MK Party Secretary-General Sibonelo Nomvalo has hit back at Nhlamulo Ndhlela and Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla’s court bid, insisting he was never the one who expelled the pair from the party.
Zuma-Sambudla and Ndhlela dragged MK Party and Nomvalo to the Joburg High Court where they are challenging their expulsion from the nascent party, which was founded by former ANC President Jacob Zuma.
The pair has cited MK Party as the first respondent and Nomvalo as the second respondent respectively.
In a replying affidavit , Nomvalo says Zuma , and not him, personally signed Presidential Decrees terminating the memberships of both Ndhlela and Zuma-Sambudla on 18 June 2026.
Nomvalo argues that the duo’s “repeated characterisation of the impugned decision as an arbitrary expulsion effected by him is factually incorrect”, saying his role was limited to communicating and implementing a decision already taken by Zuma in terms of Section 7(2)(h) of the MK Party constitution.
“I was not the decision-maker. I did not exercise the constitutional power under Section 7(2)(h). I did not issue the Presidential Decree. My involvement was confined to communicating the decision that had already been taken by the competent constitutional authority within the first respondent,” Nomvalo states.
He further argues that Ndhlela and Zuma-Sambudla failed to exhaust available internal remedies before rushing to court.
According to Nomvalo, the MK Party has an established practice allowing members aggrieved by Presidential Decrees to make written representations directly to Zuma, asking him to reconsider, revise or withdraw the decision.
Nomvalo says both applicants, as senior founding members of the party, were fully aware of that internal process but chose not to use it.
“They did not address a letter to the presidency. They did not request that the president reconsider or revise the impugned decision. They did not seek an audience with the presidency,” he says.
Instead, Nomvalo says, the pair first embarked on a public campaign against the party leadership before approaching the courts.
He argues this means the urgency relied upon in their application was “self-created” and says they cannot bypass internal party mechanisms before seeking judicial intervention.
Nomvalo also rejects the applicants’ claim that no written Presidential Decree existed, attaching what he says are the decrees signed personally by Zuma on 18 June.
He argues the documents dispose of what he describes as one of the central pillars of the applicants’ case.
On the merits, Nomvalo says the expulsions followed repeated incidents in which Ndhlela and Zuma-Sambudla allegedly undermined the party’s leadership, promoted factionalism and acted in a manner inconsistent with the MK Party’s constitution.
He has asked the court to dismiss the application with costs, alternatively remove it from the urgent roll.
The case,which was supposed to have been heard on 30 June, was struck off the roll because Ndhlela and Zuma-Sambudla did not file the papers correctly.
