The ANC’s elective conference in Mpumalanga, scheduled for this weekend and expected to back Cyril Ramaphosa’s second term as party president, may be interdicted over disputes about the national working committee disbanding the provincial leadership recently.
Mpumalanga is one of eight provinces scheduled to host its elective conference before the ANC’s national conference in December. Its 13th conference is planned for this weekend, starting from Friday, at which Deputy President David Mabuza’s successor as chair will be elected.
The four-year mandate of the provincial executive committee, which was elected after Mabuza’s departure in 2015, expired, prompting the national working committee to earlier this month disband the structure and replace it with a provincial task team. The task team was mandated to convene the elective conference.
In a letter seen by Business Day and sent to the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) on Monday after that structure’s meeting at the weekend, disgruntled members of the party in Mpumalanga informed the national leadership of their intention to interdict the provincial conference.
They cited the procedure that the national working committee followed to disband and replace the defunct provincial executive committee as one of their reasons to seek the interdict.
The national working committee runs the daily activities of the ANC while the NEC is the party’s highest decision-making body between conferences.
The working committee is a subcommittee of the NEC “with no authority to appoint the interim executive committees of the ANC”, the letter reads.
Usurp powers
The working committee’s decisions “serve mainly as recommendations to the NEC, and ... until such decisions are ratified by the NEC, in accordance to the ANC constitution, such recommendations have no force of law”, it said.
The disgruntled members, led by Edward Mhlonishwa and Fakazi Shongwe, said it was illegal for the working committee, with no express authority from the NEC, to “usurp the powers, functions and duties of the NEC” when it appointed the Mpumalanga task team.
The group is linked to former provincial executive committee member and Mabuza rival Peter Nyoni, who was suspended by the provincial leadership in March after threatening to take the governing party to court over the appointment of the task team.
The group said they intend to approach the courts for a declaratory order that the national working committee lacks the powers to disband ANC structures unless directed by the NEC, and that the decision by the national working committee to disband the provincial executive committee was ratified by the national leadership only during this past weekend’s meeting.
They want the court to interdict the conference and to set aside the decisions of the Mpumalanga task team that have been made since its appointment earlier in March.
Shongwe and Mhlonishwa want the case to be heard on or before March 31.
ANC spokesperson in the province Sasekani Manzini told Business Day previously that the province had done the necessary work to convene a conference, including resolving disputes of ghost members.
The lead-up to the twice-postponed conference has been marred by violence, including the torching of the party’s provincial headquarters in Mbombela.
The province has reached the 70% threshold for branches in good standing to convene an elective conference.
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