By Thys Khiba
Bloemfontein – The Free State African National Congress Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) members have filed legal papers in the Constitutional Court, to challenge last month’s Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) ruling declaring the governing party’s 2018 provincial conference unlawful and unconstitutional.
“Take notice further that the affidavit of Paseka Nompondo together with the confirmatory affidavit of Elias Segobelo Magashule together with annexures hereto will be used in support of this application.”
This after the MEC for Police, Roads and Transport, Sam Mashinini was in 2018 elected as the provincial chairperson of the ANC in Free State, replacing the now ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule.
Meanwhile, the African National Congress (ANC) National Working Committee has recently appointed former president Kgalema Motlanthe to find a political solution to factional battles in the Free State province.
Mashinini doesn’t agree with the facts presented by the SCA and is accusing SCA of not applying its mind. According to Mashinini, the SCA confused facts and attributing conduct to counsel on wrong facts. “The SCA has committed material errors of facts and law. The judgement of the SCA is riddled with factual errors, an indication of its failure to apply its mind to the facts.”
Furthermore, Mashinini indicates that the SCA made an obvious error, and this is a demonstration of failure to apply its mind to the matter, by assuming that the ANC national participated in the appeal despite the court excusing Ishmael Semenya SC, who represented the party’s national office, from the hearing.
“Semenya never participated in arguments and was excused from participating because no relief was sought against his client… These repeated factual errors in the SCA judgement are demonstrative of the SCA’s failure to apply its mind to the matter and thus unable to apply the correct law to the correct facts,” said Mashinini.
Meanwhile, the decisions or resolutions and outcomes of the provincial conference were declared unlawful and unconstitutional by the SCA. Furthermore, the declaration of invalidity is only effective as from the date of the delivery of the judgement.
Free State Central News has also tried to get a comment from the provincial chairperson of the ANC provincial chairperson, Sam Mashinini. “Mr Mashinini cannot comment on your media inquiries, because the matter is now sub judice,” said MEC Sam Mashinini Personal Assistant, Tshego Sekete.