As African National Congress Provincial Councils start consolidating branch nominations for President Jacob Zuma’s successor, challenges to the nominations process threaten to derail the conference.
Analysts say the conference itself might not have the requisite delegates to go-ahead, or its legitimacy may be challenged.
The deadline for ANC branches to nominate leaders and delegates was extended from November 15 to 25 and all provinces will forward their consolidated nominations to Luthuli House.
ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe: “Then we go to the provinces and have pre-registration and that pre-registration will be what came out of the nominations, so nominations themselves are beginning to develop accreditation.”
At the conference all delegates have to do is collect their accreditation cards and the names of delegates cannot be changed at the conference, but branch nominations for leaders can be changed.
Political analyst Prof Steven Friedman: “At the actual conference it’s a secret vote so you can never be a hundred percent sure that the people who promised their fellow members that they would vote for a particular candidate will vote for that candidate. Also there is provision in the ANC constitution for candidates to be nominated at the conference, it’s very difficult to do that, you can’t be nominated as a candidate unless 25% of the delegates support you.”
Dr Friedman is yet to be convinced that the conference will happen, saying: “The ANC problem is that it’s not clear whether they can hold the conference, because there are so many challenges around the country to whether the branches have been chosen legally or not, some of this may land up in court some of it may be challenged on the floor of the conference. Secondly the ANC’s other problem may be that if all its branches haven’t nominated candidates by now than 90 % of the delegates will be branch delegates and the constitution says that 90 % of the delegates have to be branch delegates.”
According to the ANC constitution the five year term of the current leadership ends in December.
Should the ANC fail to hold the conference or legitimacy of election of the new leadership be challenged, the current leadership will be illegitimate after December.
