ANC Youth League president Collen Maine said on Saturday that the league would back whoever wins the ANC's elective race, including Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.
"When the branches of ANC appoint new leadership, we [ANCYL] must abide by the decision and we must respect the leadership elected. If Cyril Ramaphosa is elected tomorrow as president, we will accept him and promote him to be the president of the country.
The league had been staunch campaigners for a Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma presidency.
Maine also had a bone to pick with the judiciary, telling HuffPost SA at the ANC's National Conference at Nasrec in Johannesburg that South Africa's courts had become too political and that they were "trying to tell the ANC who must lead it".
Maine bemoaned the fact that the courts were affecting the numbers game in the ANC presidential election between Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma.
"This is a game of numbers, a game played by people who want to decrease the support base for NDZ."Collin Maine, ANCYL president
This comes after delegates from various branches in the Bojanala, region as well as provincial executive committee members from KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State, will not be allowed to vote in the historic election. They will, however, be allowed to attend the conference as observers.
"We have been marred by court cases, we are very clear on the agendas of the courts -- the courts want to tell the ANC who must lead it. It's agendas, however, [are] going to fall. This is a game of numbers, a game played by people who want to decrease the support base for NDZ [Dlamini-Zuma]."
ANC members in the North West on Friday won their court challenge to have the Bojanala regional conference nullified. Bojanala, the biggest region in the North-West, was firmly behind presidential candidate Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. Will their absence deal a blow to her campaign for ANC's top spot?
"[The] judiciary is becoming too political, and that tendency must be dealt with; otherwise, we will have [a] judiciary behaving like Big Brother and it taking sides in political battles.
HuffPost also spoke to Carl Niehaus, spokesperson for the Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans' Association, who echoed Maine's views on the judiciary.
"Members must not run to courts, they should rather deal with the matter internally within the structures of the ANC. A process that continues under this rule will be problematic for the ANC. We cannot and we should not allow a political party to be ruled by court ruling."