News24 | ANC to oppose DA’s bid to intervene in candidate lists case

ANC and DA campaining before the 2024 general elections. The ANC said it would oppose the DA’s bid to intervene in its Electoral Court case against the Electoral Commission of SA.

Darren Stewart/Gallo Images via Getty Images

• The ANC said it would oppose the DA’s bid to intervene in its Electoral Court case against the Electoral Commission of SA.
• The DA says the ANC is the author of its own misfortune for trying to submit its candidate lists at the last minute.
• But the ANC says the DA is only interested in keeping candidates off the ballot paper.
• For more political news, visit News24 Politics.

“A wish to see a competitor kept off a ballot is not an interest a court exists to protect,” the ANC has said.

It was responding to the DA’s bid to intervene in its legal challenge to the Electoral Commission’s failure to accept some candidates for the upcoming local government elections.

READ | ANC’s IEC candidate list ‘glitches’ hit more municipalities in KZN, including eThekwini

With less than 60 days to go before the polls, the ANC is taking the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) to the Electoral Court after the party claimed a technical glitch prevented it from submitting final candidate lists ahead of the submission deadline of 17:00 on Friday, 28 August.

This affected candidate lists in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, and Free State.

The DA argues that the ANC is the author of its own misfortune because it left the submission of candidate lists until the last minute.

It said it experienced no glitches.

READ | ANC is author of its own misfortune, DA says as it counters party’s legal action against IEC

On Wednesday evening, the ANC said it would oppose the DA’s bid to intervene on several grounds, pointing out that its case was with the IEC, which was responding to it.

“The commission is the respondent. It is defending its decision, and it is fully able to do so. The DA is not a party to that decision, and its statement of this morning misstates both what the ANC has asked for and who is affected,” it said in a statement.

The statement quoted ANC secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, saying: “Its (the DA’s) quarrel is with the voters of six municipalities who might choose somebody other than the DA. Nothing the ANC asks for takes a single DA candidate off any ballot.”

“The DA’s only interest is electoral: it contests the six municipalities concerned, among them the Mangaung metro, and it would prefer to contest them with fewer opponents on the ballot,” the statement continued.

Mangaung, comprising Bloemfontein and surrounding suburbs, is one of two metros the ANC ran outright after the 2021 local government elections.

The ANC further said:

A wish to see a competitor kept off a ballot is not an interest a court exists to protect. Should the court nonetheless admit the DA, the ANC will ask that its participation be confined to argument, that it be permitted to cause no delay, and that no extension of the commission’s timetable follows from its admission.

“If the ANC succeeds, not a single DA candidate is affected. The DA remains on the ballot in every municipality in which it lodged. No party is removed, no list is reordered, and no deadline is moved,” the party added.

The ANC and the DA are the two largest parties in the government of national unity, but they remain fierce political rivals.