ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has dismissed as “reckless” a letter — written a week before the party’s abortive Eastern Cape elective conference — alleging misrepresentation and procedural breaches.
Mbalula described the contents of the letter, penned on March 19 by ANC provincial secretary Lulama Ngcukayitobi and sent to the party’s top leadership, as a product of “internal political contestation”.
The Eastern Cape High Court issued an interim interdict on March 26, preventing the three-day conference, scheduled to take place last weekend, from proceeding.
The gathering was later postponed to allow all legal challenges — centring on alleged irregularities in the conference run-up — to unfold in court.
Ngcukayitobi’s letter caused divisions within the ANC, with the party’s Eastern Cape provincial executive committee distancing itself from it.
He was expected to contest for the position of ANC provincial chair against his former ally and premier, Oscar Mabuyane, who had indicated he would seek re-election.
Responding to Ngcukayitobi on April 1, Mbalula wrote: “The secretary-general’s office must state plainly that the manner in which your letter was framed, escalated and circulated was reckless in its effect.
“Serious allegations were tabled in a manner that treated them as though they were already fact, when many of those allegations had not yet been tested through the internal processes created by the ANC constitution and the revised conference guidelines for that very purpose.”
Ngcukayitobi declined to comment on Thursday, saying the secretary-general’s letter did not warrant a response.
Mbalula noted in his letter that he had allowed Ngcukayitobi to present the issues he had raised to national and provincial ANC officials.
He said that Ngcukayitobi‘s approach had contributed to the party being brought into organisational disrepute and later litigation.
“That concern is sharpened by the fact that you were not a bystander to the process,” Mbalula wrote.
“You were centrally located within the provincial organisational environment that generated the original roadmap and the conference-preparation sequence.”
He said the provincial dispute resolution committee fell within Ngcukayitobi‘s purview.
“In those circumstances, it was incumbent upon your office to insist that complaints be routed, tested and classified through the prescribed internal architecture, rather than elevated upwards as undifferentiated allegations.
“The movement is therefore entitled to take the view that you cannot sleep on duty within a process falling squarely within your organisational remit and later complain upward using untested material that could and should have been properly tested through the very structures available to you.
“That is not diligence. It is organisationally reckless conduct.”
Mbalula said the complaints about QR codes, scanners and conference processes had been mischaracterised.
Clear guidelines existed for how branches should register meetings and raise disputes.
He said concerns should have been formally classified and channelled through internal structures, rather than bundled together and escalated politically without proper evidence or standing.
“The subsequent court processes have shown the damage that follows when this discipline is not maintained.
“Once broad allegations are advanced without sufficient testing, they may be repeated, amplified and recast in litigation in a manner prejudicial to the movement.
“The ANC cannot allow internal correspondence, however serious its tone, to become an informal substitute for the constitutional and guideline-based processes that exist precisely to protect both fairness and organisational integrity.”
He said Ngcukayitobi’s letter was not proof that the allegations were established.
“Issues raised by you fell properly within the dispute-resolution architecture. They were required to move through and be tested by the competent structures.
“The secretary-general’s office must state that, viewed in its full context, your letter is reasonably read as reflecting a form of political contestation expressed through an administrative and grievance framework.
“That is precisely why discipline of process, proof and forum was so important.
“The movement cannot allow political contestation to be displaced into untested allegations, organisational confusion, and parallel grievance narratives that later find their way into litigation.”
Follow The Herald WhatsApp channel today and stay connected to the stories shaping our world.
