The African National Congress's (ANC's) electoral committee will oppose an urgent application some party members lodged at the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg to compel it to provide raw data of all branch nominations for the 200 candidates for additional national executive committee (NEC) positions.

The nine disgruntled party members banded together to challenge the list under the banner of "The Kgalema disputed NEC list".

Electoral committee secretary Chief Livhuwani Matsila said on Monday said that "the instruction that we have received from the office of the secretary-general is that we should oppose the court application".

He was quick to add that the application did not seek to halt the elective conference, which is expected to kick off on Friday. 

"They are seeking certain information and we are still getting clarity on that," Matsila said.

In court papers, the members asked the court to compel the party to release the raw data. 

It asked that, "The First Respondent (chairperson of the electoral committee, Kgalema Motlanthe) be hereby ordered to publish an excel spreadsheet of all branch nominations received for all candidates nominated by branches for election in the 55th national conference of the African National Congress."

Last week, News24 reported that disgruntled ANC members wrote to Motlanthe to challenge the list he had released.

They questioned the criteria the party used to disqualify some qualifying members to achieve gender parity, and gave Motlanthe 48 hours to respond. 

Leading the charge for the complainants was Isaac Mashaba, a member from Ward 30 in Sebokeng, Gauteng. 

Mashaba told News24 last week that the list published on 1 December "failed to meet the minimum requirements in that it failed to tabulate the total number of branch and provincial nominations received by each candidate".

He argued that what the electoral committee published was a list that had already factored in gender parity. 

Mashaba said it failed to satisfy the objectives of the 54th conference to establish the electoral committee so that electoral processes are conducted in a free and fair manner. 

He added that "the fact that we are using an electoral college system that is easily manipulated through influencing a core of influential people, like branch, regional and provincial secretaries, who manage the membership and deployment system", was worrying.

He said it made the ANC's internal democratic process vulnerable to corruption by businesses, internal factions and outside interests. 

Responding to the members' concerns, Matsila said the committee was "in the process of finalising the acceptance/decline of nominations and vetting of candidates".

Mashaba objected and questioned why Motlanthe released the list if all processes had not been completed.