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Court blasts Magashule for manufacturing facts as his application for leave to appeal is dismissed

Mawande AmaShabalala Political journalist
Ace Magashule has been dealt another blow in court. File photo.
Ace Magashule has been dealt another blow in court. File photo.
Image: Rogan Ward

Suspended ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule’s counsel, advocate Dali Mpofu SC, was not telling the truth in his submission that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s counsel stated  their client was not going to be told by them when to file papers since he was the country’s number one.

This is among the grounds the full bench of the Johannesburg High Court provided on Monday to dismiss Magashule’s leave to appeal against an order that his suspension was lawful and constitutional.

During the original application Magashule mounted against the ANC and Ramaphosa, the latter filed his affidavit late but asked for condonation, which was granted by the court.

However, in his application for leave to appeal Magashule claimed Ramaphosa’s lawyers had stated “the applicant [Magashule] ought to understand that he cannot dictate timelines to the first respondent as he is the president of SA”.

The full bench has since found this submission to be “quite extraordinary” and “factually wrong [as] no such statement was made and the court did not make any such finding”. 

This was not the only submission Magashule appears to have put forward in his desperate bid to have a second bite at overturning his suspension, according to the judgment.

Another is his misreading of the court order affirming his suspension, in respect of his plea that the court strike out Ramaphosa’s entire affidavit and some documents submitted by the ANC and its deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte.

Magashule had submitted that the court had dismissed his submission in this regard with costs, including costs of three counsel which include costs of duplicated documents when in fact the judgment had stated such costs would “exclude” the costs of duplicated documents. 

The court took exception that Magashule could turn “excluding” into “including” in a court order written in black and white and thus wrongly accusing the court.

“The accusation levelled against the court in this regard is thus not only unwarranted, but untrue,” reads the judgement on the application for leave to appeal.

For these and other grounds, the court held it was “of the view that a higher court [would not come] to a different conclusion in this regard” and thus “the application for leave to appeal is dismissed with costs, including the costs of three counsel”.

TimesLIVE

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