Ace Magashule’s defiant letter seeking to ‘suspend’ president Cyril Ramaphosa last week created such chaos in the ANC that people from other countries began calling the party to verify the information.
Suspended ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule is unrepentant about his “letter of suspension” to party president Cyril Ramaphosa, and has asked a court to reverse his own suspension and declare Ramaphosa suspended instead.
Court papers that Magashule served on the ANC, Ramaphosa – in his personal and ANC capacity – and deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte surfaced on Friday morning.
In it, Magashule asks the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg to hear the case on 1 June on an urgent basis.
Magashule wants the “ANC step-aside rule or regime and/or Rule 25.70 of the ANC constitution” – as well as his suspension letter from Ramaphosa – to be declared “to be unlawful, unconstitutional, invalid and null and/or void”.
In turn, he wants his suspension of Ramaphosa to be declared valid and effective until lawfully nullified, and that the instruction for him to apologise to Ramaphosa for attempting to suspend him be declared “unlawful and unenforceable”.
Magashule says he wrote the letter of suspension to Ramaphosa on the grounds that the ANC president had used money to influence a party conference outcome. Magashule also claims to have written it before Ramaphosa wrote a letter suspending him because of corruption charges.
He said he had wanted to deliver Ramaphosa’s letter physically, “out of respect for the office he holds”, and that this was the reason for the delay.
In the 128-page application, Magashule repeats the allegations he has made about his suspension in more detail, painting himself as a victim of Ramaphosa’s CR17 faction in the party.
