View noticesDA and IEC challenge ANC's bid for late nominations
The Democratic Alliance has filed court papers opposing an attempt by the African National Congress to have some of its municipal election candidates accepted despite missing the nomination deadline.
The Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has also separately filed its own response to the ANC's legal challenge, eNCA reports.
The ANC approached the Electoral Court after the IEC excluded candidates who missed the 28 August cut-off, blaming the commission's online system for the failure.
According to the ANC, its candidate lists were submitted on time through the IEC's electronic system, but were affected by what it describes as technical failures. A total of 181 ANC candidates across the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Free State have reportedly been affected.
The DA argues that no party should be granted special treatment when the same deadline applied to all contestants. The party said rules and deadlines must be applied equally to every political party seeking to contest the election.
The ANC is also opposing a separate application by the DA to intervene in the Electoral Court case. The dispute over the IEC's court filing centres on candidate submissions for six municipalities across the Eastern Cape, Free State and KwaZulu-Natal.
Meanwhile, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has acknowledged that 252 identity numbers on the party's own internal files were incorrect before the nomination dispute emerged, Hope Ntanzi reports for IOL.
Mbalula said an internal report reviewed by the ANC's National Officials found the errors had been recorded incorrectly at branch level and never verified, and that the party's own Electoral Committee had flagged the issue as early as June.
Mbalula, who approved the party's candidate lists for submission on 28 August, said responsibility for the process was collective rather than individual, spanning nine stages involving several ANC structures, including the National Executive Committee.
He said the party would not name staff members involved in compiling the lists, arguing this would amount to using employees as cover rather than genuine accountability. He confirmed that the ANC's Eastern Cape candidate list is under forensic review over claims it was substantially altered, but declined to comment further while that process is under way.
The party's internal Electoral Committee has otherwise given the nomination process a clean bill of health, according to Mbalula, while flagging areas requiring improvement. Proposed reforms include locking candidate lists seven days ahead of IEC deadlines and linking the ANC's membership system to the National Population Register to verify identity numbers in advance.