Former president Jacob Zuma’s MK party has had a bad run in local courts in recent months, losing a number of cases which have laid bare the party’s internal battles.
The electoral court delivered a judgment on Friday relating to a complaint it lodged against the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC).
The party had fielded two candidates in a by-election in Msunduzi Municipality, Pietermaritzburg, and took the IEC to court for proceeding with one of the candidates. The party through its member, Vusumusi Mvelase, nominated Nkosinathi Mshengu to run for the December by-election.
Two weeks after the submission, MK’s former KwaZulu-Natal legislature chief whip, Kwazi Mbanjwa, submitted the name of Sithabiso Nkabinde for the same by-election. The IEC replaced Mshengu with Nkabinde citing that Mbanjwa was registered with it as a contact person for the party.
The court criticised the IEC for making a blunder by initially accepting Mshengu’s nomination from a person who was not registered as the party’s IEC contact person. Moses Phooko in his judgment said the commission had “weaknesses in its internal system”.
The MK party lost the case because it failed to notify and update its contact person to the commission when it had leadership troubles with Mbanjwa.
This loss continues a trajectory of legal reversals for MK.
MK Mpumalanga leader Mary Phadi won a case against the party in December after she was removed from the position and replaced by former public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane. Phadi won the initial stage of her case at the high court in Mbombela. The party, however, said it would appeal the judgment and continues to support Mkhwebane in leading the province.
In the same month the party lost a case in which bishop-turned-politician Sophonia Tsekedi sued it.
Tsekedi was the number one candidate on the MK parliamentary candidate list after Zuma was barred from running for parliament. Tsekedi, however, was not appointed when the party won 58 seats in the May 29 elections and he sued MK for not making him an MP.
Tsekedi and Khethiso Tebe, who held the seventh spot on the candidate list, challenged their removal from the parliamentary list at the Western Cape High Court and won.
Speaking to Business Day, political analyst Dirk Kotze said the party’s internal troubles could get worse ahead of the 2026 local government elections.
“The court case losses are an indication of the internal contestation within the party. There aren’t well-established structures yet in the party,” Kotze said.
“The leadership has not asserted their authority in terms of the internal procedures of the party. The party has been so much synchronised around the position of its president, Zuma. That is what its constitution says, that in the end all authority is fixed in the president of MK.”
Kotze said that though MK published its constitution late last year, its party members were not clear about the election procedures and this could trigger more infighting. “It is almost predictable that this [internal conflict] will happen on a larger scale during the local government elections.”
He said election procedure should be a “major concern” for the party’s leadership ahead of the elections. KwaZulu-Natal, which is MK party’s home ground, has been experiencing political killings since 2011.
“The fact that MK is taken to court means that they cannot agree internally about matters. It should be a serious concern for the MK party. If you look at several parties, especially around local government elections, the contest for candidates is much more than at the provincial and national level because there are so many wards.
“That is where the real contestation will be. If a party does not have a well-established nomination process it can be problematic. In previous local government elections, especially in KwaZulu-Natal, it even led to assassinations. If they do not sort it now that cannot be excluded for next year.”
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