South Africa

ROAD TO LOCAL ELECTIONS

Frantic scramble: ANC throws everything at application to reopen candidate registrations

Frantic scramble: ANC throws everything at application to reopen candidate registrations
(Photo: Gallo Images / Sharon Seretlo)

The ANC has asked the electoral court to reopen candidate registration for another three days as it blames Covid-19, cash flow and the Electoral Commission’s freezing computers for its failure to register candidates in 94 municipalities.

Mayhem caused by Covid-19 restrictions, a freezing computer system, bad internet connections and low staff morale due to the non-payment of salaries are among the arguments the ANC put forward in papers it filed to the electoral court late on Monday night asking it to compel the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) to reopen its candidate nomination process.

It is expected that the case will be heard by the end of this week at the earliest, insiders said. 

Nominations closed at 9pm on Monday, 23 August after the IEC extended the deadline by four hours, saying it could not grant the three days that some parties (EFF, UDM and ACM) had requested. 

The EFF eventually managed to file on time, but the UDM indicated it would support the ANC’s application since it too had challenges. 

The ANC, which intended to contest all municipalities, failed to register all its candidates in almost a third of these, or 94 out of 278 municipalities. The DA and the EFF are the only parties that are contesting in all the municipalities, the IEC said earlier. 

In at least 35 municipalities the party is “severely impacted and will lose the possibility of governing again where the ANC is presently in government and risks to lose its status as the main opposition party”. 

The party also says its candidate nomination lists, as they stand, will negatively affect gender parity in local government. “Unfortunately, persistent patriarchal attitudes among ANC members and also reflected in the community vote for candidates, saw the overwhelming majority of ward candidates being male,” it argued. 

To mitigate this more women had to be added to the proportional representation lists. “With so many of the ANC’s PR candidates and ward candidates not being registered, the number of PR seats that we can contest for in a free and fair elections [sic] are significantly reduced. It will have the knock-on effect that our overall number of women councillors, who are mainly on PR lists, will be significantly reduced,” the party said. 

The party also said its intention to contest in all wards and all municipalities was evident in the fact that it paid the maximum deposit of R482,000 on time, but now might forfeit even the properly registered ward candidates in some municipalities as a lack of candidates on PR lists would disqualify the party from contesting wards. Due to the technicalities related to the deposit payments, the minimum deposit would fall short. 

The party said it would be out of government in 13 municipalities, “without contesting and offering the voters the choice to vote for us”, since the party would not be on the PR list, and it would lose its status as the main opposition party in a further six municipalities. 

In nine it would lose its status as governing party and in a further seven it would lose its status as main opposition “without a vote being cast, due to insufficient ward candidates being entered on time”. 

The ANC, in its papers, described its dilemma relating to the virtual submission of its lists as follows: “When the system froze or kicked our administrators out of the CNS (Candidate Nomination System)… the process had to be restarted. As the administrators were working on hundreds of exceptions in different municipalities and wards, it caused widespread confusion and chaos and ultimately panic among the administrators who could not keep track of what was fixed and submitted and what was interrupted and incomplete.”

It also blamed Covid-19 for the data not being captured accurately. The health restrictions “prevented the ANC from meeting all candidates, verifying names and identity documents and initiating voter registration the week before as it would normally do”. 

It also said the identity documents of some of its candidates were rejected by the system or found not to have been on the voters’ roll. 

By the deadline of 23 August 2021 most of the staff involved had been working 16-hour days for three consecutive days under massive pressure, the party argued. “Some staff had to work remotely because of Covid vulnerability or the curfew and restrictions on the number of people who could be safely accommodated in one venue. This made it more difficult to rely on good, fast internet everywhere.” 

The party also said its staff “were very demoralised and emotionally fragile due to not being paid their late salaries for July or their salaries for August”. They still worked hard and “successfully registered the ANC for over 90% of available ward seats and municipal PR lists”. 

The ANC cites 15 respondents, including the DA and the EFF, which indicated that they opposed the reopening of candidate registrations, and the UDM, which supports the ANC. It also cites Cooperative Governance Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma and the MECs for local government in all nine provinces as respondents. 

It appears that the party is worst affected in KwaZulu-Natal. Provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli said at a Tuesday press briefing that the provincial executive committee “is deeply concerned that this situation might not only merely replace the ANC as the governing party in some of these municipalities, but will undermine the advancement of the National Democratic Revolution”.

Ther provincial leadership “believes that the organisation has learnt some lessons with regards to the IEC electronic candidates’ registration with its glitches and attendant mistakes and calls on all ANC members to rally behind the (national executive committee) in fixing the challenges emanating from the registration”.

The Mzala Nxumalo, Inkosi Bhambatha and General Gizenga Maqina Mpanza regions had been the worst affected. “The ANC did not secure the registration of all PR candidates in Edumbe, Phongolo, Abaqulusi, Ulundi and Nongoma local municipalities,” he said. There were also no ward candidates in oPhongolo wards 4, 10 and 11, Abaqulusi wards 1, 5 and 7, Nongoma wards 8, 9, 12 and 17, and Ulundi wards 7 and 12.

In the General Gizenga Maqina Mpanza region the ANC does not have ward candidates registered in KwaDukuza wards 2, 6, 10, 20, 22 and 24; in Ndwedwe wards 11, 12, 13 and 15; in Mandeni Ward 15 and Maphumulo Ward 2. “In Inkosi Bhambatha we couldn’t get candidates registered for the uMzinyathi District Municipality, Umvoti wards 9 and 10, Umsinga wards 1 and 18, eNquthu wards 4, 5, 14 and 17. In Musa Dladla region it’s ward 3 Nkandla Municipality.” DM

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Comments - Please in order to comment.

  • Tracy Smith says:

    The citizens of South Africa are very demoralised and emotionally fragile due to the incompetence of the ruling party.

  • Dennis Bailey says:

    Yee gods! Next, they’ll be asking us to support their incompetent asses. A Sunday school would be better organized than the ANC.

  • Rory Macnamara says:

    as Margaret Thatcher stated so well in one of her PMQ&A’s- NO-NO-NO!

  • Douglas Gibson says:

    The sheer effrontery of the ANC in placing arguments such as this before the Court is breathtaking. Arguing that the closing date should be extended, inter alia because the ANC did not pay workers because it had no money and that they were exhausted from working 16 hour days rather undercuts the argument about the computer system freezing. It all sounds like utter incompetence. It also sounds like excuses dreamt up to explain why the ANC, its staff and its voluntary workers (or is everyone supposed to be paid?) 27 years into democracy cannot comply with the legal deadlines. The DA is contesting every ward in South Africa and its candidate lists were submitted in time. Even the EFF managed it. I suspect the real reason is that many of the unpaid staff members sabotaged the effort, ensuring that the ANC would emerge as the laughing stock of governing parties everywhere in the world. Can we really continue entrusting our towns and cities – and our country – to a political party (the “glorious movement”) that is ridiculously incompetent to this extent?

  • Christopher Campbell says:

    Dear ANC, welcome to the world you have created for all South Africans. Utter incompetence is no excuse, accept it.

    • Johan Buys says:

      Exactly my feeling. For once the party can suffer like we all suffer at the hands of their cadres every single day.

      “We are a nation of laws”

  • Louis Potgieter says:

    The ANC problem could undermine the advancement of the National Democratic Joblessness.

  • Libby De Villiers says:

    How utterly pathetic! Exactly how the
    ANC runs the country with the same results. Have they ns shame?

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