The 16 applicants were not present in courtroom F, as Judge Johannes Petrus Daffue delivered his judgment on the matter. Daffue dismissed the case with costs after a local attorney for the applicants, Hanno Bekker, informed the court that he had not been given any further instructions by his Johannesburg colleagues to continue with their argument.

Bekker was left to salvage the case when it was revealed in court that the applicants’ legal team - Advocate Kameel Magan and the instructing Attorney Dexter Selepe - failed to make the journey from Johannesburg to Bloemfontein, due to Magan’s abrupt illness. Bekker told the court that he was informed at 08:45 that counsel was unable to make it. It was such short notice, the attorney did not even have enough time to submit a formal application for postponement. He had to address it in chambers just after 09:00 am. Judge Daffue acknowledged the difficult circumstances but admonished the absent legal counsel for not even filing their affidavit or heads of argument within the allotted time. He noted that this supports the respondents’ assertion that the applicants were employing delay tactics.

In his judgment, Daffue said he has “doubts regarding the applicants’ chances of success,” something which was already raised when the applicants submitted their application before the court on 16 January. Advocate William Mokhari, representing ANC National and the party’s National Disciplinary Committee (NDC), argued that the matter needed to be finalised, seeing that by-elections must take place 90 days after a vacancy arises and the case was delaying the process. Advocate Sehapi Motloung, for the Maluti-A-Phofung Municipality, echoed Mokhari’s sentiments adding his clients needed finality in order to move forward, indirectly referring to the by-elections that could not take place while the case was being argued in court.

The law firm Moroka Attorney’s Letshego Motlogeloa, for respondents two and three, maintains the applicants did not really have a shot at winning the case. “The applicants were just buying time. We are happy this is done and dusted,” she says. The disgruntled former councillors were challenging their suspension and subsequent expulsion from the party after rebelling against the Free State ANC’s Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) and voting with the opposition to elect Gilbert Mokotso as the mayor of Maluti. The councillors appealed the PEC’s decision, at both the party’s Provincial and National Disciplinary Committees. While the former committee ruled against the councillors, the latter said the matter was not in their jurisdiction, cementing the PEC’s decision to expel the councillors. They argued the process was done in accordance with the party’s constitution.

Mokotso, who is among the expelled councillors, was replacing the controversial Vusi Tshabalala, who was recalled by the then Free State Provincial Task Team (PTT) in early May 2018. The municipality collapsed under Tshabalala’s leadership with rumours of maladministration and corruption doing the rounds. The municipality continues to reel from financial instability.

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