Mokonyane tells ANC to settle Mbalula-Lungisa fight before judge rules

Nomvula Mokonyane has called on the ANC to intervene in the court battle between its secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, and national executive committee member Andile Lungisa, saying the dispute should not be allowed to play out in public.

As IOL reported on 7 October, Mokonyane made the call while campaigning in Ivory Park on Tuesday. She said the party’s internal processes and its legal obligations both had to be considered.

“There are due processes, the guidelines of the ANC. There’s an implementation of what is required by law, and all those permutations must be looked at,” she said.

“The issue of Andile cannot be an issue that becomes something that is portrayed as a mess in the African National Congress.”

Mokonyane said the matter needed both political and organisational intervention. “The best is to get it out of court,” she said.

The case turns on Lungisa’s removal from the ANC’s proportional representation candidate list for Nelson Mandela Bay ahead of the local government elections.

Lungisa has challenged that decision in the Johannesburg High Court. He argues that his name came through the party’s internal nomination process and that he was ranked first on the Nelson Mandela Bay list. He alleges that Mbalula personally instructed officials to remove him, and that the secretary-general did not have the constitutional authority to overturn a process completed through ANC structures.

Mbalula has rejected the allegation under oath. He says he did not personally order Lungisa’s removal and that he acted on an instruction from the ANC’s electoral committee. Mbalula has also maintained that Lungisa did not take part in the required candidate-vetting process.

Two competing versions of the same sequence are now before the court, and the Johannesburg High Court has reserved judgment until 12 October.

For voters in Nelson Mandela Bay, the dispute sits close to the ballot. Candidate lists decide whose names appear on the proportional representation section of the municipal ballot, and therefore which party figures can enter a council without winning a ward. A list compiled and then altered is a list whose order can shift who gets a seat.

Mokonyane’s intervention also sets out the ANC’s own preferred route. Her argument is that a matter between two senior party figures is better handled through the party’s guidelines and internal processes than through a courtroom, and that a public fight carries a cost for the organisation as a whole.

That preference does not by itself settle anything. The court has heard both versions, judgment is reserved, and the ANC has not announced any internal step that would take the dispute out of the High Court’s hands.

Source: IOL, Mokonyane urges ANC to take Mbalula-Lungisa dispute out of court