The DA has launched urgent legal action against ActionSA, the EFF, the MK Party, and GOOD, accusing the four opposition parties of deliberately hiding their PR candidates from voters ahead2026 Local Government Elections.
In papers filed in the Electoral Court on Tuesday, DA Federal Council Chairperson Ashor Sarupen said the DA is challenging the submission of proportional representation lists containing only one name by the four parties – a tactic he described as a deliberate attempt to mislead voters.
“The DA has filed an urgent application in the Electoral Court against ActionSA, the EFF, the MK Party and GOOD, for their attempt to bend the laws governing candidate lists in this year’s Local Government Election,” Sarupen said in a statement.
“The DA’s papers challenge the deliberate submission of proportional representation lists with only one name on them… a decision we view as deliberately concealing their candidates from voters.”
According to the DA, the parties are misinterpreting a provision that allows the IEC to request additional names after an election. If a party wins more seats, then it has candidates on its PR list.
“The principle at stake is so fundamental that it cannot go unchallenged: parties are required to present voters with the names of their candidates before voters go into a voting booth to choose their political parties, not after the votes have been counted,” Sarupen said.
He argued that the law was never intended to be used as an electoral strategy.
“The law was only intended to cover situations where parties make entirely unexpected and fortuitous surges in support and end up winning a few more PR seats than their lists could cover before the election,” he said.
“The law was not crafted to allow parties to hide or conceal their candidates from voters and wait for the election to be done before submitting names to the IEC. Doing this is a perversion of the very meaning of a candidate election and is deeply disrespectful to South African voters.”
The DA pointed to the scale of the practice as evidence of a coordinated strategy.
“The EFF is contesting almost every ward in South Africa, with thousands of individual ward candidates, while submitting just one PR candidate in every municipality,” Sarupen said.
“ActionSA has nominated more than 2,000 individual ward candidates while submitting one-person PR lists in virtually every municipality it contests. In Johannesburg, where it currently has dozens of PR councilors, it has submitted just one PR candidate.”
The DA said MK has similarly fielded candidates across thousands of wards while submitting one-person PR lists, and GOOD has done the same in municipalities where it already holds multiple PR seats.
“The scale and uniformity of this practice is precisely why the DA has approached the Electoral Court,” Sarupen said.
He added that ActionSA had publicly acknowledged the strategy was deliberate, saying it would supplement its list after discovering how many seats it had won and would use seats as rewards for party members who work hard during the campaign.
“ActionSA has even said it would use the seats it attains as rewards for party members who work hard during the election campaign, putting the party ahead of residents and voters again,” Sarupen said.
The DA has asked the Electoral Court to determine the legality and constitutionality of the practice and to grant appropriate relief, arguing voters’ rights to information ahead of voting is sacrosanct.
“This is particularly important after the ANC was excluded from contesting in various municipalities after failing to submit its lists on time. If the ANC engaged in the same willful deception of voters and only submitted one name on the list, it would be on the ballot,” Sarupen said.
“Voters must be presented the candidates they are voting for. Elections can not become games of sleight-of-hand. The ballot box must determine which candidates are elected.”
ActionSA, the EFF, MK Party, and GOOD had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.
This is a developing story.