ANC takes IEC to court over candidates ‘locked out’ by election system

Johannesburg – The African National Congress has approached the Electoral Court in a bid to overturn the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s decision to exclude some of its candidates from the November 4 local government elections after the party failed to finalise their submissions before the August 28 deadline.

According to News24, the ANC argues that its officials were logged out of the IEC’s Online Candidate Nomination System while attempting to complete the final submission process.

The party maintains that the affected candidates had already been captured on the system before the 5pm deadline and that the problem was caused by a technical failure rather than a failure to nominate candidates on time.

The dispute centres on several municipalities, including areas in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State.

Business Day reported that affected areas include Mangaung, uMshwathi and municipalities in the Eastern Cape.

The ANC has argued that it is not seeking permission to submit new candidates after the deadline, but wants the IEC to recognise candidates whose information had already been uploaded and stored before the cut-off.

‘They were not submitted’

The IEC, however, disputes the ANC’s version of events. It has repeatedly said its system remained operational and that candidates who were captured but not formally submitted cannot be treated as having met the deadline.

IEC chair Mosotho Moepya said: “They were not submitted, they were captured.”

The commission has also ruled out reopening the nomination system. Chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo previously said: “The commission has never entertained any possibility to open the system for any party.”

The legal challenge comes as the Electoral Court has already rejected a separate attempt by the United Democratic Front to have the IEC extend the candidate nomination deadline. The court found that the IEC has no statutory power to condone a missed deadline.

In its judgment, the court said, according to Sunday Times: “The act confers no power to exempt one party from a deadline that continues to bind all others.”

However, the ANC’s case could differ if it succeeds in proving that the disputed nominations were effectively completed before the deadline and that the problem resulted from the IEC’s own system.

The stakes are significant, with the ANC potentially unable to field proportional-representation candidates in some affected municipalities if its application fails. More than 2,200 candidates from 45 political parties were captured on the IEC system but not formally submitted by the deadline.

The Electoral Court’s decision could therefore determine whether the ANC’s case amounts to an attempt to bypass a statutory deadline — or whether candidates already captured on the IEC system should be regarded as having been validly submitted before the cut-off.