South African president weighs court action against electoral commission

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has said his African National Congress (ANC) party is considering Electoral Court action over alleged technical glitches that affected candidate-list submissions ahead of local elections in November.

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has rejected the ANC’s claims, saying there were no reports of a non-functional system when nominations closed at 5pm on August 28.

Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the ANC’s door-to-door campaign in Tembisa, Ekurhuleni, on Friday, Ramaphosa said the problems were linked to the interface with the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC) candidate-capture system.

”There were some glitches, glitches with regard to just the interface with the IEC system. The candidates’ list was there for the whole country. They were submitted, and in regard to those areas there were some glitches,” Ramaphosa said.

The ANC has disputed claims that it failed to submit its nominations on time, maintaining that technical problems affected some of its remaining entries. The Commission has also said it will not reopen the system to allow parties or independent candidates to submit nominations after the deadline.

The dispute comes as the IEC processes more than 140,000 candidate nominations for the November elections. The Commission received 142,072 nominations to contest 10,526 council seats, with 504 political parties submitting nominations. Of these, 299 parties submitted through the Online Candidate Nomination System, while 205 submitted nominations manually at IEC offices.

The IEC said 2,274 candidate names were captured on its online system but were not finally submitted by the 5pm deadline on August 28. The names were linked to 45 political parties, with 480 potential proportional representation candidates and 1,794 potential ward candidates among them. The IEC has said these candidates are not in contention because, although their details had been captured, they had not been formally submitted to the Commission by the deadline.

Ramaphosa described the system error as limited, saying its impact was “containable and manageable." He said several political parties had experienced problems, but the ANC was particularly affected because it was submitting a large number of candidates.

”This is not only affecting the ANC. There are a number of other parties, I’m told 34, so there should be a solution to be found, because the technical glitches should not in the end deprive our people from being able to vote for their candidates,” the president noted.

”I’m certain that a solution will be found. The Political Party Liaison Committee, as well as the IEC and the parties themselves, will be able to find a solution,” Ramaphosa said, adding that the ANC was exploring different avenues to resolve the dispute.

The ANC’s candidate-list problems have affected some municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and the Eastern Cape. The party is seeking a resolution to the disputed submissions as the IEC moves towards finalizing the candidate lists. The IEC is expected to publish the final list of candidates on September 16 after completing its compliance checks.

First published by IOL