A day after the eThekwini ANC’s regional conference began delegates are yet to nominate leaders for election due to disagreement after disagreement on procedural matters.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, the process of adopting credentials was halted due to yet another disagreement about whether the region’s task team should be given voting status. 

Regional convener of the ANC in eThekwini Kwazi Mshengu explained to TimesLIVE on Sunday the reason for the latest stalemate.

“The reason we adjourned is because there was only one issue relating to the credential — the status of the RTT whether it votes or does not vote and our view which has been a practice in KZN is that the ANC task team do not vote. It’s a PEC decision and we have run seven successful conferences and in all those task teams were not voting,” he said.

In 2019 — the ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive committee (PEC) disbanded the eThekwini regional executive committee (REC) and a regional task team (RTT) was established.

While the structure’s main task was to take the region to conference — some delegates at the plenary conference argued that it should be given voting status — as interim structures have been allowed to vote in other provinces however there is no precedence in KwaZulu-Natal. 

“In 2018 we went to the provincial conference led by the task team that was led by comrade Mabuyakhulu and comrade Zikalala. That provincial task team did not vote in a provincial conference. So we have been following a clear trend that our understanding is that the task team of the ANC does not have a voting status,” said Mshengu. 

Precedence cited by those who argued for the RTT to be given voting status included provinces like Mpumalanga where the task team have been allowed to vote. However Mshengu said in KwaZulu-Natal the decision lies with the province’s leadership. 

“Now our issue is that there is no national decision as far as we know that the task team votes, so if Mpumalanga decided to allow a task team to vote it cannot be a precedent that applies to KZN because KZN has a decision, a PEC decision.

“We have been saying that. You know the credentials debate started at 11pm until 4.30am, because we wanted to be patient with comrades, explain and explain over and over again in the quest obviously to try and protect the conference from collapsing, but we have been explaining it,” Mshengu said.

He added that this matter was also explained in the RTT meetings leading up to this conference that the RTT does not vote and it had been understood as such until the matter was raised during the credentials report.

“We go in again [this morning]. We will try to persuade comrades because we can’t change the decision of the PEC, a regional conference does not have that mandate. So we will go there and reason with comrades with a hope that we will find each other,” said Mshengu.

TimesLIVE