Eastern Cape ANC chair Oscar Mabuyane has warned that if the party’s failure to register candidates with the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) turns out to be deliberate, it would amount to a betrayal of both the ANC and people of the Eastern Cape.Speaking at the ANC’s Nyandeni sub-region manifesto launch on Sunday, Mabuyane’s remarks suggested he was not fully convinced the missed deadline was simply a technical mishap, and hinted at possible internal sabotage.“If it is proven that candidates were not registered or submitted and as a result the ANC cannot contest elections [in some wards], that amounts to a betrayal of the ANC and the state. That is why the ANC must deal with anyone who contributed to manipulating the ANC’s lists, resulting in the party missing the deadline,” Mabuyane said.“Whoever failed to press the button that would have secured the ANC’s councillors [must be found] because it is only the ANC that can have councillors in every ward, across the whole country. Here in the Eastern Cape, we have wards numbering over 700 and the ANC must have members in all of them.”The Eastern Cape is the hardest hit by the bungled submission. According to a Sunday Times report, ANC candidates were affected across the OR Tambo and Alfred Nzo district municipalities, as well as the Sundays River Valley and Walter Sisulu local municipalities, with Alfred Nzo mayor Tsileng Sobuthongo left off the list despite remaining popular with voters. In Port St Johns alone, the party failed to submit 20 ward councillor candidates and 19 PR candidates.The same report cited a senior ANC figure who said Mbalula had admitted to the Eastern Cape provincial executive committee that the party’s lists were only submitted minutes before the August 28 deadline expired, lending weight to Mabuyane’s suggestion that something more than a glitch may be behind the failure.Mabuyane said the province would not let the matter go. “We won’t let it off the hook, we will follow it through. This is not the first time something like this has happened.”He argued the ANC’s own conduct undercut any suggestion the party never intended to field its candidates. “The ANC paid for every one of its candidates, both ward and PR. It could not have done that if it did not intend to register its candidates and load them onto the IEC system. We are following up on this, and we will leave Luthuli House to handle it. But we are saying: if this was deliberate, it is a betrayal of the state and the people of the Eastern Cape, because this province is a pillar of the ANC, and we will not allow anything like that to happen.”Mabuyane singled out Ngquza Hill and Port St Johns, both municipalities governed outright by the ANC without a coalition partner. “We will not have coalitions in those municipalities,” he said.“We must not allow wicked conduct to stand, the ANC must fix this. We will fix it, comrades, including in cases where candidates may have been removed by the system. That is being followed up on by the head office.”Mabuyane’s remarks come amid mounting pressure on secretary-general Fikile Mbalula from within the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC), with several members reportedly pushing for him to be held personally accountable.TimesLIVE