Africa-Press – South-Africa. After months of bickering, the ANC in the Free State reached consensus on tentative dates in September for the regional and the crucial provincial elective conferences.
In a video that News24 has seen, Free State ANC interim provincial committee (IPC) coordinator Paseka Nompondo said the IPC’s mandate had been extended to 30 September and that 31 July had been set as the deadline for provincial ANC members to renew their membership.
Nompondo added that regional conferences would be held between 15 and 30 September and that the provincial conference would take place towards the end of September.
“The IPC is preparing a conference of the province and conferences of the regions. We have set up a cut-off date for membership renewal for the 31st of July to allow all ANC members to renew their membership.
“Once a member has renewed their membership of the ANC and becomes a member in good standing and becomes a paid-up member, they then have the right as a member of the ANC to participate in the ANC branch general meeting. They may also participate in the preparation of a branch to participate in the regional and provincial conferences,” Nompondo could be heard saying.
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She added that new branch executive committees would be elected in August and September.
In addition, branches will elect their delegates for regional conferences and the provincial conference.
Speaking to News24 on Wednesday, IPC spokesperson Oupa Khoabane said discussions on the exact dates for the regional and provincial conferences were ongoing.
Khoabane confirmed that the tentative agreement was that the membership renewal process would be wrapped up at the end of July and that the regional and provincial conferences would be concluded by the end of September.
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“We want branches to reach the 70% threshold of having convened branch general meetings and selecting delegates to participate at the conferences. We have that roadmap as the IPC, that says as of the 30th September, we must go to the provincial conference.
“Even if all regional conferences have not convened, but branches have met the threshold to hold the provincial conference, we will then go ahead with the provincial elective conference. As you know, conferences are for branches, and 90% of the delegates in the provincial conference are branch delegates, and the rest are league structures and the IPC members,” Khoabane said.
Furthermore, he said the delay in the convening of regions and provinces was to avoid “unnecessary litigation”.
In 2012, the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC), led by then secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, decided to bar the 20-member Free State provincial executive committee. The move came after the Constitutional Court found it to be invalid, following a legal challenge by some branches over the processes leading up to the conference.
This excluded the Free State PEC from voting at the 2012 ANC Mangaung conference, apart from members like then Free State chairperson Ace Magashule who voted in his capacity as an NEC member.
In 2017, a similar fate befell the province’s PEC after the NEC decided that the PECs of KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State would not be allowed to vote on any matter at the party’s hotly contested 54th elective conference in Nasrec.
Nompondo said: “In the past, we were not able to work together for a number of years, but now I do have a sense that all members in the IPC are working towards what we were brought together to achieve.”
He reiterated that “by the time the national conference sits in December, we would have had a provincial conference of the ANC in the Free State”.
Last month, disgruntled ANC members from the Mangaung region approached the Free State High Court over what it termed the “slow pace of conference preparations.”
The group has also called on the disbandment of the ANC Free State IPC, led by former economic development MEC Mxolisi Dukwana and Nompondo.
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The interim structure was formed after the governing party decided not to appeal a Supreme Court of Appeal ruling that the provincial executive committee elected in 2018 was lawful.
The frontrunner for the ANC Free State chairpersonship are Thabo Manyoni and Dukwana.
Having been at the helm since 2021, Dukwana, a close ally of President Cyril Ramaphosa, made his name as Magashule’s nemesis.
During the time he has been in office, Dukwana has fallen out with ANC alliance partners as well as some who were sympathetic to him.
Manyoni, on the other hand, has grown in popularity, having recently been awarded an honorary membership attribute award from former Mozambique president Joaquim Chissano and former Seychelles president Danny Faure during the 9th Africities Summit in May.
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