A rerun of the ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal elective conference is within sight as the ruling party concluded the first regional elective conference in KwaDukuza at the weekend.

The conference‚ held at the Meander Manor guesthouse in Salt Rock‚ is the first of nine to be held.

National executive committee member Edna Molewa‚ deployed to monitor the elections‚ said that the remaining conferences‚ including that to elect a provincial executive committee‚ would be staged before May 31.

“We have eight more RECs to be convened. These regions have met the criteria to proceed with the conferences in the next few weeks.

“These regions have convened their branch general meetings and are now meeting the 70% threshold required to convene their regional conferences and elect new regional leadership‚” she said.

The conference came in the wake of a threat by a cohort of ANC eThekwini region branch members that they would go to court to halt a provincial conference.

The representatives of 42 ANC branches in the eThekwini Region held a media briefing at the Royal Hotel on Friday.

The party continues to grapple with a leadership void in KZN with a court challenge by a group of “rebels” having successfully nullified the elective process which saw the installation of the provincial executive committee in 2016.

The group sought to dissolve the legitimacy of ANC provincial secretary Super Zuma‚ provincial chairperson Sihle Zikalala as well as 38 other ANC leaders following the controversial PEC in November 2015.

Following a January court ruling in their favour‚ ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule formally suspended the KZN executive and replaced them with an interim structure‚ convened by former KZN economic development and tourism MEC Mike Mabuyakhulu and coordinated by his predecessor and former ANC provincial chairman‚ Sihle Zikalala.

Now on the cusp of fresh regional and provincial conferences‚ the group said if their internal overtures failed‚ they would approach the courts.

The group’s Sifiso Dlamini‚ of the Umlazi sub-region‚ said that “challenges” that had driven the lot to court in the wake of the local government elections still remained.