News24 | IEC readies contingency plans as ConCourt mulls ANC candidate lists saga

Sy Mamabolo, chief electoral officer of the Electoral Commission of SA, says the commission is not contemplating any change to election dates.

Sharon Seretlo/Gallo Images

• IEC CEO Sy Mamabolo says the commission is not contemplating any change to election dates, and will “work with whatever decision” the court hands down.
• The ANC uploaded all candidate information and paid deposits for six municipalities but failed to press “submit as final” before the 28 August deadline.
• IEC’s deputy CEO Masego Sheburi warns that a large portion of ballots tied to the ANC case would require reprints if the court rules in the ANC’s favour.
• For more political news, visit News24 Politics.

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has drawn up contingency plans should the Constitutional Court rule against it in the dispute over the ANC’s candidate lists for the 2026 local government elections.

Briefing the media on Wednesday, IEC chief electoral officer (CEO) Sy Mamabolo said the court’s decision would be implemented within the election timetable.

“At this stage, the commission is not contemplating any change in dates or something of that sort. We’re waiting on the 4th (November), and we will work with whatever the decision is.”

On Tuesday, News24 reported that the DA had argued in court that if the ANC gets its way to have its candidate lists for six municipalities declared “timeously and validly submitted”, the result would be absolute chaos.

On Monday, the Constitutional Court heard arguments in the ANC’s application for leave to appeal against the Electoral Court’s order last month and, if leave is granted, to have that order set aside and replaced.

READ | ‘Absolute chaos’: DA pushes ANC’s buttons in candidate list case in ConCourt

The ANC also seeks a declaratory order that its party lists and ward candidate nominations for the six municipalities – Sundays River Valley, Walter Sisulu, Ngquza Hill, Port St Johns, uMshwathi and Mangaung – were “timeously and validly submitted” in terms of Sections 14 and 17 of the Municipal Electoral Act for the local government elections on 4 November.

It asks the court to direct the IEC – which opposes the application – to “do all things necessary” to include those nominations in all subsequent electoral processes.

The dispute arises from the ANC’s failure to press the “submit as final” button in the commission’s online candidate nomination system.

Advocate Michael Bishop, for the DA, argued that if the ANC had just pressed the button, it would not have been disqualified.

The ANC’s argument is that it complied with the requirements of the relevant statutes and regulations, as its lists are with the IEC and it paid the deposits, and that the requirement to push the “submit as final” button is not prescribed by law.

Advocate Terry Motau, SC, for the IEC, argued that the ANC complied with the other requirements of the online system, and those were also not provided for in the regulations. He said the party sought to take advantage of the system’s benefits but “disavows” the step it took that did not comply with it.

The court reserved judgment.

Mamabolo said the court should be given space to consider the merits of the matters before it, adding that litigation was part of lively democracy.

“So, do we have any regrets? Certainly not. The commission exercised its mind on the matter, and it applied it consistently across the political spectrum, and in their opinion, that was the correct stance to take.

“If the courts were to hold differently, it is part of the democratic system. The commission has always respected the outcomes of judicial processes, and we see no difference in this matter. No hard feelings, it’s part of a lively democratic system.”

READ | ANC vs IEC: ConCourt grapples with what ‘submit’ really means

Elaborating on the contingency plans, Mamabolo’s deputy, Masego Sheburi, said 66% of ballots had already been printed and warned that the commission would incur a loss should it have to reprint them to include the ANC and other parties that missed the candidate list submission deadline.

“We’ve indicated that 66% of ballots have already been printed, and because we have a finite window period of 21 days within which to print those ballots, unfortunately, ballots that are implicated in the ANC case, a significant proportion of those have already been printed, which means, if we were to include the ANC candidates in those municipalities, those printed ballots are sunken costs that we can never recover.

“We’ve printed them. We must reprint new ballots to give effect to the court decision if the court finds in favour of the ANC. So, those are the contingency plans.”