The Cape High Court was set to be busy on Monday dealing with a wave of legal action ahead of the floor-crossing window that opens on Thursday.
The court will hear argument on a bid by United Democratic Movement deputy president Malizole Diko and five other party officials to have their suspension from the party reversed, and to prevent it from expelling them.
Their suspension on August 5, on suspicion that they intended to jump ship to another party, was to have been followed by a disciplinary inquiry.
The other five are Diko’s fellow MP Nomakhaya Mdaka and four MPLs, one each from the Western and Eastern Cape, Gauteng and Limpopo.
The UDM lost nine MPs and MPLs to the African National Congress during the previous national and provincial floor-crossing window in 2003.
Also on Monday, the court will be asked to deal with a barrage of applications related to the Independent Democrats’ bid to expel its former Western Cape leader Lennit Max.
The independent chairperson of a party disciplinary hearing, Sarah Christie, ruled last week that Max had breached the party’s code of conduct, and expelled him.
Max, however, demanded an appeal hearing — which the party has scheduled for Monday afternoon — and obtained a court order temporarily preventing the speaker of the Western Cape legislature from swearing in a replacement in his seat in the legislature.
Since then, the ID has asked the court for a ruling that he may not cross the floor, and on Sunday night, Max served the party with papers claiming that the appeal was being rushed and that the party officials designated to hear it were biased.
ID attorney Cecil Burgess said it was hoping to argue all three matters simultaneously before a judge on Monday, once the party had had a chance to file papers in response to the latest application. — Sapa