The African National Congress (ANC) leadership in KwaZulu-Natal has resolved to challenge the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg ruling by filing an intention to appeal at the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) on Wednesday pending permission from national leadership.

The ruling handed down on Tuesday nullified the legitimacy of the ANC's 2015 provincial elective conference (PEC).

Provincial spokesperson Mdumiseni Ntuli told News24 that if the only issue was that the PEC should not have taken place six months earlier, this does not warrant the conference being set aside.

"The PEC met last night and came to conclusion that the irregularities which were pronounced by those aggrieved were of no material effect, and not substantive enough to warrant a decision to set the conference aside," said Ntuli.

Ntuli explained that they were consulting with national leadership in order to seek permission on whether they could file their intention to appeal with the SCA as soon as possible.

"The PEC has appealed to members of the ANC to say we are not challenging the court decision because we don't want the ANC to go to conference, but we want to avoid setting the wrong precedent by leaving this as an unchallenged judgment," Ntuli said.

Ntuli said that the judges had not considered the fact that the ANC is a political party and that they had to take into account other factors other than the law.

"Judges used the law, circumstances and context of the case, completely disregarding the fact that the elections were around the corner. Conferences tend to be divisive, elections are also challenging so we had to manage those things simultaneously and that was an irrational expectation from the courts," he said.

Ntuli said that the conference was only called earlier so that they had enough time to campaign before the local government elections in August 2016.