The ANC has escalated its fight to the apex court to save 181 excluded candidates after the Electoral Court dismissed its bid to be reinstated on the ballot for the November local government elections.
The party filed an urgent application at the Constitutional Court on Wednesday after its candidates were blocked from contesting proportional representation seats in six municipalities across the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State.
The exclusion follows the ANC’s failure to beat the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC) 28 August deadline for submission of candidate lists.
The ANC now wants the apex to hear the matter on 7 October.
Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula, who has been leading the public defence of the party’s administrative blunder, insists the ANC has a strong legal case and that the exclusion amounts to voter disenfranchisement.
“We think our case in law is very strong and makes sense because we are not asking for anything that is not prescribed by the law,” Mbalula said.
“Politically, we have to stand up for this because it is disenfranchisement,” he added.
Mbalula’s argument is that the party had already captured its candidate information on the IEC’s online nomination system, but its administrators could not press the final ‘submit’ button before the system closed.
The ANC claims technical glitches on the IEC’s electronic portal prevented final submission. The Commission has flatly denied this, saying no technical glitches were reported on deadline day and that other parties managed to submit without difficulty.
It is a familiar defence for the governing party. In previous elections, the ANC has also blamed system failures for late submissions, but the courts have held firm that deadlines are deadlines.
In its Constitutional Court papers, the ANC contends that barring it from the 4 November polls in municipalities where it commands strong support would unfairly punish its voters, arguing that residents in those six strongholds will be stripped of the right to vote for the party on the PR ballot.
“The exclusion could deny some voters the chance to vote for their preferred party,” Mbalula argued.
The Electoral Court dismissed that argument, rejecting the ANC’s reinstatement bid and ruling there was no ground to interfere with the IEC’s enforcement of the deadline.
The ANC is now pinning its hopes on the Constitutional Court to reverse that ruling, recasting the dispute as a matter of political rights and democratic participation rather than a simple failure to comply with procedure.
The stakes are high. If the ConCourt refuses to hear the matter or dismisses the application, the ANC will go into the local government elections on 4 November without a PR ballot in the six affected municipalities.
The opposition has been scathing, accusing the ANC of incompetence and then trying to use political pressure to bend electoral rules.
The IEC has maintained that the rules apply equally to all 300-plus parties contesting the elections and that making an exception for the ANC would open the floodgates and compromise the integrity of the election timetable.