I am also of the view that the Pretoria High Court ruling on the ANC’s urgent application to stop the breakaway group from using the name ‘Congress of the People’ is extremely biased and contestable. The court failed to ask why an association incorporated under 21 of the Companies Act wants to register as a political party in terms of section 15 to 17 of the Electoral Commission Act or chosen this particular name.
Despite this setting a wrong precedence to the extent of violating the Companies Act, it conveys to the outside world that a political party can register as a section 21 Company to the effect of which is to benefit itself as a non-profit organization in terms of Nonprofit Organisations Act 71 of 1997. In its court papers, the so-called Cope alleges that “The Committee also approached legal advisors and instructed them, in line with the announcement on 6 November 2008 referred to in paragraph 6.5 above, to apply for the incorporation of Congress of the People as a section 21 Company with the Registrar of Companies”. In contrast, there is no paragraph 6.5 in its papers. It further alleges that “Accordingly it is difficult to find persons who were personally involved at the time to give first hand evidence, particularly at such short notice. This problem has been exacerbated because mainly of the so-called ‘elders’ of the Applicant (ANC) who are aware of the true state of affairs as at that date are, understandably, not willing to take sides in the present dispute and to depose to affidavits on behalf of the First Respondent (Cope)”. This is a vague submission in an attempt to substantiate side issues which are irrelevant to the matter. In this instance, if indeed this argument is valid, Cope could have asked for time to find those persons as the court is duty bound to grant such a request on good cause shown and satisfied that the party has genuine and bona fide dispute of fact. As such, the court would have granted the ANC a temporary interdict with a return date for Cope to give first hand evidence with persons deemed to have been personally involved in this historic event. Despite that Cope has rested its case on bare falsehoods, the court dismissed the motion application without exhausting all substantive issues raised by the ANC to such an extent that it created an impression that no one has common law rights to their heritage, identity or history. Yet it’s common knowledge that the historic events such as the Defiance Campaign in 1952 and the Congress of the People in 1955, were aimed at forging a kind of multiracial front against the 1948 accession to power of the Afrikaner Nationalist Party. At this time, in Kliptown, an alliance of all components of the Congress Movement comprising of Africans (ANC), Indians (SA Indian Congress) Coloureds (Coloured People’s Congress) and whites (Congress of Democrats), converge under the banner of the Congress of the People in open opposition to the government’s unjust and repressive laws. The Freedom Charter was the main result of this event which led to the ANC adopting it as the cornerstone of its policies and ideals until to date. This was the cause in which the greatest racial spread of members of the Congress Alliance became aligned with the ANC as a political home to a large category of people. This tradition survived and the terms like “Kongolose” and Charterist” were used synonymously to refer to the ANC. It further forged alliance with the SACP and Cosatu in what the ANC became known as the ‘broad church’. It’s against this background that the ANC has common law rights to the heritage, identity, goodwill and history of the Congress of the People held in Kliptown. And the piggy-back stratagem Cope employed to have undue and improper advantages by means of falsehoods will not go on unchallenged. Morgan Phaahla, Ekurhuleni "An inch of time is an inch of gold, but you can't buy that inch of time with an inch of gold." --- On Fri, 12/12/08, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: [YCLSA Discussion] Re: Judgement on abuse of 1955 Congress of The People To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Date: Friday, December 12, 2008, 5:26 AM Dear: Comrades Am utterly dissapointed that again the courts of this country have failed to distiguish facts from opinions by ANC dissidents. Or either the legal team representing us were unable to use documented historical facts to argue that COP is part and parcel of the furniture of the ANC. I am very much worried about the weight of our argument, read both affidavits on www.thetimes.co.za for further reference. It is a well documented historical facts that COP was first mooted in the ANC circles and the 1953 CAPE Conference in Cradock adopted a Proposal to convene a convention of South Africans which was made by the late, then ANC President of CAPE Prof Zachariah Keodirelang Mathews. COP is our own comrades, irrespective that we invited other organisation o serve on the ANC adopted NAC. I think we must appeal, this judgement. Thabo lekhu 0836969174 ------------------------------------------- South Africas premier free email service - www.webmail.co.za ------------------------------------------------------------------ For super low premiums, click here http://home.webmail.co.za/dd.pwm --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. 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