KZN ANC 2015 conference was declared invalid by the High Court in Pietermaritzburg.
KwaZulu-Natal ANC leadership say they want to appeal the High Court in Pietermaritzburg ruling on Tuesday which nullified the legitimacy of the party’s 2015 provincial elective conference.
On Wednesday, they filed their intention to appeal the ruling in the Supreme Court of Appeal, pending permission from national leadership.
Provincial spokesperson Mdumiseni Ntuli told News24 that, if the only issue was that the PEC had taken place six months to early, it did not warrant the conference being set aside.
“The PEC met last night and came to conclusion that the irregularities which were pronounced by those aggrieved were of no material effect, and not substantive enough to warrant a decision to set the conference aside,” said Ntuli.
Ntuli explained that they were consulting with national leadership in order to seek permission to file their intention to appeal in the SCA as soon as possible.
“The PEC has appealed to members of the ANC to say, we are not challenging the court decision because we don’t want the ANC to go to conference, but we want to avoid setting the wrong precedent by leaving this as an unchallenged judgment,” he said.
Ntuli said that the judges had not considered the fact that the ANC is a political party, and that they had to take into account other factors other than the law.
“Judges used the law, circumstances and context of the case, completely disregarding the fact that the elections were around the corner. Conferences tend to be divisive, elections are also challenging, so we had to manage those things simultaneously and that was an irrational expectation from the courts,” he said.
Ntuli said that the conference was only called earlier so that they had enough time to campaign before the local government elections in August 2016. — News24