ANC Electoral Committee chairperson Kgalema Motlanthe had told Tony Yengeni he was disqualified from contesting for a position on the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) because of his fraud conviction and four-year prison sentence.  

Yengeni launched an appeal against the decision, stating that 10 years after the sentence: “I applied to the director-general of the Justice and Correctional Services Department to expunge my criminal record. My application for expungement was accordingly approved,” he wrote to the committee.  

In a letter to Yengeni, Motlanthe said the committee had decided to uphold his appeal on the substantive reasons he provided and the proof of the expungement of his criminal record.  

“We, therefore, wish to confirm that you are no longer disqualified from being a candidate for the NEC positions during the 55th National Conference of the ANC due to take place on 16 December 2022 at Nasrec.”  

Yengeni pleaded guilty to fraud charges in 2003, relating to him using his role as chairperson of the Joint Standing Committee on Defence to get a discount when he bought a Mercedes-Benz. 

He served four months of the sentence before being released on parole. 

Yengeni is one of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s critics and is hoping for a return to the NEC.  

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Last week, former ANC Women’s League president Bathabile Dlamini was disqualified from standing for the NEC at the party’s national elective conference, which begins on Friday. 

Dlamini was one of the front-runners in the race for NEC positions, making it to number 15 on the list released by the committee last week after receiving 856 branch nominations.  

Her disqualification relates to a court ruling this year which found the former minister of social development guilty of perjury for lying under oath during an inquiry into the social grants debacle at the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa).  

She was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment or a R200,000 fine and opted for the latter. Dlamini had concealed from the judge that she had set up a parallel structure to Sassa with “workstreams” that reported directly to her. 

Another two ANC members with criminal convictions are former ANC Youth League leader Andile Lungisa and former deputy higher education and training minister Mduduzi Manana. 

Lungisa was convicted in 2018 of assault and sentenced to three years in prison. Like Yengeni, he was released on parole. The conviction relates to a 2016 incident in the Nelson Mandela Bay council when he smashed a jug on the head of DA councillor Rano Kayser. 

Manana pleaded and was found guilty of three counts of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm on charges relating to attacking three women at a nightclub in August 2017. He was sentenced to one year in jail or a fine of R100,000.  

The Electoral Committee is yet to communicate what will happen to the pair. DM