Gangster State

weaken the province’s contribution to the Polokwane conference.
The trouble started in early 2007 , when a group of disgruntled party
members obtained an interim interdict against all decisions taken at the
party’s Fezile Dabi regional conference.^2 Allegations of vote-rigging
and other irregularities at branch and regional level added to the chaos,
and there was even talk at one point that the Free State ANC would
split.^3 One court ruling determined that some of the province’s
branches were unfit to send delegates to the national conference.^4
Magashule’s faction was accused of manipulating the outcome of
branch meetings through a variety of dubious means that contravened
the ANC’s constitution. These included allegedly convening branch
meetings in a ‘secretive and selective’ manner by failing to properly
notify all branch members of such meetings, and ‘unlawfully’
excluding certain ANC members from branch meetings by ensuring
that their names did not appear on branch registers.^5 The court found
that the applicants had not provided enough evidence to substantiate
their allegations. However, later court rulings against the Magashule
bloc would confirm that the province’s ANC politics was rife with
rogue behaviour.
Papi Kganare recalled that in the build-up to Polokwane, his faction
wanted the national leadership to intervene in the Free State by helping
to ensure that the nomination processes in the various regions were
concluded without any funny business. ‘Our suggestion was that MPs
needed to oversee the process in some districts, or, for instance, that
Gauteng’s leadership come to oversee the process in the Fezile Dabi
district,’ he told me.
The request was refused. According to Kganare, the NEC, which
could have ensured that voting in the branches and regions occurred in