aside,” said Nkgweng, who is a former Bojanala regional treasurer.
He said those delegates should not be participating in the national conference.
NW ANC secretary Dakota Legoete lambasted members for suing the party rather than resolving issues internally.
Like Mantashe, Legoete denied that the ruling applied to the 38 branches, claiming it applied only to the regional executive committee.
“It is our firm view that the court erred on some of the critical matters of ANC procedures and processes. It is in this regard that we have instructed our legal team to immediately file an appeal,” Legoete said.