Eyes are on the ANC’s national officials today as they are expected to decide on the disciplinary action to be taken against suspended ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule as his fight against his removal has spilled into the courts.
Magashule was recently slapped with a suspension by the governing party after he refused to step aside from his position along with other leaders who have been formally charged for corruption and other serious crimes.
Magashule, instead, unilaterally slapped President Cyril Ramaphosa with a suspension letter which saw him being rebuked by the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) which ordered that he issue a public apology or be subjected to disciplinary action.
He, however, refused to apologise by Friday as instructed by the ANC officials, and instead served the party with court papers in which he is challenging his suspension before the South Gauteng High Court.
The NEC had instructed the officials to lead the process of ordering Magashule to apologise to the party’s structures or sanctioning him.
ANC MP and NEC member Bongani Bongo, who has also been charged for corruption and who is also fighting against his suspension, told Sowetan yesterday that he was considering joining Magashule in his court action against the party.
“I am still consulting now,” Bongo said.
ANC national spokesperson Pule Mabe indicated that the party’s top brass will also discuss its response to Magashule’s court case today.
In his court papers Magashule said he would not apologise for attempting to suspend Ramaphosa without a court order, adding that the apology would not be genuine even if he were to make it.
He accused the NEC of being infested with factionalism and warned of its demise if the “step-aside” rule was not scrapped in its current form.
ANC NEC member and justice minister Ronald Lamola, who belongs to the party’s dominant faction, argued yesterday that the ANC was empowered by its constitution to remove those who were charged with criminality.
“The constitution says we must ensure that we protect the integrity of the organisation when someone has been charged or indicted in a court of law. The NEC is implementing the constitutional provision, guided by conference resolutions,” Lamola said.
Speaking on the by-election campaign trail in the Eastern Cape’s OR Tambo region yesterday, Lamola accused Magashule and his backers, dubbed the “RET forces”, of being mischievous by accusing the NEC of factionalism.
Magashule argued that the party under Ramaphosa had failed to implement many resolutions adopted at the Nasrec conference, including the nationalisation of the SA Reserve Bank and introduction of the basic income grant and had instead gone “into an unprecedented overdrive” to implement the step-aside resolution as soon as he was criminally charged.
Lamola, however, dismissed this, arguing that the RET faction had also failed to implement the resolutions for a decade under former president Jacob Zuma.
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