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The ANC’s failure to formally complete submission of local council candidate lists before last week’s deadline extends to the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State, according to people involved in the party’s nomination process. Business Day understands at least three municipalities are affected in the Eastern Cape, one in KwaZulu-Natal and one in the Free State which is believed to cover the whole of Mangaung metro, the province’s largest municipality and home to Bloemfontein. In KwaZulu-Natal, the affected area may be uMshwathi local municipality and appears limited to the proportional representation list. The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) online candidate nomination system closed for new submissions at 5pm on August 28. The commission said this week 2,274 prospective candidates from 45 political parties nationwide were captured on the system but never formally submitted, leaving them out of contention for the November 4 municipal elections unless the impasse is resolved.The ANC has said in a statement the shortfall was caused by a malfunction in the commission’s final confirmation step, not by any failure on its own part. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the party said all nine provinces had uploaded their full candidate lists by the deadline, and the system’s final electronic confirmation step had failed to close on a portion of the lists. The party is not asking the commission to accept late nominations, it said, only to recognise candidates it said were captured and stored in the system before the cutoff.“The difficulty emerged in the closing hours of the window and was reported to the commission as it arose. The records of the affected candidates were already captured and held on the online candidate nomination system before 5pm. We are addressing these system failures with the commission through the proper channels,” it said.The ANC is the largest party and has a lot of institutional knowledge. The stakes are high. Somewhere people messed up. I feel for ANC voters and councillor candidates — but at the end of the day, the law is the law— Election analyst Wayne Sussman“This was not confined to one party or one municipality. The commission has itself reported 2,274 candidates across 45 political parties were captured on its system but not recorded as finally submitted. That is the measure of the matter.”TimesLive reported the glitch caused ANC Eastern Cape provincial secretary Lulama Ngcukayitobi to demand a full accounting from the office of national secretary-general Fikile Mbalula over which candidates the party submitted in the province, according to a letter reviewed by local media. Mbalula’s office has said the vast majority of ANC candidates were lodged on time and only a small number of entries remain unresolved with the commissionIEC chair Mosotho Moepya rejected that account on Wednesday, telling reporters the commission’s system remained operational throughout the nomination period, including the closing hours. “We don’t want to speculate as a commission about the reasons why. They were not submitted, they were captured,” he said. Chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo said there had been no reports of system failures on the day of the deadline and the platform had been available to parties since June 21.The commission has said it will not reopen the nomination system or accept additions to any party’s list, and will begin a candidate verification and finalisation process on September 4, running through to September 16. A record 142,072 candidates were nominated across 299 political parties and independents for the November 4 vote, a 43% increase in participation from the 2021 local elections.Election analyst Wayne Sussman said it is not clear where the error occurred when the ANC submitted its candidates on the IEC systems but “it is obvious that something went wrong”. “The ANC is the largest party and has a lot of institutional knowledge. The stakes are high. Somewhere people messed up. I feel for ANC voters and councillor candidates — but at the end of the day, the law is the law.” Business Day
