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The ANC in the Eastern Cape has been dealt yet another heavy legal blow on Thursday, when the high court in Makhanda set aside the recent appointment of the party’s provincial task team (PTT), which had replaced the provincial executive committee (PEC), whose term had lapsed in May.
The high court has declared the appointment of a 44-member PTT by the party’s national bosses last month unconstitutional and unlawful, and thus reviewed it and set it aside.
The issues that arose in this matter could have been easily resolved between the parties without the costly litigation involved had the ANC been upfront with its members.
— Judge Vuyokazi Noncembu
The court also declared all decisions taken by the new provincial structure invalid, unlawful and of no force or effect.
As of Thursday, the PTT, led by former provincial ANC chair Oscar Mabuyane as convenor and Helen Sauls-August as provincial co-ordinator, has been barred by court from “representing the Eastern Cape in any structure, function, meeting, conference, or any activity of the ANC, at any level whatsoever.”
This is a second major and critical legal battle the party’s provincial bosses have lost in the past three months, including the late March interdict of their much-anticipated provincial elective conference.
Both these legal losses had been orchestrated by three disgruntled members, who had taken the party to court to interdict the provincial conference amid branch meeting disputes they said went unresolved.
Recently, the trio approached the Makhanda high court after Luthuli House had dissolved the province’s PEC and appointed a task team instead, asking that the PTT be dissolved pending their ongoing case that abruptly interdicted the March conference.
In his Thursday judgment, after having heard the matter over the past few weeks, judge Vuyokazi Noncembu said the party’s appointment of the PTT was unlawful in that it was in breach of the applicant’s contractual rights “as governed by the constitution, rules, policies and directives of the ANC”.
Noncembu said the conduct of the ANC in its opposition to this application “strongly suggests a lack of bona fides on their part”.
“The issues that arose in this matter could have been easily resolved between the parties without the costly litigation involved had the ANC been upfront with its members,” Noncembu said.
“This is particularly so if one considers the purported resolution that was belatedly presented in their papers. Not to mention the contradictory versions presented by the respondents in their opposition to the matter. Such callous conduct, in my view, warrants the censure of this court,” she said.
“I’m therefore persuaded that a punitive cost order is warranted in these circumstances,” Noncembu said.
This is a developing story.
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