South Africa: 181 ANC candidates remain excluded from municipal elections
The South African Electoral Court has rejected the ANC's appeal regarding 181 candidacies in six municipalities. At this stage, these names remain absent from the local election lists for November 4, while the party announces its intention to continue the legal battle.
In South Africa, 181 candidates from the African National Congress (ANC) remain excluded from the municipal elections scheduled for November 4 after the party’s appeal was rejected by the Electoral Court on Wednesday, September 16. The ruling affects six municipalities and keeps these candidacies off the final lists for now.
The affected candidates were set to run in Port St Johns, Ngquza Hill, Walter Sisulu, and Sundays River Valley in the Eastern Cape, as well as in uMshwathi in KwaZulu-Natal and Mangaung in the Free State. The ANC has announced its intention to pursue further legal avenues against the decision.
The dispute centers on the application submission process before the August 28 deadline at 5:00 pm. The ANC argued that the information for the 181 candidates had been recorded in the Electoral Commission’s electronic system and that technical difficulties had prevented final validation. The Electoral Commission contested this account, asserting that data registration did not equate to a definitive submission.
The Electoral Commission certified 136,790 candidates for the 10,526 seats available in the November 4 election. It noted that 5,096 applications were disqualified following legally mandated checks, including those related to deposits and the validity of nominations.
The Chief Electoral Officer, Sy Mamabolo, stated that the Commission acknowledged the ANC’s intention to appeal to a higher court. He indicated that the impact of any new appeal would depend on the nature of the request made to the court. Therefore, the current lists remain those established by the Electoral Commission.
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