Johannesburg - Suspended ANC national executive committee (NEC) member Tony Yengeni has lodged an appeal with the party’s electoral committee over its decision to ban him from standing for one of the 80 positions in the ANC NEC.
This week, Yengeni joined fellow ANC members, such as former ANC Women’s League president Bathabile Dlamini and Mervyn Dirks, who have been suspended by the party in recent months.
Both Yengeni and Dlamini are appealing the decision by the electoral committee, which has been seen as a tool to fight those who belong to the RET faction of the party ahead of the elective conference. Another member of the party who has been expelled for bringing the party into disrepute is MKMVA spokesperson and fierce Ramaphosa critic Carl Niehaus, who has confirmed that he will be appealing his expulsion by the party’s national disciplinary committee (NDC).
In its defence, the ruling party and its Electoral Committee outlined reasons for disqualifying several party members from contesting for the top six positions, saying they did not meet three main criteria to stand for the roles.
The ANC said both Dlamini and former party chief whip Tony Yengeni were not eligible to stand for National Executive Committee positions due to their respective criminal convictions.
However, Yengeni says his case is different as it happened more than 15 years ago.
In a letter to the chairperson of the electoral committee, Kgalema Motlanthe, Yengeni appealing the decision by the committee to disqualify him from standing for an NEC position ahead of the ANC elective conference set for Nasrec later this weekend.
Yengeni argues that he has already been punished by the party, adding that his ban from participating has no merit since the matter occurred over 15 years ago, way before the new rules were even enacted.
"Firstly, it is true that I was found guilty and sentenced to four years in imprisonment, for which I served four months ... After more than 10 years of the sentence, I applied to the director general of the justice system and constitutional development for the expungement of my criminal record, and my application for expungement was accordingly approved.
"The resolution on which you seek to disqualify me from participation at the upcoming national conference of the ANC was only taken in 2017, however, I had been sentenced more than 15 years since then and had also been punished by the ANC for the said offence," Yengeni said in his letter to Motlanthe.
Yengeni has called the ruling by the committee unconstitutional and not in line with the rules governing the party.
"Your decision ruling, which to continue to perpetuate that I have a criminal record record is therefore unlawful as it is against the constitution," he said.
The Star