Ronnie Malomane (Delwyn Verasamy)
Last-ditch talks are to take place between the ANC national leadership and disaffected Mpumalanga party members this weekend in an attempt to resolve their high court bid to stop 108 “ghost” branches from taking part in the provincial list process ahead of next year’s national and provincial elections.
The move comes after branch members, led by Ronnie Malomane, approached the high court in Pretoria, sitting as the circuit court in Mbombela, last Friday to request a two-part order to prevent the 108 branches from participating in the list conference and to disband the provincial executive committee.
The branches had gone to court after a breakdown in negotiations at Luthuli House, the ANC’s national headquarters, which had instructed that the “cloned” branches in the Inkomazi region be consolidated with legitimate branch structures. The ANC’s national dispute resolution committee had also found that several branches had “ghost” members (ANC members who had died but were still on the branch membership lists) and had ordered a membership audit.
Last Friday, after hearing argument from counsel for the ANC and the Mpumalanga members, Judge Segopotje Mphahlele postponed the application until December 13.
The judge ordered that the applicants provide the court with supplementary affidavits regarding their claims about the cloned branches in the Inkomazi region and that the provincial executive committee under former chairperson David Mabuza had been elected unlawfully on the basis of inflated membership figures.
Mphahlele ruled that, if the parties wished to settle out of court, they should do so by December 4 and present their agreement to the court.
Irate branch members have staged marches and other protests in Mpumalanga and at Luthuli House in Johannesburg, demanding that the provincial executive committee be disbanded and replaced with a provincial task team. The conflict has delayed the election of a replacement for Mabuza, who was elected ANC deputy president at the party’s national conference in December, and other provincial leaders elected to the national executive committee.
Malomane told the Mail & Guardian that representatives of the ANC national working committee had requested at court that they withdraw the action and allow the leadership time to deal with membership issues.
“We could not agree to this, but agreed to park the bus and suspend the two parts of the application until December,” said Malomane. “We will still be submitting our other affidavits next week, as we do not have a lot of faith in the process.
“So far they have not been negotiating in good faith. They are allowing the same people who caused the problem of ghost members and who were elected in a fraudulent way to run the auditing process and the process of consolidating the branches. You can’t do that. You can’t be [both] a player and a referee,” he said.
“We met yesterday and resolved that talks must start again as soon as possible. We are now waiting to hear from them.”
Malomane said they would prepare to return to court while waiting for the follow-up meeting with the national working committee.
ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe failed to comment by the time of publication. Acting ANC Mpumalanga chairperson Mandla Ndlovu did not respond to calls from the M&G.