Johannesburg – In the appeal papers challenging his expulsion from the ANC, Carl Niehaus, a senior party member and a staunch critic of President Cyril Ramaphosa, says he has a right to freedom of speech and free circulation of ideas.
Niehaus was accused of being one of the instigators of the July 2021 unrest that took place largely in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng following the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma for contempt of court.
This was after Zuma refused to appear before the state capture commission chaired by now Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.
Niehaus is a strong ally of Zuma.
In the expulsion letter issued on Monday, the national disciplinary committee (NDC) said the charges for which Niehaus was found guilty are serious.
“The utterances of the charged member were made at a time when the circumstances surrounding the arrest and subsequent committal to prison of former president Zuma was very volatile as evidenced by the subsequent riots which took place in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng and the resultant loss of life and limb and damage to and loss of property.”
In the appeal papers filed on Wednesday, Niehaus’s legal representative and ANC veteran Mathews Phosa said that his client was “entitled to raise his opinion and exercise his right of freedom of speech”.
“The charged member is certainly not the only one who has levelled and raised their support for Mr. Zuma, and the NDC patently failed to take this into account,” said Phosa.
He said the NDC failed to consider that the purported Rule the committee relied upon and Niehaus’s purported contravention thereof, was not consistently applied. He noted that Niehaus was found guilty of “making utterances that were devoid of any truth and patently false and that the charged member deliberately put such false information into the public domain to cause confusion and disunity in the ANC. It purportedly brought the ANC into disrepute…”
But he disagreed: “The NDC erred in not considering that these utterances were the opinion of the charged member. The NDC failed to lead evidence in proving beyond reasonable doubt that these utterances were false and devoid of truth”.
He continued: “the NDC erred in failing to take into account that no evidence was led to proof beyond reasonable doubt that that ANC was brought into disrepute. The charged member raises this ground of appeal concerning all of the charges or counts on which he was found guilty of”.
He also said the NDC failed and erred in failing to consider that Niehaus made the utterances on the express authority of the MK Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) for which organisation he was a national executive member and the spokesperson.
“The NDC erred in not taking into account that the evidence to the contrary was merely an opinion and not substantiated,” he said.
Regarding the sanction of expulsion Phosa said the NDC “failed to consider Niehaus’s history and the time he devoted to the struggle as a member of the ANC”.
“The absence of purported remorse and persistence that he is not guilty of the charges should not have been construed as aggravating circumstances,” he said.
For these reasons, he said, “the charged member contends that the sanction imposed is too harsh and does not justify expulsion”.
“The NDC should have considered the submissions made by the charged member’s representative and it is submitted that the proposed sanction would have been appropriate and accepted by the charged member,” he said.