The ANC has come out fighting in its bid force the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) to reopen registration process for candidates in 93 municipalities including the three crucial metros in Gauteng.
In urgent application filed with the electoral court on Monday, the ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte said the IEC’s refusal to allow the party to register candidates would impact on its chances of contesting in 93 municipalities.
Duarte said should their bid fail, 35 municipalities will result in a change of government, or change in the main opposition without a single vote being cast. She said most of the affected municipalities are in the North West.
But it is also in the crucial metros in Gauteng where the ruling party could suffer greater pain after losing power during the local government elections in 2016 in Tshwane and Johannesburg. The party is governing Ekurhuleni through a coalition with smaller parties.
According to Duarte, the party wants the court to review and set aside IEC's decision not to amend the election timetable to allow it to register candidates in areas where it was affected by technical glitches.
Duarte said the party had approached the IEC to amend the elections timetable on August 24 but the commission declined citing too little time to print 78 million ballots it must deliver to over 23,000 voting stations.
She said the commission having been advised that the ANC technical challenges on the system used to register candidates, the IEC failed to act in a manner that would rectify the position to ensure that the elections would be free and fair.
The party said it needed 36 hours to complete its submissions and that this would not cause any serious prejudice to the commission or any other party participating in elections.
The ANC said it was able to register both ward and PR candidates in 129 of 135 wards the City of Joburg, 98 of 112 wards in Ekurhuleni, 95 of 107 wards in Tshwane and 12 of 15 wards in Midvaal.
Duarte said the ANC will be out of 13 municipalities without contesting because it will not be in a position to have candidates on the proportional representation (PR) ballot due to names not being submitted on time. These would include the City of Cape Town where the party registered no single PR candidate out of 116 wards.
Duarte said the party’s troubles were compounded by the fact that the IEC system kept on freezing, which resulted in some of its candidates not being able to meet the 9pm IEC deadline for registration. She said the party's administrators were repeatedly kicked out of the system and that it had a slow operating time due to increased traffic.
The DA and EFF both indicated last week that they would be opposing the application. EFF’s leader Julius Malema urged other parties to join in opposing the ANC’s application while DA’s IEC representative Werner Horn said the IEC cannot bend to the will of the ANC and must therefore oppose this “frivolous” application.
UDM leader Bantu Holomisa on Tuesday said his party would be joining court proceedings to force the IEC to allow them to register their candidates as they experienced similar challenges with the IEC’s system which “kept kicking us out”.
“There were areas in KZN, Mpumalanga and Limpopo where our candidates were not able to register...We are joining this case as friends of the court on behalf of UDM candidates who want to be given a fair opportunity to fight to be councillors,” Holomisa said.
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