KZN ANC election battle laid bare in court

Lawyers for the ANC members challenging the November 2015 election of the party’s KZN provincial executive committee say the elective meeting was held without the approval of one third of its branches, as required by its constitution. According to a Mail & Guardian Online report, they also claim that delays in getting the case to court are a result of President Jacob Zuma’s failure to fulfil a promise to deal with their clients’ complaints – that the conference had been rigged – within five days of his meeting them in December 2015. Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, counsel for the five ANC members who brought the application in the KZN High Court (Pietermaritzburg) to set the conference result aside, told the court yesterday that the conference should have been held in May 2016. Instead, the provincial executive had decided to hold it early, in November 2015, but failed to secure the backing of a third of the branches to do so. Ngcukaitobi said the decision usurped the power of the branches to call an early conference, a mistake which was ‘fatal’. Ngcukaitobi said that after the conference, the applicants had appealed the outcome and met Zuma and other members of the ANC top six in Umhlanga on 12 December, 2015. ‘He said he would respond after five days. He never did so,’ Ngcukaitobi said. The applicants, he said, then wrote to ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe through lawyers to express their dissatisfaction. When they received no positive response and the ANC national executive committee confirmed the result, they had no choice but to go to court.

Full report on the Mail & Guardian Online site