HAPPENING TODAY 🚨
Anc Makes Final Legal Bid To Get 181 Candidates On Ballot
The African National Congress will ask the Constitutional Court today, Monday to overturn an Electoral Court ruling that left about 181 of its councillor candidates off the ballot for the 4 November local government elections.
The hearing is the ANC’s final legal avenue after the Electoral Court dismissed its challenge on 16 September. The court found that the candidates had not been validly nominated because the ANC failed to activate the “submit as final” function on the Electoral Commission’s Online Candidate Nomination System before the 17:00 deadline on 28 August.
The ANC argues that its administrators had captured the candidate information, uploaded supporting documents and paid the required deposits before the deadline, and that the final click was merely an administrative step in the IEC’s system. Secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has said the failure to complete the final step was beyond the party’s control.
The IEC maintains that uploading information does not amount to formal submission and that the ANC failed to complete the process on time. The Electoral Court upheld this position.
The dispute affects 130 proportional-representation candidates and 51 ward candidates across six municipalities: Port St Johns, Ngquza Hill, Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley in the Eastern Cape; uMshwathi in KwaZulu-Natal; and Mangaung in the Free State.
The ANC has warned that excluding the candidates could affect the rights of both candidates and voters. In Port St Johns and Ngquza Hill, the party could be left without any ward or proportional-representation councillors if the exclusion stands.
The Constitutional Court has set the matter down for today, 5 October, exactly 30 days before polling day.
A ruling against the ANC would keep the candidates off the certified lists, while a ruling in its favour would require the IEC to reinstate them as ballots are being prepared.