By Akani Nkuna
The Electoral Commission (IEC) has extended the benefit of the Constitutional Court’s ruling in favour of the ANC to 32 other political parties, allowing them to complete their candidate nominations ahead of the 4 November local government elections.
However, another 13 parties will remain excluded after failing to meet electoral requirements, including the payment of deposits and voter registration requirements.
IEC chairperson Mosotho Moepya announced the decision on Friday, a day after the Constitutional Court overturned an Electoral Court ruling that had prevented 181 ANC candidates from contesting elections in six municipalities.
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The 32 qualifying parties had intended to contest elections in 121 municipalities across the country, including metros, local and district municipalities. Like the ANC, they had nominated compliant candidates and paid their election deposits but failed to submit their final candidate lists.
“Consistent with the constitutional imperative for free and fair elections as well as the importance of upholding the inherent principle of parity of treatment, the Commission has resolved that the thirty-two (32) similarly situated parties must be deemed to have lawfully submitted their candidates,” Moepya said.
The ConCourt’s majority order, delivered by Justice Rammaka Mathopo, set aside the Electoral Court’s earlier decision and directed the IEC to include the ANC’s 51 ward candidates and 130 proportional representation candidates in all relevant electoral processes.
The dispute arose after the ANC uploaded candidate information to the IEC’s online nomination system but failed to complete the final submission process before the 28 August deadline.
The ANC argued that its nominations had been submitted in accordance with electoral legislation, despite the party not clicking the system’s final submission button.
The IEC said that completing the final electronic submission step was necessary for nominations to be accepted.
The Electoral Court initially upheld the IEC’s decision, prompting the ANC to approach the Constitutional Court.
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The original court proceedings concerned only the ANC and the IEC, leaving other political parties that had failed to complete the nomination process in a similar position.
Moepya said the commission had consulted its legal team and concluded that excluding parties facing the same circumstances as the ANC would undermine the principle of equal treatment.
“We understand our duty not just to administer elections but to ensure that those elections are free and fair…. We understand that if we exclude all other parties in a similar position as the ANC, even-handedness in this election becomes an issue that arises,” Moepya said.
The commission said it would contact the 32 parties to confirm whether they still intended to contest the elections. Those wishing to proceed would be allowed to complete outstanding nomination requirements and, where necessary, supplement or substitute candidate names appearing on multiple lists.
Successful candidates would then receive their candidature certificates through an expedited process involving the ANC and the 32 parties.
According to the commission, extending the benefit of the court order to similarly affected parties will affect 107 municipalities, with 33 million ballot papers required to accommodate the decision.
Of these, 27 million had already been printed, while about 6.6 million ballots relating to the six municipalities involved in the ANC’s court challenge had not yet been printed.
“The Commission held back from commencing with printing of the ballots until the Constitutional Court had made a ruling on the matter. In other words, no costs were incurred in relation to ballots affecting these six municipalities,” Moepya said.
