The African National Congress (ANC) will continue to engage its aggrieved members directly, to manage the fallout from the party’s 68 delegates who were registered for the national conference, but were not found on the voters roll – now known as the Nasrec 68, the ruling party’s attorney said on Saturday.
“From the side of the ANC, we have always made it very clear we don’t want to be litigating against our own members. The ultimate objective is to address all the grievances in a satisfactory manner,” attorney for the ruling party Ajay Chagan told African News Agency (ANA).
“From that point of view, we don’t have anything to hide from our members — that is our good faith. Nothing that happened, happened with the intention of manipulating any results. It was a result of a fair auditing process.”
A meeting held by the representatives of the party, and representatives of the 68 on Friday, managed to avert a bruising court wrangle for now, as all parties continued to engage before turning to the courts.
The disgruntled members believe that the omission of their votes from the overall vote count could have affected the final tally for the position of secretary-general of the ANC, which was won by Free State Premier Ace Magashule.
The vote difference between Magashule and his counterpart, former KwaZulu-Natal Premier Senzo Mchunu, was just 24 votes.
The disgruntled members, from Limpopo and KZN, are supporters of Mchunu, and they have demanded that their votes which are known as “special votes” should be included and have threatened to go to court.
– African News Agency (ANA)
