ANC candidate list errors spread in KwaZulu-Natal as election court fight widens
The ANC’s trouble with candidate lists has spread beyond one municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, with the party now saying glitches also hit eThekwini and Ray Nko...
The ANC’s trouble with candidate lists has spread beyond one municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, with the party now saying glitches also hit eThekwini and Ray Nkonyeni ahead of the November 4 local government elections. The dispute is headed to the Electoral Court, where the party is fighting the Electoral Commission’s decision to reject some of its nominations.
At a briefing in Durban on Thursday, provincial task team coordinator James Nxumalo said the party had found technical capturing errors in eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality and Ray Nkonyeni Local Municipality, on top of the earlier problems flagged in uMshwathi. In eThekwini Wards 65 and 90, the ANC says some candidates were swapped. In Ray Nkonyeni, it found duplication errors.
Three municipalities affected
The most serious case in uMshwathi involved the ANC’s PR list, which was never finalised on the Electoral Commission’s system. That left the party without proportional representation candidates on the ballot there. The party has framed the problem as technical, not political.
But the Commission’s position is starkly different. In court papers, chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo said the ANC simply ran out of time, and that the commission’s records showed party officials were still working on the nomination system right up to the deadline. The filing opposes the ANC’s bid to have late candidates placed on the ballot in six municipalities.
Court battle over deadlines
The ANC’s challenge is about more than KwaZulu-Natal. The party has taken the commission to court after rejected lists in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Free State. ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has said 181 candidates are affected, while insisting the party’s mayoral candidates are on the lists. He also said 44 other parties have candidates affected.
The Democratic Alliance has moved to intervene, arguing that deadlines apply equally to all parties and that the ANC should not get special treatment after missing the 17:00 deadline on August 28. The DA says it filed candidates in all 257 municipalities on time and that uploading names on the commission’s system is not the same as formally submitting them.
Wayne Sussman, an elections analyst, has warned that the Electoral Court should stick to precedent. He says other parties have missed candidate-list deadlines before and were not given a chance to fix their errors. On that reading, the ANC should face the same consequences.
The case now turns on a simple question with large political stakes: whether the court treats the ANC’s problems as fixable technical mistakes, or as missed deadlines that cannot be undone. Mamabolo’s affidavit leaves little room for ambiguity. The ANC, he said, “simply ran out of time.”
