THE number of guests allowed inside the ANC Eastern Cape elective conference dogged the first day of the conference as the rival faction demanded that they be removed from plenary as they have taken up space for voting delegates.
It emerged as the conference took off on Saturday April 7 at the East London International Convention Center that the plenary was packed with guests who are sympathizers of Premier Oscar Mabuyane who is being challenged by former treasurer Babalo Madikizela for chairmanship.
The overwhelming number of guests resulted in delegates in support of Madikizela not having space to sit as the seating arrangements inside the plenary was not arranged according to regions as is the tradition of conferences.
And while the guests joined Mabuyane's delegates in song with a second term sign inside in a show of force, Madikizela supporters remained outside and at some stage Madikizela were said to refuse to enter the plenary as long as the guests were inside.
Inside Madikizela delegates raised several motions to have them kicked out but it was later agreed that the proper sitting arrangements will be done after lunch.
While the conference got underway it emerged that some members of the DR WB Rubasana have lodged a court application to stop some of the branches from its region who according to the court papers have been registered to participate in the conference.
Provincial coordinator Lulama Ngcukayitobi earlier told journalists in a media conference just hours before the conference started that there were branches from troubled regions who will be participating.
He said of those 40 of them are from the troubled DR WB Rubasana which have full right in the conference and 97 from the Chris Hani regions. Ngcukayitobi promised that the number of branches participating will be upgraded from time to time.
The regions were taken to court after it was discovered that some members of the branches were unconstitutionally and illegally constituted.
According to court papers confirming such a challenge, the matter has been set down for Saturday April 7 5pm for an urgent hearing at the Eastern Cape High Court in East London.
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The presiding magistrate has instructed the applicants to notify the respondents either by phone call or text messages and the respondents, which is the ANC, had until by 4pm to respond.
"Having considered the certificate of urgency placed before me in the above matter, I hereby issue the following directions with regard to the hearing and further conduct of the matter," said the court paper.
It is not clear whether national executive committee deployee and convener Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has been served with the papers but in a press briefing an hour before the conference started, he didn't rule out there would be a court challenge and said the party would respond when the legal challenge came up.
When opening the conference party chairman Minerals and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe, who also served as party Secretary General, said court challenges were not new to the ANC.
Mantashe said during his tenure, he was taken to court 12 times and he successfully defended the ANC in all those cases.
Mantashe, however called for unity during his address, saying it could not be that every time when there is an elective conference there are divisions, questing why people from the same party should be divided by conferences instead of working together and grow the movement.
"And how can society trust us in that kind of a situation? Society cannot trust us. So we must improve that," he said.
