By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
@AlonSkuy.
The ANC provincial executive committee (PEC) in the Free State has filed papers in the Constitutional Court, asking it to set aside a recent Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) ruling that declared its election in 2018 unlawful and unconstitutional.
The move by the PEC, which is backed by the party’s secretary-general Ace Magashule, is at odds with the decision taken by the ANC’s national working committee (NWC), which preferred a “political solution” to the matter and was against any legal appeals on the SCA ruling.
The NWC appointed former president Kgalema Motlanthe to “lead engagements aimed at building a united structure in the province”.
The ANC Free State PEC, through its chairperson Sam Mashinini, wants the Constitutional Court to set aside the SCA ruling that declared 2018 conference unlawful.
“The SCA has committed material errors of fact and law. The judgment of the SCA is riddled with factual errors, an indication of its failure to apply its mind to the facts,” Mashinini says in his founding affidavit.
In its ruling, the SCA said: “The order of the court below is set aside and replaced by the following: it is declared that the provincial conference for the Free State that took place on May 18 and 19 2018 was held in violation of the court order of November 29 2017 under case number 5942/2017 and that the said provincial conference, its decisions/resolutions and/or outcome are unlawful and unconstitutional.
“The declaration of invalidity mentioned in paragraph 3 of the order shall only be effective as from the date of the delivery of this judgment.”
Magashule has filed a confirmatory affidavit in support of the ANC Free State application for leave to appeal the SCA ruling.