ANC's Electoral Court bid over excluded candidates fails

The African National Congress has lost its challenge in the Electoral Court against the decision to exclude 181 of its candidates from the 4 November local government elections.

This is after the Court dismissed the ruling party's appeal on Wednesday, having heard from the party, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and the Democratic Alliance on Tuesday.

At issue was whether candidate details the ANC had captured on the IEC's Online Candidate Nomination System ahead of the 28 August deadline counted as a formal submission, given that the party had not completed the system's final submission step.

The DA was granted leave to intervene in the case.

A separate application by the African Transformation Movement to intervene was found not to be properly before the court, having been lodged “inordinately late” and without an application for condonation. No costs order was made.

The ANC said it would now pursue an appeal.

National spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu said the party's legal representatives would “engage the court” on the legal questions arising from the judgment, adding that the ANC respected the courts and did not consider the matter to be about seeking preferential treatment or asking the IEC to bend its rules in the party's favour.

Rather, Bhengu said, the dispute turned on the legal status of candidate information the ANC maintains was captured on the IEC's system before the deadline.

The 181 affected candidates span six municipalities: Port St Johns, Ngquza Hill, Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley in the Eastern Cape, uMshwathi in KwaZulu-Natal, and Mangaung in the Free State.

The ANC had argued that because the required information and documentation had already been uploaded before the 5pm cut-off, the candidates should not be excluded merely because the final submission step was not completed.

The IEC rejected this, arguing that capturing or saving information on the system does not amount to formal submission, and that the ANC had failed to complete the process in time.

The DA, for its part, argued that allowing late submission would undermine the fairness and certainty of the electoral process – a position the court's ruling and its decision to admit the DA as a party to the case effectively endorsed.

Bhengu called on ANC members and supporters to “remain calm and disciplined” and to avoid public comment that could prejudice the ongoing legal process, while confirming that the party remains committed to contesting the elections regardless of the outcome of its appeal.