The lobby for ANC deputy president Paul Mashatile to ascend the top position as the country’s number two after President Cyril Ramaphosa is unsettled after he admitted to have submitted to the court a fake ANC’s national executive committee (NEC)
resolution, which resulted in the adoption of the results of the North West ANC elective conference last year.
A North West ANC member, Sello Molefe, has opened cases of fraud and perjury against Mashatile after accusing him of falsifying an affidavit to mislead the court to rule in favour of the party.
If charged, Mashatile could be forced to step aside as dictated to by the governing party’s resolutions adopted at its elective conference in Nasrec in 2017. The resolutions, among others, decree that leaders facing criminal charges should step aside as part of the organisation’s renewal process.
The ANC’s NEC last year filed papers to oppose an application by the North West disgruntled members, including Molefe, to interdict the party’s elective conference.
They said the interim provincial committee (IPC) did not have the authority to organise the conference because the NEC had not renewed its mandate to remain in office and oversee the elective conference.
Opposing the application, the ANC made up a fake resolution of the NEC to defend itself against the failure to renew the term of the North West IPC, and Mashatile, the then acting party secretary general, made a sworn statement under oath before the high court that his submissions were truthful.
He told the court that “the NEC took and ratified decisions to extend the IPC’s term to perform the functions of the PEC at various meetings of the NEC between June 2020 and August 2022.
“Therefore, without challenging the NEC’s decisions to extend the IPC’s tenure, the extensions are considered valid and binding until set aside.
“This application is accordingly stillborn. Due to the extensions, the IPC had the authority to exist, and the applicants needed to challenge the NEC’s decisions”.
However, Molefe said the NEC resolution dated July 2022 turned out to be a fake “copy and paste” of the previous resolution taken.
“On proper scrutiny and analysis of the two resolutions, it would appear that Mr Mashatile simply amended the year on the resolution from 2019 to 2022 and left the exact dates of July 26-29 as it is,” read Molefe’s police statement.
Molefe, who opened the cases at Mmabatho Police station, said acording to the ANC NEC calendar of 2022, there was no NEC meeting held from Tuesday to Friday, July 26-29 2022.
Mashatile has now admitted to court in an affidavit on February 7 that the submission of the fabricated NEC resolution as evidence claiming to extend the term of the IPC to allow it to organise the ANC North West elective conference held last August was an innocent “error”.
Suddenly, the man expected to become the country’s next deputy president in the next few days or even earlier, may face charges of fraud and perjury. These charges, if they are made, could dim his rising political star. The man fondly known to his allies as “Spokes” appears to have put a spike in his own wheel.
Former social development minister Bathabile Dlamini fell on the same sword when she allegedly perjured herself in court during the social grants matter. The ANC called for Dlamini to step aside and not even stand for any leadership position in the party.
In his defence, Mashatile said: “The statements that I had made in the answering affidavit concerning annexure ‘ANC11’ were made in error [and] the attaching of that annexure and the reliance thereon was also made in error.”
He blamed unnamed “functionaries” in Luthuli House for the mistake, adding that the court documents were also prepared in a hurry.
“In the circumstances, I depose this affidavit for the purpose of admitting that the ANC did not meet over the period 26 to 29 July 2022 and it did not adopt annexure ‘ANC11’ at that time (in July 2022). I apologise unreservedly for this error and say that I never intended to mislead this honourable court”.
He continued: “The error was a bona fide one and is certainly not attributable to any endeavour to fabricate evidence, nor was it made in ‘an attempt to deliberately mislead this honourable court’. Indeed, I am not even the author of annexure ‘ANC11’ and I certainly did not simply copy and paste resolutions and minutes of prior meetings.”
ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula said on Wednesday “leaders of the ANC act and discharge their responsibilities on behalf of the organisation, and not in their personal capacity”.
Mbalula said: “Any member of the ANC who has a grievance emanating from organisational processes should utilise the ANC’s dispute resolution mechanisms.”
The ANC’s misstep in failing to renew the mandate of the IPC meant that the structure did not have the authority to organise the party’s provincial elective conference in Rustenburg last August.
Had the court found in favour of the applicants to interdict the conference, which elected Nono Maloyi, a Mashatile ally, as provincial chairperson, the results would have been scrapped.
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