The Gauteng ANC’s bank account has been attached by the Johannesburg Sheriff of the Court, plunging the ruling party into a financial quagmire that will see it embarrassingly fail to pay August salaries.
The party’s bank account was attached after an Mpumalanga based company, Buscor, obtained a writ of execution in the Joburg High Court after the ANC Women’s League and the ANC national executive committee (NEC) failed to pay the company R3 million for the services it rendered. It is not clear what those services were.
The startling tidbits are contained in court papers filed by the party’s lawyers to interdict Buscor from transferring funds out Jacob Khawe says the sheriff erroneously attached the account as Gauteng ANC is not cited in the matter.
In the papers, the party also seeks an order directing the sheriff to immediately release its bank account from attachment.
The governing party alternatively seeks an order directing the sheriff and Buscor to be prohibited, restrained and/or interdicted from attaching its bank account.
In his plea for the order, ANC provincial secretary Jacob Khawe said Buscor attached the account after successfully suing the women’s league and NEC, and not Gauteng ANC.
He added that the sheriff had erroneously attached the bank account as it was not cited in the matter in which the court granted a writ of attachment.
He said it became aware the bank account was attached when it started processing the salaries of staff.
Khawe said letters sent to the sheriff and Buscor lawyers to request they resolve the matter were ignored, adding that if the court did not rule in its favour,
the party will be prejudiced economically and would not be able to pay salaries.
“I submit that if the applicant brings this application in a normal motion it will be too late as it will not be able to conduct its daily organisation activities and/ or operations,” he said in court papers.
“Further, it will not be able to pay salaries to its employees and its regional structures … will be severely affected as these regional structures relies [sic] for funding from the applicant for their daily regional activities in order to give support to their zonal structures and ANC branches at the community level.”
The matter was heard on Wednesday and judgment was reserved.
