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The ANC’s chaotic election candidate registration process with the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has left prominent figures such as ANC and government veteran Frank Chikane and NEC members Andile Lungisa and Nocawe Mafu off the proportional lists.Chikane had been earmarked by the party as its answer to Helen Zille and the DA’s campaign for Johannesburg’s mayoral chain, while Lungisa had pinned his hopes on returning to the Nelson Mandela Bay council as the party’s mayoral candidate.Mafu, who is the deputy sport, arts and culture minister, was recently announced as one of four candidates being considered for mayor of Buffalo City, the only metro the ANC still controls outright.The IEC this week confirmed its system showed there were 2,274 candidate nominees from 45 parties whose names had been “captured” but were not formally submitted by the parties concerned.The IEC, however, denied this may have been the result of a “technical glitch”, as claimed by the ANC. Luthuli House is downplaying the shambles, blaming the unexplained “technical glitch” and arguing mayoral candidates inadvertently left out could still make it when the IEC reopens the process for amendments.The Eastern Cape is said to be the hardest-hit province, with many of its candidates in the OR Tambo and Alfred Nzo district municipalities and the Sundays River Valley and Walter Sisulu local municipalities affected. In Port St Johns, the ANC failed to submit the names of 20 ward councillor candidates as well as the names of 19 PR candidates.In KwaZulu-Natal, where the ANC is trying to regain the support lost to Jacob Zuma’s MK Party, the party is said to have failed to field candidates for uMshwathi — a KwaZulu-Natal Midlands local municipality near New Hanover, where the ANC still enjoys support.Read the full story here.
