An eleventh-hour court application to stop the conference was granted in the Pietermaritzburg High court on Friday. The ANC has been told that it may not hold its controversy-riddled KwaZulu-Natal elective conference, scheduled to take place this weekend.
Disgruntled ANC members – who claim to represent 44 branches out of 88 in the troubled Moses Mabhida region – rushed to court on Friday afternoon to apply for an urgent interdict to stop the three-day conference from going ahead.
By Friday afternoon, hundreds of delegates had already started streaming into the University of Zululand in Empangeni after the ANC National Executive Committee announced at the end of May that it “had gone beyond the minimum requirements” prescribed in its constitution for the conference to proceed.
Absent, however, from Zululand, was ANC Provincial Task Team co-ordinator Sihle Zikala – who has been tipped to be elected chairman of the ANC in KZN at the conference – who was instead at the high court. He was accompanied by eThekwini mayor, Zandile Gumede.
Judge granted the inderdict to stop the ANC PEC this weekend !!!!! @TimesLIVE #ANC PEC pic.twitter.com/4xtQWYzm3J
— Jackie Clausen Pics (@jackie_pics) June 8, 2018
Several ANC branches objected to the announcement of the dates for the conference, including the Moses Mabhida region members who launched the legal application.
The application was defended by the ANC and members of the Provincial Task Team, who were cited as respondents.
After standing down the matter for a short while, Judge Jacqueline Henriques granted the interdict to stop the party from proceeding with the conference, saying that if the elective process was tainted, the court should err on the side of caution.
During oral arguments, Advocate Cameron Hunt SC, for the six applicants, said that if the conference went ahead without remedy it would be in breach of the ANC’s own constitution.
In papers before the court, he pointed out that the conference did not have the required number of voting delegates to proceed.
“It is unlawful for the conference with a sub-minimum number of voting delegates. That is, of course, ignoring the fact that, on evidence, some of the delegates at the conference were elected at BGM’s [branch general meetings] which were not properly convened,” he said.
He argued that the ANC still had seven weeks to hold a properly constituted elective conference. “Instead, the respondents are forging ahead doing damage to the entire organisation. Do they want a third rerun of this conference?” he said.
