tallied, and Magashule won by just twenty-four.^27 But the new
secretary-general barely had time to soak up his success before trouble
brewed once again. While the Nasrec delegates were still casting their
ballots for the ANC’s new NEC, there were strong indications that
Magashule’s victory may have been secured through the same political
dark arts that had kept him in power in the Free State.
Some delegates noticed that the numbers released by the EleXions
Agency, a private service provider that oversaw the voting, did not add
up. Word quickly spread through the venue that there were sixty-eight
votes that had not been factored into the result.^28 Most concerning, it
appeared that the ‘missing’ ballots were those of delegates who
represented pro-Mchunu branches in Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal.^29
As it turned out, the missing votes had been placed in ‘quarantine’
amid uncertainty over the affected delegates’ credentials. The sixty-
eight conference-goers had accreditation tags, but their names were not
on the voters’ roll.^30 Mchunu was both furious and dejected. His chief
campaigner, Jomo Sibiya, insisted that the affected delegates had been
‘properly accredited’.^31
The issue threatened to derail the entire conference. Some of the sixty-
eight delegates indicated that they would take legal action.^32
Eventually, the conference steering committee decided that fifteen of
the sixty-eight votes were legitimate and could be added to Mchunu’s
tally.^33 But he still came up short. Mchunu probably would have
pursued the matter, but his support within the Ramaphosa camp began
to dwindle. Some Ramaphosa backers were afraid that further pressure
to probe the issue could spark calls for a recount of the votes for the
entire Top Six, possibly jeopardising Ramaphosa’s own narrow victory
over Dlamini-Zuma.^34 In the end, Mchunu relented. He took up a job
nora
(Nora)
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