The provincial ANC leadership in the Free State has distanced itself from the letter written by its former interim provincial coordinator Paseka Nompondo in which he claimed that regional leadership had no mandate to expel councillors from Mangaung metro. The councillors were expelled after voting with the DA to unseat the governing party’s mayor.
The decision places Nompondo in an untenable position because he tried to block the dismissal of the rogue councillors.
“The entire disciplinary processes that were instituted by your region in respect of all those comrades, is constitutionally flawed. You are therefore informed that no member of the ANC can be expelled under these circumstances.
“The alleged recommendations of expulsions are therefore null and void,” said Nompondo in a letter to Sabelo Pitso, former Mangaung ANC internal regional coordinator on August last year. Nompondo said the regional leadership had no mandate to discipline and expel councillors of the party from the metro.
He said the then provincial structures were aware that several ANC leaders in the Mangaung region were allegedly subjected to disciplinary processes and were subsequently recommended for expulsion from the party.
Nompondo said the NEC deployees had intervened in the matter in terms of rule 25.10 of the ANC constitution, and that the expelled councillors took up the matter to the Bloemfontein High Court. The hearing has been postponed to June 29.
In his responding affidavit, the ANC’s provincial secretary Polediso Motsoeneng argued that the expelled councillors stopped representing the party in the metropolitan council once they were expelled.
Motsoeneng said the councillors, who were expelled in June 2022, relied on the letter sent by his predecessor, Nompondo, who was an interim provincial coordinator up until the provincial conference in January 2023.
Motsoeneng was a deputy provincial coordinator last year. He was present when the six expelled councillors were charged on June 10 2022 for voting with the DA at the
metro chambers and was present when Nompondo instructed Pitso that he should not proceed with the disciplinary hearings of the councillors as it was not authorised by him.
Motsoeneng said in his head of arguments that the councillors relied on a missive authored by Nompondo wherein he made a finding of procedural unfairness. “There is nothing in the ANC constitution empowering Nompondo to make such a finding,” he said.
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