Johannesburg – A steering committee of the ANC is currently in negotiations with senior members of the party about 60 odd votes that were not reckoned into the final tally for the party’s top six positions.

This comes after Senzo Mchunu from KwaZulu-Natal, who lost the election for the position of ANC secretary general by 24 votes to Free State premier Ace Magashule, challenged the final outcome based on information that emerged that the votes in question had not been counted.

While the ANC has not made an official statement regarding the impasse, what is known is that 63 or 68 delegates (still unconfirmed) went to the voting booth with their IDs and accreditation tags to vote for the top six, but their names didn’t appear on the voter’s roll.

The voter’s roll had the names of all the legitimate delegates that were allowed to vote at the conference. It excluded the names of all the people who were prevented from voting by the various court cases.

The 63 or 68 delegates were allowed to vote, but their ballots were then kept separately so that the EleXion Agency, who is administrating the election, could check later why their names weren’t on the voter’s roll.

These ballots were ultimately excluded from the final tally of votes when the results were announced, which means that somewhere a decision was made not to include them.

Mchunu, having lost by such a small margin, then queried this decision with the EleXion Agency and the ANC’s electoral commission and a steering committee was appointed to investigate and manage the situation.

Some sources say that Mchunu has threatened with court action, but that a political solution is being sought to allow the voting for the national executive commission (NEC) to go ahead and to avoid a total collapse of the conference. They are currently negotiating, while voting for the NEC is going ahead.

The position of secretary general is crucial as this is the person who effectively manages Luthuli House and the ANC. Magashule, who is a known ally of President Jacob Zuma, won this election with 2360 votes against Mchunu’s 2336, the latter having been on Cyril Ramaphosa’s slate.

FOR AM

JOHANNESBURG – Convicted arms smuggler Guus Kouwenhoven has to report to police every two hours as part of his bail conditions.

He was granted bail of R1-million in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court today.

Kouwenhoven was Liberian warlord Charles Taylor‘s confidante and built his timber empire through arms deals made with Taylor.

READ: Dutch arms dealer’s bail hearing continues

“One million rand in cash and a very intense reporting requirement at Sea Point police station, on a daily basis. There’s a curfew in place,” his advocate Gary Eisenberg said.

“An additional bail condition is that Kouwenhoven remain under house arrest at his R90-million Bantry Bay home at weekends.”

Magistrate Vusi Mhlanga said there is a concern that the multi-millionaire has both the means and the motive to flee the country.

The state says Kouwenhoven has been a fugitive of justice by not handing himself over when a Dutch court sentenced him to 19 years in jail for selling arms and aiding war crime.

State Advocate Dave Damerell says DIRCO has received a new extradition request, matter postponed until 12 January 2018 to work through these documents #Kouwenhoven #DutchFugitive #eNCA

— Pheladi Sethusa (@pheladi_s) December 19, 2017

Eisenberg said the Department of International Relations had received the extradition bundle by the diplomatic route. 

“I’m not so sure at this stage whether it has been examined for compliance purposes. We’ve learnt from the prosecution that an extradition bundle was received some time ago but was non-compliant.”

The matter was postponed until 12 January.

eNCA

Johannesburg – Accusations of state capture cannot be limited to the Gupta family, when Afrikaner capital continues to capture the state, former ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe wrote in his organisational report, delivered to delegates at the ANC national elective conference.

In the report, Mantashe stated that the debate over how far back the judicial commission of inquiry should start its investigation on state capture required the participation of party members.

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He said that there were some within the party who wanted it to begin with the arrival of Dutch colonial administrator Jan Van Riebeeck; some who wanted the probe to start in 1994 when the ANC took power; and a third group that wanted it limited to an investigation of state capture by President Jacob Zuma’s friends, the Guptas, like the one conducted by former Public Protector Thuli Mandonsela.

“At the heart of this confusion are the divisions among comrades, boxing each other into solidified factions. This deprives our movement of space and the capacity to enrich the debate, and coming up with appropriate conclusions,” he writes.

Speaking to journalists, Mantashe said the debate around the existence of state capture continued to divide the ANC.

The debate, however, he says, imposed a responsibility on the leadership to engage and find a common, coherent and cohesive response.

“It’s facing us, it is there. We can’t hide our heads and say it does not exist. It exists, it is debated by society,” he told journalists.

He said that, while confronting the phenomenon may be painful, the challenge of state capture posed a threat to the movement.

ALSO READ: Booing of Zuma ‘signalled the near collapse of the alliance’ – Mantashe

The ANC could not be perceived as confused and defensive, under a dark cloud of recent revelations that are in the public discourse, such as the #GuptaLeaks, the KPMG, Bell Pottinger, and MultiChoice scandals, he said.

“This conference must provide concrete guidance to the leadership, not only on the position the ANC must take, but also how should it engage this debate. At this point in time, the ANC is divided in this debate, to a point of seeing our disagreements as boxes of enemy camps.”

Mantashe cautioned against using “white monopoly capital” as a counter argument to state capture, saying that, while that line of reasoning might be popular, it was not scientific, but self-defeating.

WATCH: Gwede Mantashe on the state of the ANC

“It removes our eyes from the reality that white domination, in all aspects of our lives, is the essence of the revolution. That the white section of society remains dominant owners of the economy, controlling and managing it, and cannot be accepted.

“Deracialising the economy should be at the heart of the programme of the liberation movement. It should not be reduced into a new phenomenon that constitutes an immediate problem facing our movement; nor one to counterpose different comrades in the movement.”

Visit our special report, #ANCVotes, for all the news, analysis and opinions about the ANC’s national elective conference.