Tuesday’s court ruling declaring the 2015 ANC conference in KwaZulu-Natal unlawful dealt a huge psychological blow to the faction aligned to President Jacob Zuma and gives his deputy Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidential campaign a morale boost.
The ruling, which declared the election of Zuma ally Sihle Zikalala null and void, threw a big spanner in the works for the governing party as it continues preparations for its December national elective conference.
KwaZulu-Natal is the ANC’s largest and the most influential province. It is also at the centre of the Zuma camp’s push for Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to succeed him.
The ruling suggests that the province has become effectively leaderless. In the 2015, now illegal conference, Zikalala defeated then chairman and premier Senzo Mchunu for the post.
Mchunu is a strong Ramaphosa supporter and on Tuesday his allies said there were moves to approach the court for an "enforcement order", to return Mchunu to the helm of the province. If successful, this could lead to a Ramaphosa ally running the preparations for the December gathering, significantly changing the dynamics of the party’s leadership race.
The group that won the case, led by councillor Lawrence Dube, suggested that the ANC’s national leadership order Zikalala and his leadership to vacate their offices and put an interim structure in place.
It is unclear whether the ANC will be able to rerun the conference in time, with the worst-case scenario touted by insiders on Tuesday being the postponement of the December conference, which could lead to more violence in a province already riven by political killings.
But ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said on Tuesday he was confident the ruling would not derail the December conference. The party’s Mangaung conference had not been derailed by a court setting aside the Free State conference results in 2012. In the current case, the ANC had three months to deal with it, Mantashe said.
Judge Jerome Mnguni said he was "disinclined" to determine how the ANC should regulate its internal processes. "Consequences will follow from the declaration of invalidity, which, going forward, are best dealt with by the ANC itself in regulating its internal processes," he said. Mnguni effectively ruled that all decisions, including leadership elections, taken at the 2015 conference were unlawful and invalid
The ANC will study the ruling and discuss its "political ramifications". It will then refer it to the ANC national executive committee (NEC).
It is understood the now illegal provincial executive committee will hold a meeting on Tuesday evening and meet with the top six officials of the ANC on Wednesday. The committee has said it will appeal against the ruling. Another option under consideration by this group is to put up a fight in the NEC at the end of September, to ensure that the province is placed under the leadership of a provincial task team aligned to its faction. Zuma continues to command large support in the NEC.
The irregularities highlighted by the court included that branches were excluded from the gathering; were not given adequate opportunity to appeal against the results of audits; and that the voting process or results appeared to have been manipulated or influenced.
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