The legal battle between the ANC and Ezulweni Investments over the more than R102m the party owes the firm for election posters seems far from over.
This is despite a South Gauteng High Court ruling ordering the ANC to pay its debt to Ezulweni for services rendered in relation to its 2019 election campaign.
The court last week rejected the ANC's application to appeal its ruling two months ago that found that the party had a binding verbal agreement with Ezulweni for supplying ANC street posters for the 2019 general election. The posters cost more than R100m.
Ezulweni had resolved to approach the high court after the ANC refused to pay them, with the ruling party claiming it had not signed a contract with the company.
But the South Gauteng High Court found that the ANC's application for leave to appeal had no reasonable prospect of success, saying as the verbal agreement with Ezulweni was binding.
However, the ANC is now considering petitioning the Supreme Court of Appeal over the matter.
This is contained in a letter the ANC's lawyers have sent to Ezulweni's legal representatives following the judgment.
In a tit-for-tat, Ezulweni Investments has threatened to seek an execution order to attach assets of the cash-strapped governing party, giving them until Friday to file their papers in the SCA — even though the ANC has up to 30 days to file an application with the Bloemfontein-based superior court.
Ezulweni Investments' lawyer Shafique Sarlie on Wednesday confirmed receipt of the correspondence from the ANC's lawyers.
“Yes, they wrote to us saying they intend on appealing to the Supreme Court. They wrote to us, but they haven’t filed anything. We believe it is a vexatious application because the judgment of this high court is a sound judgment and well-reasoned judgment,” said Sarlie.
The judgment is likely to compound the already precarious financial position of the ANC, which has been battling to service its other debts and struggles to pay the salaries of its staff members regularly on scheduled dates.
It's against this backdrop that Ezulweni has already started the process of identifying assets it can attach from the ANC, in the event they go ahead with the execution order application.
ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.
Sarlie said the matter had been dragging for too long and his clients and their investors had long been awaiting their payday.
He said they have given the ANC until Friday to lodge their application as a month was too long.
“The ANC has got one month to appeal to the SCA. What we’ve done, because we don’t want to be unreasonable, we said we want you to apply by this Friday and that if you don’t, we plan on proceeding to execute,” Sarlie said.
According to Sarlie, Ezulweni Investments spent a lot of money on ANC election street posters in 2018 ahead of its campaign for the 2019 election and they had not been paid a cent, almost two years later.
“My client has fulfilled a huge contract and they spent huge amounts of money and owes huge amount to subcontractors and investors on this project, some of whom have waited for 18 months. These monies were due to us in May 2019,” Sarlie said.
