ANC WILL OPPOSE THE DA’S APPLICATION TO INTERVENE IN THE ELECTORAL COURT: THE RIGHT TO VOTE IS NOT THE DA’S TO NARROW
BY: CHANON LECODEY MERRICKS | ONLINE EDITOR
ANC WILL OPPOSE THE DA’S APPLICATION TO INTERVENE IN THE ELECTORAL COURT: THE RIGHT TO VOTE IS NOT THE DA’S TO NARROW
The African National Congress has instructed its legal representatives to oppose the Democratic Alliance’s application for leave to intervene in the ANC’s application before the Electoral Court concerning the lodgement of the movement’s candidates in six municipalities for the local government elections of 4 November 2026.
The ANC’s application is directed at a decision of the Electoral Commission.
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.
“The DA has no quarrel with the Commission and no quarrel with the law,” said the Secretary General, Cde Fikile Mbalula. “Its 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.
What the DA asks for takes two thousand two hundred and seventy-four candidates off the ballot, and forty-four of the forty-five parties they belong to are not the ANC.” The ANC will oppose the intervention on the following grounds. The DA has no interest the Court needs to protect, and nothing to add.
The question before the Court is whether the ANC’s lists were submitted before the deadline under the Municipal Electoral Act. That is a question between the ANC and the Commission, and the Commission is answering it.
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. 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. No harm to the DA, or to anyone. 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 only effect of the relief the ANC seeks is that candidates whose details were on the Commission’s own system before 17h00 on 28 August are counted, for all 45 affected parties on identical terms. A party that complied loses nothing when another party’s timeously lodged candidates are counted.
The only prejudice the DA can point to is that it would have to win votes in Mangaung rather than inherit them.
The DA’s case rests on a false premise. The DA says the final electronic step was “a process all parties clearly understood and successfully followed”. On the Commission’s own count, 45 parties did not complete it, and every one of them lodged through the Commission’s Electronic System.
The DA’s intervention therefore asks the Court to keep 2 274 candidates from 45 parties off the ballot. Forty-four of those parties are not the ANC. Delay prejudices the voter. The Commission’s own timetable has the final list of candidates compiled on 16 September and the ballot paper draw on 23 September. A further set of papers from a party with no stake in the outcome beyond its own advantage puts that timetable at risk, and the people who pay for it are the candidates of 45 parties and the voters of the municipalities concerned. The Commission’s own practice.
The Commission’s timetable itself provides for parties to cure defects after the deadline: notices for missing identity documents and acceptance forms were sent on 4 September with parties given until 7 September to respond, and substitution of candidates appearing on more than one list is permitted until 11 September. In 2021 the Commission amended the election timetable and reopened candidate nomination for every party when circumstances required it. Where a systemic difficulty arises on the Commission’s own system, affecting 45 parties through a single channel, the practice of this democracy has been to protect participation, not to defeat it.
The ANC’s case asks for no reopening; it asks that what was lodged in time be counted. In the alternative, and only for every affected party on identical terms, it asks the Commission to use the power the Act already gives it.
The DA cannot pretend that curing a systemic problem is foreign to our electoral system. The right to vote is sacrosanct. The Constitution guarantees every adult citizen the right to vote and the right to stand for public office, and our courts have repeatedly held that electoral law must be interpreted to promote participation.
The DA asks the Court to do the opposite: to narrow the choice before the voters of six municipalities for the advantage of one party. “Deadlines are Deadlines” is not an answer to that. The ANC agrees that deadlines bind every party equally. The question before the Court is what was submitted before the deadline, and that question belongs to the Court, to the Commission and to the parties whose candidates are affected, not to a party that stands to profit from their exclusion.
The DA sits with the ANC in the Government of National Unity. In this matter it has chosen to act as what it is in local government: the ANC’s principal opponent. The ANC will meet it as such in court. The country should read the DA’s intervention for what it is — an act of the campaign, not of the Constitution — and should note the company the DA has chosen to keep in making it.
The Secretary General set out the ANC’s position on 8 September, and it has not changed: “The ANC wants no favours. Whatever the Court grants, we have asked that it apply to every affected party on the same terms.” And: “Disagreement in a court is how a democracy respects an institution. Disagreement on a stage, with slogans, is how a democracy weakens one.
The ANC has chosen the court.” “A vote is won on the ballot and it is lost on the ballot,” the Secretary General said. “It must not be lost at a confirmation step on a website, and it must not be lost because a rival party found it convenient. The Court will decide, and the ANC will abide by what the courts decide.”
The ANC lodged 9 128 candidates, and 8 947 of them were accepted by the Commission at lodgement: Candidates in 97 per cent of the wards in the Republic, and proportional lists covering 90 per cent of the proportional seats.
Our campaign continues in every one of them.
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