Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
A big blow for the NDZ faithful
Provincial leadership and branches barred
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 and 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 province’s top brass and several branches from participating in the conference, which is due 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 pos- sible split after the party elections have collapsed. The provincial executive committees of KZN and the Free State had been due to send 54 delegates together. Now none of them can vote, should they attend.
In Bloemfontein, provincial ANC chair Ace Magashule was barred from attending today’s elective conference after the Free State High Court ruled that his re-election at the provincial conference last weekend was “unlawful and void” and the provincial conference “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.
It’s the second time he’s been barred from an elective conference – after former Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke barred him five years ago from attending the 2012 Mangaung conference.
Reacting to the High Court ruling, disbanded Free State ANC spokesperson Thabo Meeko said the ANC provincial executive committee was still “studying the judgment and its implications” and would comment at a later stage.
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.
But ANC rebels have vowed to fight the participation of nearly 70 delegates at today’s elective conference. The group disputed ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe’s assertion that the court decision only applied to the regional conference held in September.
Mantashe suggested that if the ruling was interpreted as preventing delegates their right to participate at the conference then the ANC would appeal it.