This follows after the ANC Chief Whip, who was also the council whip, Vumile Nikelo, was shown the door by members of opposition parties and ANC members during a vote of no confidence in the council.

ALSO READ: Mangaung council whip out after secret ballot

According to the ANC Mangaung IRC spokesperson, Ncamile Nxangisa, the party’s lower structure has since requested the intervention of the IPC on the expulsion of eight members who were flagged for their possible role in colluding with the opposition to defy the work of the ANC but to date, nothing has happened in that regard.  

ALSO READ: ANC intends to expel councillors as infighting intensifies

Nxangisa says the party is deeply worried about the state of the metro, especially when incidents such as the aforementioned occurs. Those who the ANC seeks to expel include council speaker Stefani Lockman-Naidoo and former Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) for Transport, Patrick Monyakoane. It also includes six others, who have been served with letters of intention to expel them from the ANC.

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“We are disappointed that we are being swayed away from [managing] our councillors' work, which [in turn] destabilises the municipality and rolling out of services to our people. We finally wish to call for calm and apologise to residents of Mangaung and assure them that the ANC will do everything in its power to try and bring stability to this municipality,” Nxangisa adds.

The threat to expel these councillors from the ANC also comes ahead of the much-anticipated Free State provincial ANC conference next month where the new leadership of the Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) is set to be elected.

Earlier, a group of ANC members dragged the party’s IPC to the High Court. A group led by, amongst others, the ANC Branch 29 Secretary in Mangaung, Ditaba Mokhutle, wanted a High Court judge to give an order to dissolve the IPC. Mokhutle said several factors ignited the court move and those include the failure to prepare and organise a provincial party conference.

ALSO READ - #ANCvsANC: IPC taken to Free State court

The ANC council has long been tangled in factional battles with party members believed to be aligned to a party policy called the Radical Economic Transformation (RET), usually linked to the suspended ANC Secretary-General (SG) Ace Magashule, and those aligned to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Thuma Mina, at loggerheads with each other.

The ANC’s IPC spokesperson, Oupa Khoabane, has, however, previously rejected the notion that the ANC is one organisation with many groupings in the party.

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