The ANC has filed papers with the Electoral Court, challenging the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC) decision over some of its candidate nominations for the November 4 local government elections.
The party is seeking leave to appeal against the IEC’s decision after some of its candidates were not recognised as having been formally nominated, despite their details being captured on the Commission’s online nomination system.
The ANC has blamed technical glitches for its failure to complete the affected nominations before the August 28 deadline, while the IEC has rejected claims that its system malfunctioned.
The dispute affects ANC candidate nominations in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Free State.
Word ‘submitted’ at heart of dispute
In its court papers, the ANC said its appeal concerned “only the interpretation of the word ‘submitted’” as used in sections 14 and 17 of the Local Government: Municipal Electoral Act.
The party said the matter was “purely a question of law” and that there were no foreseeable disputes of fact.
The ANC argues that political parties have two ways of submitting their nomination documents, either by hand or electronically, and that the same legal requirement applies to both.
“Section 14(1A) creates a single obligation and offers two alternative means of discharging it,” the party said.
It argued that the word “submit” could not have one meaning for manual nominations and a stricter meaning for electronic ones.
“The verb governs both paragraphs; it is not repeated in either of them; and it cannot bear one meaning where the party takes route (a) and a stricter meaning where the party takes route (b),” the ANC said.
ANC points to IEC’s own description
The ANC also relied on the IEC’s own wording to support its argument.
According to the court papers, the Commission had recorded that the cut-off “applied to both manual submission and online/electronic nominations”.
The ANC is therefore arguing that candidates whose details had already been captured electronically before the cut-off should be regarded as having been submitted.
Its case follows the party’s earlier claims that technical problems with the IEC’s online nomination system affected its ability to complete some candidate submissions within the required time.
The ANC is not asking for the nomination period to be reopened, but wants the court to determine whether the affected nominations should be treated as having been submitted before the deadline.
The court challenge comes after the Electoral Court rejected a separate application by the United Democratic Front Party to extend the candidate nomination deadline.
In that case, the court ruled that the IEC did not have the power to condone a missed statutory deadline.
