ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula says NEC member Andile Lungisa should have come to him directly instead of hauling the party to court – but correspondence shows Lungisa warned him in August that his axing as Nelson Mandela Bay mayoral candidate was an “unexplained political intervention” overriding branches.
The public spat between the ANC’s top administrator and and a senior NEC memeber exploded last week after Lungisa filed urgent papers in the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg to declare his removal from the party’s proportional representation list unlawful and force Mbalula to reinstate him.
“He [Lungisa] should have written to me as a person and not through lawyers to raise this issue,” Mbalula saidon the sidelines of his campaign trail in the Northern Cape.
“Now we are talking through lawyers and its a matter that will be settled there in defence of the ANC and its processes.
“Andile is an author of ANC guidelines and if we involve lawyers then its a matter we would have to settle in court and respect that process because whatever I’m going to say on behalf of the ANC about what he has written will be used against me in the court of law.
“As a leader, politically, of his caliber and ANC member he must know how to raise issues because its not only him affected,” Mbalula said.
But Lungisa’s camp says he did try – weeks before the court papers.
In an email reportedly sent to Mbalula in August, Lungisa reportedly told the SG he regarded his removal as a political purge that had overridden branch support.
“I did not manufacture a campaign for the mayoralty of Nelson Mandela Bay out of personal ambition. I responded, despite serious reservations, to approaches from community organisations, civic formations and residents who urged me to make myself available,” Lungisa wrote.
He said he had agreed to stand because he did not want to witness the ANC’s “electoral humiliation” in the metro, which he described as in free-fall – failing electricity and water, sewage running through streets, broken traffic lights, unreliable refuse collection, unemployment and crime.
He warned Mbalula that the ANC could not claim branches were its foundation while treating their overwhelming preference as “an irritating recommendation”.
That warning was ignored an ANC insider said.
In urgent papers filed on Friday by his lawyer Makangela Mtungani, Lungisa asks the court to declare: “The removal of the name of the applicant from the proportional representative listed candidates for ANC in Nelson Mandela Bay is declared to be unconstitutional, unlawful, invalid and of no force or effect.”
Mbalula, as custodian of the ANC’s lists who corresponds with the Electoral Commission, is cited as first respondent and directed to put Lungisa’s name back.
The case is the latest explosion in the ANC’s massive administrative meltdown ahead of the November 4 local elections.
Lungisa, backed by regional branches to lead the ANC’s charge to retake Nelson Mandela Bay from a DA-led coalition, was left off the PR list submitted to the IEC – part of a broader registration blunder that has seen the party miss deadlines in six other municipalities.
Sources say Lungisa views his exclusion not as an error but as a deliberate purge by factions including the Veterans’ League, which has long clashed with him.
“As SG, Mbalula is the accounting officer who signs off on candidate lists to the IEC. He has been picking and closing as he likes. It’s not fair,” one insider said.
Despite being left off, Lungisa has refused to defect.
Sources furtjer say opposition parties including People’s Power are understood to have offered him a PR seat. He rejected it.
“I remain a member of the ANC,” he told supporters.
The Gauteng High Court is expected to hear Lungisa’s matter urgently soon.
Neither Luthuli House nor Mbalula would comment further beyond insisting the matter must now be settled “through lawyers”.
