Publications
Partners
Johannesburg – The group of North West ANCYL members, who brought an urgent application to prevent the ANCYL congress from going ahead, say they feel "betrayed" by the outcome.
This after their application was dismissed by the High Court in Pretoria on Thursday. Judge Moses Mavundla ruled that the matter was not urgent.
The applicants - which included Thabo Molamu, Mbuyiselo Booi, Gonste Maruping and Papa Jood - were represented by Advocate Herman Waldick in the case against the first respondent, the ANCYL national task team and the second respondent, the North West provincial executive committee.
Mavundla dismissed the matter with costs, meaning that the conference would go ahead on Friday as scheduled.
Speaking outside the High Court in Pretoria, Molamu said he believed the judgment was "unfair".
He said he believed the amount of money that had already been spent on the conference seemed to supercede "the complaints from ordinary members at branch level and South Africans in general".
"We will not back down because we are speaking the truth. If needs be, we will go to the Constitutional Court. We will start by appealing the outcome, we have the strength to see this through."
Molamu said he would not betray his province by participating in the conference.
"We are here because we are disputing the legitimacy of the conference and [its] lead up processes."
'This is an illegitimate conference'
"We can’t participate in this congress, we are not even accredited. The ANCYL is saying that they are expecting 10 000 voting delegates at the weekend. We don’t know where these delegates come from, they are manufactured and the processes have been flawed.
"This is an illegitimate conference and it's not credible. Even the opposition is going to laugh at us."
Molamu said he was not afraid of the consequences of challenging the National Task Team.
"We are not afraid of Nathi Mthethwa. We are doing what is right," he said.
Mthethwa, who is ANCYL NTT co-ordinator, and convenor Fikile Mbalula were in court on Thursday, but left shortly after judgment.
Papa Jood, another ANCYL member from the North West said: "The judgment handed down to us is unfair because our rights were not taken into consideration when the decision was made."
The run-up to the ANCYL national congress has been marred by claims of irregular auditing processes and allegations of interference from top structures within the ruling party.
