By Simon Nare
The ANC and the DA, the two largest parties in the Government of National Unity, are set to square off in court over the bungled submission of ANC candidate lists in six municipalities, with the DA declaring that no party should receive special treatment for failing to meet an election deadline.
The DA has filed papers in the Electoral Court for leave to intervene in the ANC’s bid to have 181 candidate nominations accepted after the IEC found their final electronic submission had not been completed by the 5pm deadline on 28 August.
South Africa will vote in the local government elections on 4 November.
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The ANC disputes that the nominations were submitted late, saying the required information and documents had already been uploaded to the IEC system before the deadline and that a “technical glitch” led to the bungle.
The affected candidates are in six municipalities across the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State.
ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said the party was not asking the court for a favour or seeking to introduce new names, but wanted the IEC compelled to process the candidate information already captured before the cut-off.
The DA argues in its application that the “principle is simple: deadlines are deadlines. All parties were required to submit candidate lists by 17:00 on 28 August. The DA submitted candidates in all 257 municipalities, on time.
“Capturing candidates on the IEC system is not the same as submitting them. The system expressly requires parties to “submit as final”: a process all parties clearly understood and successfully followed.”
The ANC intends to oppose the DA’s application to intervene, arguing that the IEC, as the respondent, is capable of defending its decision and that the DA was not a party to it.
Mbalula said the DA had no quarrel with the commission or the law.
“Its quarrel is with the voters of six municipalities who might choose somebody other than the DA. Nothing the ANC asks for takes a single DA candidate off any ballot. What the DA asks for takes two thousand two hundred and seventy-four candidates off the ballot, and forty-four of the forty-five parties they belong to are not the ANC,” he said.
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The 2,274 figure refers to potential candidates from 45 parties whose details were captured on the IEC system but were not finally submitted by the deadline. The ANC’s 181 affected nominations form part of that total.
The DA said courts have repeatedly required “rigid adherence” to election deadlines because equal rules are essential to free and fair elections.
“The rules are the rules and deadlines are deadlines. Rules and deadlines must apply equally to every political party wishing to contest an election,” it said.
The ANC also argues that the DA will suffer no harm if its candidates are accepted and has no legal interest the court needs to protect.
“The question before the Court is whether the ANC’s lists were submitted before the deadline under the Municipal Electoral Act. That is a question between the ANC and the Commission, and the Commission is answering it.”
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The IEC, in its answering affidavit, rejected the ANC’s claim of a system “glitch”, saying the party had failed to complete the required submission process before the deadline.
“What this case is really about is the ANC’s failure to meet the deadline in the election timetable, masked as an error on the part of the commission. Nothing could be further from the truth. The facts show that the ANC left the final submission of many candidate nominations until hours before the nominations…”
“It now seeks to have this court give it a further opportunity to do so after the deadline passed,” said the IEC.
