The new leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) in North West faces an uncertain future, and its newly elected chairperson could be forced out due to a culpable homicide charge still hanging over his head.

Former North West MEC for human settlement Nono Maloyi emerged victorious over Premier Bushy Maape at the North West ANC's ninth elective conference over the weekend.

Ahead of the election, there was a strong push for Maloyi not to contest for the position, with his critics citing a 2018 culpable homicide case that was provisionally withdrawn by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) as grounds for him to step aside.

Branches in Bojanala, the ANC's biggest region in the North West, wrote to the interim provincial committee, requesting that Maloyi not be allowed to stand for election, given that the culpable homicide charge may still be reinstated.

They argued that the matter was not struck off the roll, meaning that Maloyi still faced the serious charge.

Maloyi told News24 it was unfortunate that his detractors "were trying to leverage an unfortunate situation for political gain".

"The ANC step-aside rule was meant to root out bad apples from the organisation and not to settle political scores," Maloyi said.

"The accident was an unforeseen and unfortunate incident. It was not corruption, money laundering, or any of the criminal acts that were meant to be rooted out by the step-aside policy."

He said that should ANC members in the province prioritise renewing the party and ensuring that the quality of leadership "was of high integrity", petty factional squabbles would not find their way into the ANC.

Maloyi added that if the ANC had been preoccupied with issues affecting communities, and not been entrenched in self-serving matters, the court cases, which had hampered the conference schedule, would not have happened.

Beyond the litigation that derailed progress at the conference, there were also allegations of security breaches, with "thugs" said to have stolen accreditation tags with the intention of infiltrating the conference.

ANC head of organising Nomvula Mokonyane said the "thugs", as she called them, had been caught in the act on camera.

There were also allegations of voting branch delegates being "manipulated".

Despite the numerous delays, Maloyi emerged as the provincial chairperson, defeating ANC veteran Maape by more than 90 votes.

Lazzy Mokgosi was elected deputy chairperson, amassing 353 votes, compared to Paul Sebegoe's 311 votes.

Current economic development MEC Kenetswe Mosenogi was defeated by Louis Diremelo for the position of provincial secretary, while Viola Motsumi was elected deputy secretary.

Community Safety and Transport MEC Sello Lehari was elected provincial treasurer.

In the early hours of Monday, the conference was still electing additional members of the provincial executive committee (PEC).

The rest of the conference programme is expected to be finalised in the next two weeks.

President Cyril Ramaphosa was advised not to attend the conference as North West's programme had not yet been concluded.

"We have since also advised President Cyril Ramaphosa that because the conference has not concluded its business, he should not come," chairperson of the national executive committee (NEC) deployees in North West, Obed Bapela, said.

"As you know, the president only closes the conference once all the work of the conference has happened, so we told him to no longer proceed to come to the venue," said Bapela.