The judiciary has come under heavy criticism from the ANC's KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive committee - which accused SA's judges of favouring President Cyril Ramaphosa's administration while being biased against former president Jacob Zuma.
The criticism is in a report the PEC delivered in a closed meeting with ANC national officials last month, following the unrest that claimed more than 300 lives in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
The meeting was called to discuss the political fallout after Zuma's imprisonment and the violence that followed.
The KwaZulu-Natal PEC, which was led by chair Sihle Zikalala and provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli, used the opportunity to lash out at the judiciary, including acting chief justice Raymond Zondo, and pointed fingers at Ramaphosa, his cabinet ministers and the national executive committee (NEC).
The attitude of the PEC goes some way to explaining why some ANC leaders in the province were hesitant to condemn the riots when looters were on the rampage, destroying the cities and towns the party governs.
The Sunday Times understands that prior to the meeting with Ramaphosa and other top leaders, some PEC members warned that the report was too harsh and urged the provincial office bearers to "tone it down". However, the watered-down version still raised the ire of ANC national officials.
The report acknowledges that Zuma was partly to blame for his arrest for "taking a hard line" on participating in the commission of inquiry into state capture, but it agrees with the view expressed by his staunch backers that the former president was jailed without trial and that the Constitutional Court created a "Zuma law" when the majority judgment sent him to jail.
"The minority judgment confirms the judicial blunder that President Zuma was sentenced into imprisonment without trial. The combative expression and language contained in the majority judgment demonstrate that the departure from ordinary procedures was an emotional decision from the members of the bench," the report says.
It accuses judges of taking sides in political battles.
"It is worth noting that the government and the ANC lost almost all court cases in the period between 2014 to 2019 … It is also an open secret that cases brought to court against the government and the ANC post the 54th national conference [at Nasrec] are generally dismissed, and mostly with costs to the litigants. The central question would be what, if anything, has been practically done by the government and movement to secure so much consistent victory in court cases, except an impression that judges are players in the political space," it reads.
It is worth noting that the government and the ANC lost almost all court cases in the period between 2014 to 2019
— The KwaZulu-Natal PEC
Zondo comes under attack for "his abuse of the judiciary system by approaching directly the ConCourt to force President Zuma to appear before the commission whilst the review application by Zuma is still pending in the high court".
But Zikalala's PEC reserves the harshest criticism for Ramaphosa and his executive. The report says the president's characterisation of the unrest as an insurrection with some ethnic mobilisation was "simplistic" and "exaggerated".
"A revolutionary movement worthy of its name should be able to scientifically dissect such occurrences beyond what meets an eye. Failure to do so will lead to a simplistic argument that arresting every participant in looting will be the panacea of the problems at hand," it reads.
The province accuses the NEC of having abandoned Zuma when new leaders came in after the Nasrec conference.
"In the quest to clean its image in society or certain sections of society, it allowed the freedom fighter and its President for 10 solid year to hang dry and, wittingly or [unwittingly], projected him as the face of corruption and everything wrong that happened in the ANC and government.
"The ANC could not even combatively contest the wrong narrative of 'nine wasted years' . the ANC should have closed the space around the former president. In the final analysis the trigger event was a culmination of blunders that could have been avoided," the report says.
Asked if the province stands by the report, Zikalala said the report was part of an ongoing conversation in the party. "From the meeting we agreed we need to discuss these matters internally," he said.
He declined to comment further and referred the Sunday Times to Ntuli, who was not available at the time of going to print.
ANC national chair Gwede Mantashe, who attended the meeting, also declined to comment on "internal discussions".
The Sunday Times understands that Ramaphosa stood his ground when he responded to the report - and insisted there is evidence the riots were part of a planned insurrection.
A PEC member who disagreed with the contents of the report - and who asked not to be named - said the initial report was "worse". "The [national] officials dealt with us. We were moered," he said of the response of the national officials to the report.
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