The Government of National Unity is on the verge of collapse, with the ANC and DA now locked in a vicious Electoral Court street fight just weeks before local government elections.
The ANC has vowed to crush the DA’s attempt to intervene in its legal battle with the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) after it missed the deadline to submit candidate lists for six municipal councils.
In a scathing counter-attack, ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula reportedly said the DA had no business in the case and is using the courts as an electoral ploy to steal votes it cannot win at the ballot box.
The DA on Wednesday said deadlines were deadlines and the ANC cannot be allowed to bend the law because it is big.
The fallout centers on 28 August, the final deadline under the Municipal Electoral Act for parties to submit candidates.
The ANC admits it did not press the final “submit as final” button for 181 candidates contesting ward and proportional representation ballots in municipalities in the Eastern Cape, Free State and KwaZulu-Natal.
It claims all candidate details were already captured on the IEC system before 17:00, but technical glitches on the commission’s portal prevented final submission.
The DA has filed papers for leave to intervene, asking the Electoral Court to enforce what it calls “rigid adherence” to deadlines.
“The principle is simple: deadlines are deadlines. Rules are rules,” DA Federal Council Chairperson Ashor Sarupen said.
“Capturing candidates on the IEC system is not the same as submitting them. The system expressly requires parties to ‘submit as final’ — a process all parties clearly understood and successfully followed.”
But Mbalula is not having it. He says the DA’s intervention is opportunistic and has nothing to do with protecting its own candidates.
“What his party is asking from the commission doesn’t impact any of the DA’s candidates,” Mbalula said of the DA’s case.
“What the DA asks for takes 2,274 candidates off the ballot and 44 of the 45 parties they belong to, are not the ANC.”
The ANC argues that if the court sides with the DA’s hardline stance, it will not just punish the ANC but disenfranchise at least 44 other smaller parties who experienced similar glitches on deadline day.
The party has instructed its legal team to oppose the DA’s intervention outright.
“The DA had no business involving itself in the case and seeking to intervene was an electoral ploy, rather than because it had a material stake in the matter,” the ANC said in papers.
“The DA had no interests the court needed to protect, and nothing to add to the case.”
The IEC has also filed its own papers in response to the ANC’s main challenge, setting up a three-way legal showdown that will define who gets to contest in the six affected municipalities.
Tensions between the two GNU partners have been intensifying for months, with court battles over the BELA Bill, the Expropriation Act, and the national budget.
If the Electoral Court rules that the lists were not submitted in law, the ANC will be forced to sit out contests in all six councils. If it rules that system glitches constitute valid submission, it will open the floodgates for the 44 other affected parties.
The Electoral Court is expected to hear both the ANC’s challenge against the IEC and its opposition to the DA’s intervention as a matter of urgency next week.