The Joburg High Court has dismissed with costs Gauteng ANC provincial executive committee’s ( PEC) application for an urgent court order to force bus company Buscor to release its attached bank account.
The dismissal of the application threatens the party’s ability to pay salaries at the end of this month. The PEC’s bank account was attached by the Johannesburg Sheriff of the Court last month after Buscor, an Mpumalanga-based company, 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 transport services it rendered.
In the court papers, ANC Gauteng provincial secretary Jacob Khawe said the sheriff erroneously attached the account as the PEC was not cited in the matter in which the writ of attachment was obtained. He said the PEC asked for an order directing the sheriff to immediately release its bank account from attachment.
He also said the PEC alternatively sought an order directing the sheriff and Buscor to be prohibited, restrained and/or interdicted from attaching its bank account. He said Buscor attached the account after successfully suing the women’s league and NEC, and not Gauteng PEC, which was an autonomous structure from the ANC.
But in a judgment that will have far-reaching consequences for the ANC and its structures, Judge Leonie Windell dismissed the party’s application with costs. She said although the ANC’s constitution provided that the ANC Women’s League and youth league will function as autonomous bodies within the overall structures of the ANC, it did not describe the PECs in the same fashion.
The constitution did not also state that the PECs were autonomous or independent from the ANC. Windell also added that the autonomy of the Gauteng PEC only relates to management and control of the ANC assets, reads part of the judgment.
“The application is dismissed with costs,” Windell said.
