Gangster State

the first weekend of December, but the applicants wanted to prohibit
the gathering from taking place. They argued that a series of branch
general meetings (BGMs) and biannual meetings in four of the Free
State’s regions, held between August and November, had been replete
with irregularities.
The BGMs were extremely important, as it was during these meetings
that branch members nominated their preferred candidates for the
ANC’s NEC and Top Six. These decisions would then be consolidated
and affirmed at the provincial conference scheduled to take place just
before the national gathering at Nasrec. The branch meetings also
determined which party members would attend both conferences. In a
particularly hefty court application of nearly 1 000 pages, the twenty-
six dissatisfied party members laid bare the astonishing level of
skulduggery that still prevailed in the party’s provincial structures. This
time around, some of Magashule’s closest political associates were
fingered as the alleged perpetrators of blatantly undemocratic and
unlawful acts that barred certain branch members from participating in
the nomination processes.
It is worth delving into some of the myriad examples cited in the court
documents. In late October 2017 , one of the party’s branches in the
Lejweleputswa district municipality (Welkom and surrounds) held its
BGM. Sizwe Mbalo, the provincial legislature’s deputy speaker and a
staunch Magashule ally,^6 attended the meeting as a representative of
the Magashule-led PEC. He was supposed to merely observe the
proceedings, but he did much more than that. According to the court
filings, Mbalo arrived with a ‘pre-signed attendance register’. Some of
the branch’s legitimate members were not listed on this form and
therefore could not vote for their preferred candidates. ‘Despite the fact