The election is perhaps the most pivotal moment for the ANC in its 23 years of powerб South Africa’s ANC set to elect the leader to replace Zuma. Scandal and corruption allegations have tainted Zuma’s presidency and the party that launched black majority rule under Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nelson Mandela is now deeply divided, its image tarnished at home and abroad.
on Sunday at the Nasrec Expo Centre outside Soweto, current deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte announced that the delays in accepting the credentials of delegates had finally been resolved.
A total of 4776 delegates are now eligible to vote after an initial 5240 had applied. To win the election, a candidate needs 2 389 votes. The battle over the eligibility of branches and delegates at the conference led to delays on Saturday night with the gathering being adjourned late at night as officials worked on the credentials.
According to the adopted report the number of voting delegates had decreased from the initial allocation of 5240.
This is due to a number of factors including court judgments which effectively barred provincial executive committee (PEC) delegations from the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal from voting at the conference.
Some branches also failed to hold their branch general meetings while some branches in the North West’s Bojanala region were also barred by the courts from participating as voting delegates.
KwaZulu-Natal’s delegation is down from 870 to 804, Gauteng is done from 508 to 491, Eastern Cape is now sending 632 delegates down from 648, Northern Cape has 193 delegates down from 197, the Western Cape is down from 182 to 136, Limpopo is down from 643 from 567, Free State decreased from 409 to 349, North West declined from 538 to 446 while Mpumalanga went down from 736 to 708.
The leagues will send 175 delegated, the PEC’s bar those from KZN and Free State will send a total of 189 delegates while the NEC’s 86 members are also eligible to vote.
Delegates were due to spend the early afternoon adopting the rules of conference and possible amendments to the ANC constitution, including expanding the ‘top 6’ of the party to a ‘top 8’.
Once this has been resolved, the conference will go into plenary or open session for the nomination of candidates for the top 6 or top 8, following which the balloting papers will be drawn up and delegates taken in groups of 200 to vote.
