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ANC presidential hopeful Mathews Phosa will go to court on Monday to apply for the dissolution of the Mpumalanga provincial executive committee (PEC) following the branch nomination results on Friday.
It was found that most of the branches nominated unity above individual names for the top six positions when the ANC’s electoral commission announced results on Friday afternoon.
Unity has been championed by Premier David Mabuza. He believes that the ANC elective conference in two weeks’ time should not be contested in order to stymie further divisions and probably another split in the organisation.
For president, 223 branches nominated unity against 123 for Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and 117 for Cyril Ramaphosa. The same trend played out for the rest of the top six positions.
Phosa’s Mpumalanga campaign co-ordinator Ronnie Malomane said the court application would seek nullification of the nomination process after branches that lodged disputes with both the PEC and national executive committee did not get feedback.
“We want the nomination process to be re-run because 35 branches lodged disputes and there was no report-back”, Malomane said.
He also said that Mabuza and the PEC had misled branches into nominating unity. “The nomination guidelines are clear that a person with a name and surname must be nominated. Mabuza and the PEC misled branches and we want the PEC to be disbanded,” Malomane said.
He said that the ANC electoral commission had raised concern about branches that nominated unity. The commission had listed unity nominations as abstentions, but Mabuza and the delegates protested that they should be recorded as such.
The commission obliged but said the matter would need to be discussed by the conference.
Provincial ANC secretary Mandla Ndlovu responded: “It’s up to them. They can go to court and we’ll defend [our viewpoint].”
