‘A portion was kicked out’: ANC demands answers over IEC nomination glitch

Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri

Cape Town – The ANC is pushing for the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) to investigate what it says was a technical glitch that resulted in some of its councillor candidates being excluded from the final nomination lists. 

The party says it had uploaded its candidates before the 28 August deadline but that a portion of its final batch was rejected by the system. 

The IEC, however, has rejected claims that a general system failure affected the submission process and has made it clear that the nomination system will not be reopened.  

ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu said the party’s internal vetting process had contributed to candidates being finalised close to the deadline, but insisted that the party had complied with the submission timelines. 

“The very last portion in our batch of candidates that was being uploaded is when the system started kicking that out,” Bhengu said during an interview with Newsroom Afrika. 

She said the affected candidates included people from parts of the Eastern Cape, one municipality in KwaZulu-Natal and Mangaung Metro in the Free State. 

Bhengu said the ANC was not disputing the deadline but wanted the IEC to investigate what happened to the final batch of candidates. 

“We are not discussing the compliance on the part of the African National Congress with meeting the timelines. We are talking about a batch that was kicked out when in fact the rest of the candidate list had been uploaded on that very same day,” she said. 

The ANC has also rejected suggestions that it is at loggerheads with the electoral commission. 

“We continue to have the full confidence in the integrity of the IEC-run processes,” Bhengu said. 

She said the party wanted the commission to establish whether there were technological failures that prevented the final candidates from being captured. 

However, IEC Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo has drawn a firm line under the nomination process, saying there will be no opportunity for parties that missed the deadline to submit candidates. 

“There is no avenue for reopening the submission of candidates on the IEC systems or even submitting manually. That is history,” Mamabolo said. 

He said the commission could still request additional documentation from parties that successfully submitted their candidate lists by the deadline, but stressed that this did not amount to reopening nominations. 

“By the 7th of September, that will be the deadline for any window for additional documents for the parties that have submitted,” Mamabolo said. 

The IEC will also deal with candidates who appear on the lists of more than one political party. 

Mamabolo said parties would be notified about such cases by 9 September and given an opportunity to make the necessary changes within the law. 

The dispute comes as the IEC moves into the next phase of preparing for the local government elections. 

According to the IEC, only 66% of the 345 nationally registered political parties will contest the vote. 

For the ANC, the dispute is particularly significant because the missing candidates affect municipalities in several provinces, with the Eastern Cape among the areas most affected. 

Bhengu said the party’s candidate-selection process had become more stringent since the 2021 elections, with additional vetting and community involvement intended to ensure that candidates met the party’s requirements. 

She said this process meant some candidates could only be finalised towards the end of the nomination period. 

“We involve the community in the selection of candidates,” Bhengu said, adding that the vetting process could result in people being removed from lists at the final stage. 

The ANC is now asking the IEC to consider candidates it says had already been captured on the system and to investigate why the final batch was rejected. 

But with the IEC insisting that the deadline has passed and that the nomination system will not be reopened, the dispute could now become a legal and electoral battle over whether the affected candidates can still be included in the final lists.

Picture: X/@MYANC

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Compiled by Glaan Sibuyi

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