Magashule and his fellow respondents sought to convince the court
that not a single ‘branch delegate not authorised to do so attended the
provincial conference’ and that no ‘branch delegate entitled to attend
was denied the opportunity to do so’. But the Constitutional Court
judges found these ‘bare denials’ unconvincing and ‘generic’. ‘This is
particularly so because where ... the appellants adduce facts which
support the categories of irregularities, region by region, they are not
seriously disputed,’ they said. They set aside the Bloemfontein High
Court’s earlier ruling and declared the Parys conference and its
decisions and resolutions unlawful and invalid.^32
The Constitutional Court reached its decision on 14 December 2012 ,
two days before the ANC’s national conference was due to get under
way in Mangaung. As a result, the NEC barred the PEC from voting at
the conference, but Magashule was allowed to attend in his capacity as
a member of the NEC.^33 Furthermore, the court’s ‘declaration of
invalidity’ only applied to the provincial conference.^34 Mantashe
explained to the media that Free State branch delegates could still
attend the national conference, seeing as the processes through which
they had been elected were overseen by the party’s electoral
commission and not by the Magashule-led PEC.^35 This undoubtedly
helped ensure the Zuma slate’s victory at Mangaung, but there were
also suspicions that the membership numbers in pro-Zuma provinces
such as the Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga had been
‘rigged’ in order to send more delegates to the conference.^36 The Free
State’s ANC membership figures, as reflected in an organisational
report presented by Mantashe at the conference, certainly made for
very interesting reading. Before the Polokwane conference in 2007 , the
province had 61 000 members. In January 2012 , the figure stood at 76
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