Only convicts will be excluded from ANC lists, says Jessie Duarte

Only people who had criminal convictions would be excluded from the ANC lists for parliament and provincial legislatures, ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte said on Friday.

Speaking to the media in Durban, Duarte said the ANC would not a make judgment on people outside of a courtroom.

“Where a person is charged criminally in a court of law, definitely those matters are taken quite seriously,” she said.

Duarte said many of the ANC leaders who were nominated by branches but implicated in wrongdoing had voluntarily removed themselves from the list.

“It’s quite an important process because people do literally debate about names and they motivate why a certain person shouldn’t be moved lower on the list or be kept higher on the list,” she said.

Duarte said the party’s national list process would not be held to ransom by the delays and in-fighting over who featured on the lists in the North West.

On Friday, the ANC held an extended national executive committee (NEC) meeting with its alliance partners to comb through and finalise the lists of names submitted by ANC branches to serve in the national assembly, the national council of provinces and all nine provincial legislatures.

Duarte said the outcomes of the North West list conference on Saturday might change the lists only marginally.

Factions of the ANC in that province have been warring after the provincial leadership led by former premier Supra Mahumapelo was disbanded.

Mahumapelo led two failed court bids to try to overturn the decision to disband them and later to interdict the opposing faction to run the list processes.

An earlier attempt to hold the list conference in the North West resulted in bloody confrontation.

Duarte said regardless of what happened there they would continue finalising the lists to be adopted by the NEC on Sunday.