Fewer than half the ANC’s current councillors have been deemed fit to contest the upcoming local government elections, party Deputy Secretary-General Jessie Duarte has said.

“There is a great number of people who are not happy with not being returned,” Duarte told journalists during a Zoom press conference shortly before the Electoral Commission’s (IEC’s) extended 9pm deadline for the submission of party lists on Monday night. 

Duarte explained that some of the protests by party members to party offices and the IEC’s head office in Centurion on Monday by saying that only about 40% to 50% of present councillors appeared again on its candidate lists. Many of the disgruntled were from provinces where “retention” was low, Duarte said. Representatives from several provinces expressed their unhappiness with the lists. 

One such aggrieved member was reported to have been Moretele Local Municipality Mayor Andries Monaheng and George Marindi, who complained that the 26 ward candidates selected during their community meeting had not been included in the final list handed to the party’s electoral committee. 

Moretele is one of the municipalities implicated in the VBS Bank scandal, as it invested R50-million of its 2017/18 water services infrastructure grant in the bank. 

Some party members were killed in the process of compiling the party lists. 

In response to a question, Duarte denied that it was the ANC that had asked the IEC to extend its deadline on Monday from 5pm to 9pm, but with less than an hour to go before the extended deadline, she said the party was “at the tail end” of finalising its submissions. “There are only a few where we had to check ID numbers that were still outstanding. They will go through in the next few minutes,” she said. 

Party spokesperson Pule Mabe also said that ANC staffers had been working at the weekend, contrary to reports in the media of a go-slow due to unpaid salaries. 

The party submitted the names of about 4,800 ward candidates and about 5,200 proportional representation candidates. “Most of our candidates are the product of community meetings that would have been held throughout the country,” Duarte said.

She said Covid-19 regulations meant that some of the meetings had to be split up into smaller meetings. 

Over the weekend, the lists compiled in the provinces were sent for final approval to an extended national executive committee meeting, which included the party’s leagues and alliance partners, the SA Communist Party and labour federation Cosatu.

The party’s newly formed electoral committee, headed by former president Kgalema Motlanthe, presided over the candidate selection. It appointed provincial list committees and regional interviewing and vetting panels to help in conducting the processes. 

The party said “the persistence of patriarchal attitudes meant that the majority of ward councillors nominated are male”, but the party had added more women to the proportional representation lists to make up for this. 

Meanwhile, the DA on Monday announced mayoral candidates for the five metros which it deems to be “strategic municipalities”, according to party leader John Steenhuisen. He said the party had fielded a candidate in every ward. 

The DA has also submitted a lawyer’s letter to the IEC asking for a list of parties that had requested an extension of the commission’s 5pm cut-off time on Monday.

The IEC published a notice in the Government Gazette on Sunday night about the extension. 

Steenhuisen said: “I think it’s just a case of the IEC, once again, bending the knee to the ANC’s requirements.”

*However, on Tuesday morning, IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo, told SAFM’s Elvis Preslin that the United Democratic Movement, the African Content Movement and the Economic Freedom Fighters had requested the deadline extension.

In its statement on Monday, the IEC  did not give any reasons for extending the deadline,  but halfway through the day said it had received the nomination lists of 97 of the 480 registered parties, and of 353 independent candidates. 

It will notify parties by Friday, 27 August about any outstanding documents, and by the end of the month about any candidates appearing on multiple lists. Final lists will be published by 7 September. 

Last week, the ANC supported the IEC’s application to the Constitutional Court to have the 27 October local government elections postponed until February. The DA is opposed to such a postponement.

Until there is finality about a possible election postponement, the timetable is set to continue as if South Africans will go to the polls in October. DM

This article was updated on Tuesday, August 24, to include Mamabolo’s comment about which parties had requested the extension.