An African National Congress (ANC) legal representative has argued that the 2018 May Free State elective conference cannot be nullified on the basis that some branches failed to re-run meetings successfully, ahead of the conference.
The matter is being heard in the high court in Bloemfontein. A disgruntled ANC group from the Free State has accused the party of violating its constitution.
Its ANC vs ANC in court once again; the group says the December 2017 order which declared that 14 branches, where there were irregularities, be re-run, remained in contempt of court.
The legal representative for the disgruntled group Tembeka Ngcukaitobi says the party failed to comply with the order and that no audits were conducted nine months prior to the May conference as per the party’s constitution.
”According to Mr Magashule, the audits were done in February 2018. That’s a vital submission because Mr Mohale spends the five minutes of his submissions denying that any order to it done and simply saying we should not pay any attention to the question of the audits. But the national office says the audits were done so the first thing that you should consider is that the respondents is in conflict with one another about the national audit question.”
Meanwhile, the ANC has come out gun’s blazing over accusations that no branches were re-convened prior to the May 2017 conference.
The ANC’s legal representative William Mokhari says the disgruntled group’s arguments are unfounded. It also argued that branches that failed to re-run did not participate in May conference.
“There are specific 28 branches identified by the court order of the 15th of December which the respondent then re-run of those branches that they rerun and is never in dispute that the respondents did so on the five branches and that’s what we’ve been disputed only five branches successfully conducted reruns and those are the five branches that were allowed to attend there provincial conference of 18 and 19 May 2018 that is not putting dispute my Lord.”
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