Durban - Unhappy with the direction the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) was taking, a KwaZulu-Natal member tried unsuccessfully to stop the party’s provincial assembly from taking place this weekend.
Siyabonga Mpule, acting on behalf of the Msunduzi branch, filed an urgent application before the Durban High Court on Friday.
He argued that new leaders would be elected “illegitimately” if the assembly was to go ahead.
Mpule said in court papers that the assembly could not be held because it did not have a proper quorum for leaders to be elected to the party’s provincial command team - the body in charge of EFF affairs in KZN.
He said despite the provincial leadership being aware of this, they still wanted to go ahead so that “favourites” could be elected to prevent any opposition to its commander-in-chief, Julius Malema’s political agenda.
In response, the party’s provincial structure argued on Friday for the matter to be struck off the roll, saying the assembly was advertised in January and that R700 000 had been spent to arrange it.
The party also questioned why Mpule waited hours before the meeting was expected to start before lodging his court application.
The provincial assembly took place this weekend at the BAT Centre in Durban where the interim provincial command team was replaced with an elected one.
Mpule said in his affidavit that according to their guidelines, a provincial “people’s assembly” could only be held if a minimum of 70 percent of the municipal wards in the specific province had existing EFF branches and had passed a party audit.
Mpule said only four of the EFF’s 11 KZN regions had complied.
He said it was public knowledge that there was a “measure of disunity in the ranks” of the EFF and “dissatisfaction” with the direction it was taking.
He felt Malema was “losing sight” of the party’s leftist, socialist purpose and had narrowed the party’s interests to “scandal” over taxpayer funding to improve President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla homestead.
In his affidavit, he said that most of the EFF members were not interested in political point scoring.
He also felt that limiting the number of delegates who might vote at the assembly would be reducing any resistance to Malema’s agenda.
Mpule’s advocate, Robin Mossop, told Judge David Ntshangase that if the assembly went ahead and new leaders were elected, it would be difficult to later remove them.
Acting for the EFF’s national and provincial structures, advocate Paul Jorgensen questioned why Mpule waited until just before the assembly was expected, to object to it.
“Seven hundred thousand rand has already been spent to arrange this assembly and delegates are en route to Durban from all over the country,” Jorgensen argued.
Ntshangase struck the matter off the roll, saying the ward had “brought this urgency upon themselves”.
EFF national spokesman, Mbuyiseni Quintin Ndlozi, welcomed the ruling, calling the applicants “rebels”.
“This urgent application is part of a broader plot across the country to undermine the district and divide the EFF by egomaniacs who suffer deeply from over exaggerated self-importance and an uncontrollable ambition for power,” he said.
Daily News