The EleXions Agency, an independent South African company, has managed the ANC’s internal election process since its 2007 conference in Polokwane.

This year, however, politicians at the forefront of the ANC’s Radical Economic Transformation (RET) faction have come forward with a sudden new claim about the agency: that one of its two co-founders is too closely aligned with President Cyril Ramaphosa to be trusted with the administration of the elections.

The EleXions Agency’s two directors are Bontle Mpakanyane and Dren Nupen, both of whom have decades of experience in facilitating elections within political parties, corporates and NGOs.

It is Nupen who is being targeted by RET’s conflict of interests claim, on the grounds of her marriage to lawyer Charles Nupen.

The claim against Dren Nupen

Nupen, a small woman with white hair and glasses, will be a familiar figure to anyone who has followed ANC politics over the past 25 years. Ever since the Polokwane conference, Nupen has been tasked with announcing the final results of the votes cast by party delegates.

Suspended ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule appears to have kicked off the campaign regarding the EleXions Agency when he was addressing supporters outside the Nasrec conference venue on Friday.

Magashule called for votes to be counted by hand, saying: “The wife of Charles Nupen [Dren Nupen] is the main person overseeing these elections. She’s running elections here, and that’s a conflict of interest. So that’s why we are saying voting must be manual.”

The claim was subsequently taken up by recently expelled ANC member Carl Niehaus, who tweeted: “Are you aware that Cyril Ramaphosa’s attorney Charles Nupen’s wife Dren Nupen heads up The EleXions Agency, that manages the ANC’s voting process? This is a SERIOUS CONFLICT of interest, & urgently deserves our attention. I would argue a legal interdict!”

Other RET supporters have been circulating the allegation since.

It seems likely that the RET faction is attempting to lay the ground for a legal challenge to the election results should President Cyril Ramaphosa emerge victorious with a second term.

The response from Nupen and the ANC’s electoral committee

When Daily Maverick contacted Nupen for comment on Saturday, she directed us to the ANC’s electoral committee.

Nupen added: “But for clarification purposes, Nupen is not the lawyer for the President, Peter Harris is.”

The ultimate arbiter of the ANC’s elections is its internal electoral committee, chaired by Kgalema Motlanthe, to whom the EleXions Agency reports.

Committee secretary Chief Masila told Daily Maverick:

“The electoral committee is aware of this false allegation [regarding conflict of interest] which we dismiss with the contempt it deserves. The fact is that Peter Harris is the lawyer of the ANC President, Cde Cyril Ramaphosa, and Charles Nupen is not.”

Masila continued: “Dren Nupen has every right to do business on her own and independently so from her husband. EleXions is an independent business entity whose existence is distinct from the law firm that Charles Nupen is part of.”

He added: “EleXions has conducted ANC elections over the past 25 years with integrity and there is no basis whatsoever to doubt their credibility this time around. Spurious allegations raised by expelled ANC members have no bearing or consequence on the work of the ANC electoral committee.”

The facts behind the fiction

Both Nupen and Mpakanyane have elections and facilitation experience stretching back well before the establishment of the EleXions Agency and their contract with the ANC: Nupen is the former executive director of the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa.

In addition to running elections for the ANC’s national body, the EleXions Agency has also administered polls for Niehaus’s own MKMVA (military veterans’ association), the ANC Women’s League and the ANC Youth League.

It has run SRC elections on campuses including the Tshwane University of Technology and the University of the Western Cape. It is also a major service provider when it comes to the internal elections of local trade unions: the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and union federation Cosatu have both been clients.

The integrity or objectivity of the EleXions Agency does not appear to have been publicly questioned up to this point.

Nupen’s husband Charles is a founding partner at the law firm Harris Nupen Molebatsi, alongside Peter Harris and Basetsana Molebatsi.

Nupen made his reputation as a labour negotiator, but also has a storied history as an activist lawyer who spent a year in the dock on trial for terrorism in the mid-1970s. He also “played a central role in the peace accords of the early Nineties”, to quote a 1995 profile, and was an IEC commissioner for the first democratic election.

Due to Nupen’s long history in the labour movement, there is little doubt that he would be acquainted with Ramaphosa. (The Nupen profile on SA History mentions that the American Federal Mediation Conciliation Service sent someone to South Africa in the mid-1980s to “train a small group of mediators such as Nupen and Cyril Ramaphosa.)

There is, however, no indication that Nupen is acting or has acted as a lawyer for Ramaphosa currently or in the past.

It is true, however, that the law firm Harris Nupen Molebatsi is currently representing Ramaphosa in his Constitutional Court challenge to the Phala Phala report. But reporting on the matter specifically cites Peter Harris, and not Nupen, as representing Ramaphosa.

Fact-check verdict: RET is grabbing at straws

The fact that the EleXions Agency has run elections for the ANC for 25 years without incident or controversy makes the RET’s sudden claims of bias hard to swallow. DM