IEC details ANC failure to comply with elections deadline as it urges court to dismiss appeal

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has asked the Electoral Court to throw out the ANC’s appeal against its refusal to accept a list of candidates from six municipalities that were not “submitted” by the deadline.

The IEC argues that it has not taken any such “decision” as the ANC contends and that the ANC simply failed to submit its list of candidates for the municipalities in question by the deadline that was set and agreed to months in advance.

Just on that score, that the ANC failed to complete the process of submission, the IEC — through its chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo — contends that the Electoral Court must throw out the appeal.

“There is in law, no ‘decision’ of the commission to not accept the proportional representation lists and candidate nominations for the six municipalities concerned. Instead, the ANC failed to ‘submit’ the lists and nominations in the terms required by the Municipal Electoral Act and the Municipal Electoral Regulations .... by the deadline in the election timetable,” reads the IEC court papers.

“Thus, by operation of law, the ANC is excluded from the elections in these municipalities. There is accordingly no ‘decision’ of the commission to be appealed. The ANC’s application for leave to appeal should be refused by the chairperson of this court on that basis alone.”

The ANC’s case centres around wanting the IEC to recognise the lists captured on its system as having been submitted despite its administrators having been unable to move on to the next step of “submission,” arguing that this failure was due to glitches on the IEC’s own Online Candidate Nomination System (OCNS).

The commission did not take a decision to exclude the ANC’s lists from the six municipalities in question — the ANC did not submit those lists by the deadline using the OCNS.

—  IEC

The six affected municipalities are Port St Johns, Ngquza Hill, Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal’s uMshwathi, and Free State’s Mangaung. In two municipalities, Port St Johns and Ngquza Hill, the ANC failed to submit a single candidate, meaning should they lose their appeal, the party will not appear on the ballot paper.

“The commission did not take a decision to exclude the ANC’s lists from the six municipalities in question — the ANC did not submit those lists by the deadline using the OCNS,” contends the IEC.

“By operation of law, those candidates were not nominated. There is no decision to appeal against. In any event, on the merits, the ANC cannot obtain relief because it did not ensure that the lists were submitted using the OCNS before the deadline. Its attempt to blame technical issues in the OCNS is belied by the correct facts.”

The IEC rejects outright the notion that its OCNS experienced any technical issues during the submission period.

It argues that this is supported by the fact many political parties, including the ANC, were able to submit its candidate lists before the deadline in many of the municipalities they are contesting.

“Parties were able to upload and submit documents on the OCNS right up until the deadline. This again includes the ANC, which submitted lists for other municipalities within the last five minutes before the 17h00 deadline,” argues the IEC.

“The OCNS also operated on the same basis in the previous elections held in 2016, 2021 and 2024 without incident.”

The IEC argues that there is a difference between uploading documents or information on its system and capturing or saving candidate information as well as submitting the relevant nomination on the system.

The OCNS, argues the IEC, permits parties to upload, capture, save, review, amend and, where necessary, replace candidate information before making a final submission.

“The capturing or temporary storage of information is not a final submission. It is an administrative and navigational feature of the OCNS. It enables parties to prepare their nominations progressively,” the IEC explains.

“Critically, uploading, capturing or saving does not itself constitute the electronic submission of a nomination in terms of the Municipal Electoral Act and Regulations.”

The final step in this process is the clicking of the submit button which then tells the IEC that the specific party has now finalised the submission.

“It also distinguishes electronic submissions by a party, from information that remains incomplete, provisional or subject to change. Without the final submission step being performed, there is no electronic submission of a nomination in terms of the Municipal Electoral Act and Regulations,” said the IEC.

“What the ANC misses is that the statute gives the commission a power to determine these matters — and does not prescribe how the commission should work, i.e., the statute does not prescribe how the power should be exercised.”

This process was made clear in the OCNS user manual as well as in the party liaison committee meetings and candidate nomination workshops with political parties which were held over the last few months.

“What this case is really about is the ANC’s failure to meet the deadline in the election timetable, masked as errors on the part of the commission. Nothing could be further from the truth,” argues the IEC.

“The facts show that the ANC left the final submission of many candidate nominations until hours before the deadline. It then ran out of time in respect of the six municipalities concerned. It seeks now to have this court give it a further opportunity to do so after the deadline passed.”

The ANC on Thursday moved to block the DA from joining its appeal case at the Electoral Court against the IEC’s refusal to accept the list of candidates from the six municipalities that were not “submitted” by the deadline.

This after the DA this week filed opposing papers asking the Electoral Court to grant it leave to intervene in the ANC’s appeal.

The DA argues that allowing the ANC to field its candidates in the affected municipalities after the deadline would prejudice the political parties that complied with the IEC’s timeline and managed to submit all its lists by the deadline.

The ANC, argues the DA, is basically asking the IEC to change its rules to suit the ANC.

In a statement released on Wednesday, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said its case was against a decision taken by the IEC which has nothing to do with the DA and that the IEC was capable of defending itself and did not require the DA to intervene in any way.

“The DA has no quarrel with the commission and no quarrel with 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,” said Mbalula.

“What the DA asks for takes 2,274 candidates off the ballot, and 44 of the 45 parties they belong to are not the ANC.”