The ANC Youth League in the Free State was absent at the party’s elective conference in Parys although individual members were attending on Saturday.
Not one of the Free State ANCYL’s 27 voting delegates have registered for the party’s conference.
Conference accreditation committee member Olly Mlamleli said the conference made its fresh hold by six branches.
The Free State have 318 African National Congress branches and needed 233 branches in good standing to hold its provincial elective conference.
Mlamleli said 239 branches in good standing were attending the conference, indicating that the conference was constitutionally correct with a six branch cushion.
The province had various problems in the run up to the conference in Parys. It went ahead despite two of the five party provincial regions not having held their regional conferences yet.
Mlamleli said the conference expected 930 delegates but only 750 registered and arrived in Parys.
Re-elected provincial chairman Ace Magashule welcomed individual ANCYL members who attended the conference as normal branch members on Friday night.
Magashule specially welcomed reinstated ANCYL treasurer general Pule Mabe at the conference as the new the leader of the ANCYL.
“You heard me correct,” said Magashule, before he repeated that Mabe was the leader of the youth league.
He told the delegates that the party’s provincial executive committee had tried to work with the province’s youth leaders to solve differences.
“We worked with the youth league until they decided to be disrespectful,” said Magashule.
Reacting to the comments Free State ANCYL chairman Kgotso Morapela said the Parys conference was an illegal conference in terms of the party’s constitution.
He said processes to solve branch queries such as parallel structures in areas such as the Gariep region had not been solved satisfactory.
Morapela said the Free State was a small province and for the ANC to hold a provincial conference with only three regions with so many outstanding party issues was wrong.
The conference in Parys continues until Sunday. -Sapa