South Africa

ROAD TO LOCAL ELECTIONS

Searching for salvation: Definitive week lies ahead for ANC after ConCourt IEC judgment

Searching for salvation: Definitive week lies ahead for ANC after ConCourt IEC judgment
(Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach)

The governing party is facing a crucial week in which it might get a second chance to register its candidates for the local government elections.

Political parties are set to meet the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) on Monday morning ahead of the commission’s deadline to announce whether it can hold a voter registration weekend.

The IEC held an urgent meeting this weekend following a Constitutional Court ruling on Friday which gave it three days to decide whether it can hold a voter registration weekend. Failing that, the court ruled that voters have until Friday, 10 September, to register at their local municipal offices before the voters’ roll would close again and the elections be proclaimed afresh, for a date between and including 27 October and 1 November.

Only first-time voters and those who haven’t previously registered, or those voters who have moved wards are required to register for the elections.

There is still uncertainty as to whether the Constitutional Court ruling left room for the registration of party candidates to be reopened, as glitches and infighting meant that the ANC didn’t register all its candidates in 94 municipalities, and risked losing power in a vast number of these, including in the Gauteng metros and in a number of KwaZulu-Natal councils. 

The Sunday Times reported that the party’s electoral chair, Kgalema Motlanthe, and Deputy Secretary-General Jessie Duarte, at the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting over the weekend, presented a report on the failure to register certain candidates, threatening that those responsible should face the consequences.

It is understood that the ANC could place more emphasis on physically handing in the lists of its candidate names at the IEC’s headquarters in Centurion rather than relying on the computer system again, from which the ANC complained some of its administrators were locked out of as the 9pm deadline on 23 August loomed. 

President Cyril Ramaphosa told ANC leaders at Friday’s NEC meeting – which preceded the party’s lekgotla planning session of its strategic objectives for the last part of the year – that the party would have to be innovative in its campaign under Covid-19 restrictions and with little resources. The party has failed to pay staff members in recent months and many have picketed and embarked on a go-slow.

“We must ensure that we use technology and other innovative methods that will reach millions of members and supporters in safe and dynamic ways and in line with Covid regulations,” Ramaphosa told leaders on Friday.

He said the party had begun interviewing mayoral candidates “to ensure that we entrust this important position to skilled and capable cadres”, but added that there should be more rigorous criteria for the appointment of municipal managers and chief financial officers. 

Ramaphosa said the NEC should brace itself and create the appropriate public messaging for when the State Capture inquiry makes its report public in October. He said this a couple of days before news broke that former president Jacob Zuma had been released on medical parole, barely two months after he was arrested and imprisoned for ignoring a court order to testify in front of the inquiry.

Ramaphosa concluded the inquiry’s hearings by testifying to it last month about his time as Zuma’s deputy.

“The ANC and this government will be criticised in the main due to an exaggeration of the role of the Deployment Committee and misrepresentation of its ambit, as well as for the management of the work our MPs do in Parliament and parliamentary structures,” he said, following his testimony last month on the importance of deployment.

“Specific allegations have been levelled against leaders and deployees of the movement and there is a concerted drive to tie these allegations to the organisation and portray a picture of a corrupt and incompetent ANC and ANC-government,” he said.

“We need to be ready to address these and develop concise messages before the report comes out.”

He said there was palpable anger and disillusionment with the current government, which should be addressed.

Zuma supporter and self-proclaimed “RET Champion”, Nkosentsha Shezi, welcomed the decision to place Zuma on medical parole, saying that this will “result in his release” following an imprisonment that was “substantively and procedurally questionable, inhumane, malicious and unlawful”.

Paroled: Jacob Zuma to serve rest of jail sentence in ‘system of community corrections’

Meanwhile, the death last week of Kebby Maphatsoe, the former president of the Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans’ Association, brought ANC leaders together across factional divides to deliver tributes on Sunday.

ANC Chairperson Gwede Mantashe, who is associated with the Ramaphosa lobby, spoke at the memorial service in Protea Glen, Soweto, as did former North West premier Supra Mahumapelo, who has been closer to Zuma’s lobby. News24 quoted Johannesburg Mayor Jolidee Matongo as saying that Maphatsoe was at the forefront of forging unity within the ANC.

Maphatsoe, who died of a heart attack, in his last will and testament “specifically asked that his funeral be a site of unity rather than a site of division”. DM

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  • Jimbo Smith says:

    What a shambles. The ANC in any normal democracy would be decisively voted out of power based on epic failure over many years. But not in Africa; democracy not understood but patronage and freebies get the job done!

    • Nick Griffon says:

      Also does not help when 60% of the eligible voters
      1) have no clue what is really going on,
      2) cannot write a 2 page essay.
      Ironically, both are direct failures of the ANC.
      Is it by design one have to wonder?

      • Peter Dexter says:

        Simple to fix but unlikely to happen. Introduce a “Voter’s Licence.”
        At the age of 18 you are given the legal right to drive a car, but that right is withheld until you prove that you are competent and are granted a “Diver’s Licence.” This is rational as incompetent drivers may cause harm to other citizens. We have witnessed the fact that incompetent voting causes far more harm than incompetent driving, and a “voters licence” should be introduced. Voters who are competent to critically evaluate the quality and performance of political representatives would force better performance from politicians, or they would be out of work. Populous, ethnic and racial politics would fail – and that is why it won’t be introduced. The incompetent and dishonest want to keep their jobs.

        • Nick Griffon says:

          Completely agree.
          I have said many times in the past that you should at the very least pass a general knowledge test that proves you have at least a basic knowledge of at least 5 different political parties. What GDP is. Basic economic literacy.
          But as you say, this will never happen because then 60% of the population will not be eligible to vote. But oh my… How would that not change the outcome of an election.
          On a side note, I bet that there are quite a few ANC MPs who would also fail such test.

          • Charles Parr says:

            And some knowledge of the constitution. A separate and more stringent license test for prospective MPs.

      • Robert Mitchell says:

        It is indeed by design. keep your electorate stupid and you can do what you will!

  • Just Me says:

    There is no salvation for the ANC! This entity has become just a vector for crime, corruption and the extension of racism.

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