BREAKING | ANC crisis deepens as court told ‘raw membership data’ might not exist

The ANC is now confronting a new crisis that cuts to the core of political legitimacy.

In a dramatic escalation of the litigation that halted the ANC’s Eastern Cape provincial conference, a new high court application has been lodged to compel the former liberation movement to honour an undertaking it voluntarily tendered under oath.

In an unprecedented move, the ANC promised the court it would produce raw electronic membership data as part of its defence in the provincial interdict court matter at the KuGompo City High Court.

That data has not been produced, and according to a new founding affidavit deposed by the applicants that seeks to compel the ANC, the fresh allegation is that the data may not exist at all.

The affidavit, which we have read, explicitly states that at the centre of this new application is a prior undertaking made to the court by Fikile Mbalula, the ANC secretary-general, to “tender the electronic membership system results… to this honourable court for judicial scrutiny”.

That undertaking formed the foundation upon which the court allowed the matter to proceed. It is now the very undertaking the applicants say has been breached.

According to the founding affidavit, the applicants followed up to inspect the data as agreed. What they encountered was its absence thereof as the ANC failed to execute its voluntary undertaking.

“There was no raw data. Instead, they showed MS Word spreadsheets, which clearly did not resemble any raw electronic data,” reads the affidavit filed on Tuesday by Lwazi Rotya, one of the applicants.

In place of system-generated records, what was presented was manually curated information, stripped of the very characteristics that make data verifiable, which include its origin, integrity, and traceability.

Strict instruction from Mbalula’s office

The affidavit goes further to state that when the applicants attempted to document what they were shown, ANC lawyers dropped another bombshell.

“There is a strict instruction by Mister Mbalula that no copies or pictures can be taken of the Excel spreadsheet.”

The result was total obstruction.

“Nothing could be achieved. There was no raw data. The ANC… simply obstructed the entire process,” writes Rotya in the breathtaking affidavit.

This now becomes a question of whether the information itself exists in a form capable of independent verification, origin, and traceability.

The founding affidavit contains one of the most serious allegations ever levelled in the context of internal party processes, which alleges “the ANC has plainly been disingenuous in its offer to this court… it knew that it had no intention of providing the raw data”.

At its most serious, the matter raises a question rarely confronted so directly: whether an undertaking made under oath to a court can be sustained in the absence of the very evidence it promised.

This is where the new dispute before the court becomes structural and devastating.

The affidavit argues that “that information is the foundation of everything. Without it there can be no branch, no region, no province, and no national conference.”

This is the climax point where politics collide with the law.

Membership data determines who qualifies as a member, who constitutes a branch, who participates in conferences, and whether leadership outcomes are legitimate.

For ordinary members, this is about whether their membership, their vote, and their voice have any verifiable existence at all.

The affidavit further refers to practices described as “ID harvesting”, where identity documents are used to “create the impression that branch meetings were held by falsely registering persons as being present”.

Mbalula’s office not trusted

If proven, this would point to systemic manipulation of membership records and plunge the ANC into serious disrepute, a catastrophic and unprecedented systemic and legitimacy crisis of its internal processes, especially building up to the 2027 national elective conference.

The implications of this application can be devastating to the ANC, as they would extend far beyond the Eastern Cape.

If the underlying membership system cannot produce verifiable data in one province, a far more consequential question arises as to what is the status of the same system and the same data across the rest of the country.

Because it is that same system that underpins branch general meetings and branch biennial general meetings, regional conferences, provincial conferences, and ultimately, national leadership outcomes.

The new application seeks a court order compelling the ANC to produce the actual electronic membership system results, verifiable attendance records, and auditable proof of membership in line with its voluntary offering.

This is the very data the organisation relied upon to justify proceeding with its conference, which the court stopped in its tracks.

The applicants argue that “the office of the secretary-general cannot be relied upon to provide credible information about the true and genuine state of the membership”.

This new case and application now present one of the most consequential questions confronting ANC’s internal systems in history, which is, if membership cannot be verified, on what basis can internal democratic processes be regarded as legitimate?

While the court has been requested to compel compliance from the ANC, the deeper issue is foundational.

Because once the integrity of membership data is in question, the consequences extend to every structure, every process, and every outcome built upon that data.

If the data does not exist, then the structure built upon it cannot stand the test of time and legitimacy.

System incapable of producing reliable data

Certain branches in the Eastern Cape allege that the ANC membership system has not been paid under its licensing obligations since 2024, resulting in an inability to synchronise and verify membership data in real time.

According to the sources concerned, this has rendered the system functionally incapable of producing reliable, auditable records of paid-up membership, the very foundation upon which branch, regional, and provincial processes depend.

It is further alleged by branches that, despite assurances that the system remains operational, the office of the secretary-general has been unable to produce raw, verifiable membership data when required, including in the context of court proceedings.

This, they argue, creates a fundamental contradiction where a system is presented as functional, yet unable to generate its primary output, namely authenticated membership data capable of independent verification.

A question that ANC would have to answer in assuring its members is if the system has not been paid to its service provider, who has been using it and under whose authority—something that can lead to a serious criminal allegation should it exist and be confirmed by the system owner.

Branches raising these concerns caution that, if left unresolved, the issue may extend beyond a single province and raise broader questions about the integrity of organisational processes nationally.

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