By Thapelo Molefe
The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) says the Electoral Court’s decision to dismiss the ANC challenge over 181 excluded candidates provides certainty about who is eligible to contest the 4 November local government elections.
Briefing the Media on Wednesday, IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo said the commission would continue with the election timetable while the ANC considers taking the matter to a higher court.
“We believe that that outcome creates certainty about those who are eligible to participate and we just note that and will implement and proceed with the activities that underpin the election timetable,” Mamabolo said.
The Electoral Court dismissed the ANC’s appeal on Wednesday after the party sought to have 181 candidates reinstated across six municipalities.
The affected municipalities are Sundays River Valley, Walter Sisulu, Ingquza Hill and Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape, uMshwathi in KwaZulu-Natal and Mangaung in the Free State.
The candidates were excluded after the ANC failed to complete the final electronic submission of their nominations on the IEC’s Online Candidate Nomination System before the deadline on 28 August.
The ANC maintained that the candidates’ information and supporting documents had been captured on the system before the deadline and that this amounted to a valid submission.
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The IEC disputed this, saying that capturing and saving information on the system was only part of the process and that nominations had to be formally submitted before the deadline.
The ANC has since indicated that it will pursue the legal avenues available to it.
Mamabolo said the ANC was entitled to appeal the Electoral Court’s decision, but the IEC would only be able to determine the impact of further legal action once it knows what relief the party is seeking.
“The impact thereof, it will depend on the nature of the relief that they will seek in the court, and we cannot speculate until we are in possession of their papers,” he said.
The dispute has also raised questions about the IEC’s Online Candidate Nomination System and whether the legal challenge could affect public confidence in the electoral process.
Mamabolo rejected the suggestion that the dispute had damaged the IEC’s credibility, saying the ANC’s case before the court centred on the interpretation of the word “submit”.
“I don’t think so,” he said when asked whether the IEC had tarnished its image.
He said the ANC’s application was based on “a very specific matter” concerning the legal interpretation of the submission requirement.
IEC deputy chief electoral officer Masego Sheburi said the court process had allowed the concerns raised about the commission’s systems to be tested through the appropriate legal channels.
“In fact, in one of the judgments, the court mentioned the very same fact to say, if contestants impugn systems or the conduct of an election management body in an evolving electoral process, that has the potential of tainting how voters perceive the impartiality and freeness and fairness of that election management body,” Sheburi said.
She said the IEC was satisfied that the court had not found its candidate nomination systems incapable of performing their intended function.
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“We are happy that the court has spoken, that there is no finding that the systems that we are using for candidate nomination were less than capable for the task for which they were developed,” she said.
The ANC had initially blamed a technical glitch for its failure to complete the nomination process, while its legal arguments focused on whether the final electronic submission step was legally required.
The party has maintained that its challenge was not about seeking preferential treatment but about the legal status of information captured on the IEC system before the deadline.
The Electoral Court’s decision comes as the IEC finalises the list of candidates for the November elections and prepares for the printing of ballot papers.
The commission said the final candidate list would provide certainty to political parties, candidates and voters about who will appear on the ballot.
