ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula and his party will know today whether they have been saved from a catastrophic self-inflicted wound, when the Electoral Court hands down judgment on whether the Electoral Commission must accept the ANC’s late candidate lists for the November 4 local polls.
The court reserved judgment late on Tuesday after a two-and-a-half-hour hearing that exposed the ANC’s candidate submission process and forced the ruling party to plead for a reprieve.
At the heart of the dispute is the ANC’s admission that it missed the 28 August deadline for more than 180 councillor candidates, with the party blaming a technical glitch on the IEC’s online system for failing to upload lists in six municipalities across KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and the Eastern Cape.
The IEC has flatly rejected that version, saying there was no glitch and the ANC simply failed to complete the final submission process.
As secretary-general, Mbalula bears ultimate responsibility for the ANC’s compliance, making Wednesday’s ruling make-or-break — if the court rules against the party, it will have no candidates in wards it was meant to contest, giving the opposition a walkover and demolishing Mbalula’s claim that he has professionalised the ANC’s systems ahead of the elections.
During heads of argument on Tuesday, ANC lawyer Daniel Burger argued that the party had complied in substance – completing the required forms, uploading supporting documents and paying the necessary deposits – but that the IEC’s system failed to properly capture and process them.
Burger told the court that his client’s candidates were being unlawfully excluded from participating in a free and fair election over a technicality, and that voters would be deprived of their right to choose the ANC in those municipalities.
The IEC’s legal team dismissed the claim as an excuse for incompetence.
The Commission argued that the ANC understood the rules of the game and knew very well that there was no system failure at the point of submission. Other parties, including smaller ones with far fewer resources, managed to submit on time using the same system.
The Democratic Alliance, opposing the application, delivered the sharpest rebuke.
DA lawyer Michael Bishop told the court that rigid adherence to election deadlines is essential to free and fair elections, and that rules and deadlines must apply equally to every political party wishing to contest an election. To bend the rules for the ANC, he argued, would be to create two sets of rules – one for the ruling party and one for everyone else.
The case has echoes of previous Electoral Court battles where the ANC has blamed technology for its own administrative failures.
In 2021, the party failed to register candidates in dozens of municipalities, a debacle Mbalula himself described as a blunder that cost the ANC votes.
The Electoral Court judge said judgment would be handed down on Wednesday with detailed reasons to follow later.