Media Statement

The African National Congress has this week been required to defend, before the High Court of South Africa in Johannesburg, an urgent application brought against the organisation, its National Executive Committee and its Secretary General by one of its own senior members, Cde Andile Lungisa who is himself a member of that National Executive Committee.

We take no satisfaction in it. It is a sorrowful thing for a movement of this age to meet a comrade across a courtroom over a matter that our own structures were established to resolve. The rules by which the applicant considers himself aggrieved are the rules of the National Executive Committee, a body of which he is a member, and by whose decisions he is bound as every one of us is bound.

The matter has been argued and judgment is awaited. The African National Congress respects the Court and will abide its decision, whatever it may be. In that spirit we confine ourselves to clarifying the particulars, which have been the subject of much speculation and little fact.

Every person who seeks to carry the colours of this movement onto a ballot must submit to vetting. There is no exception to this, for any member, in any structure, at any level. Our appointed vetting agency first reported that Cde Lungisa had not attended that process, which includes the taking of biometric prints, without which an assessment of a criminal record cannot be completed. The outcome was subsequently obtained. Regrettably, it records adverse findings which remain live and which place Cde Lungisa outside the criteria adopted by the National Executive Committee for every candidate nominee. The conviction and the sentence on which much of this turns are a matter of public record, confirmed on appeal by the Supreme Court of Appeal.

It must be said plainly that membership of the African National Congress, and service in any of its structures, carries no guarantee of public office. Deployment is not an entitlement. It is governed by the rules and the guidelines of the organisation, and in this period of renewal those rules are applied without fear, favour or exception. However popular an individual may be, and however long their service, this movement was founded on servant leadership and not on entitlement to government position. Through the Eye of the Needle remains our measure. We ask our members and our supporters to trust the wisdom of our elders and the integrity of our processes.

The African National Congress would rather deal with this matter behind closed doors. Our wish is to sit with Cde Lungisa, as comrades sit, to discuss his future and the contribution he is still able to make to our society in otherways and at another station, while he completes a period of introspection and rehabilitation. That door is open to him, and it does not require a court to open it.

Our duty in the meantime is to the people of Nelson Mandela Bay and of every municipality we contest on 4 November. They are entitled to candidates who are fit for purpose and whose candidacy is lawful in terms of the Local Government: Municipal Structures Act and the Constitution of the Republic. We will not place before our people a candidacy that we cannot lawfully certify.

The African National Congress will make no further comment while judgment is awaited.

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