LOCAL ELECTIONS 2026: Before their court battle, Andile Lungisa warned Mbalula of ‘electoral humiliation’

In an email to ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula before filing an urgent high court application over the removal of his name from the party’s candidate list, the party’s Andile Lungisa accused the national leadership of overriding branches and warned that Nelson Mandela Bay was ‘in free fall’.

Less than two weeks before Andile Lungisa filed an urgent application in the Gauteng High Court, he wrote to ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula and the party’s national leadership, warning that Nelson Mandela Bay was “in free fall” – and accusing the party's leadership of overriding branches and communities to remove him as a mayoral candidate for the metro.

In an email sent on 31 August, Lungisa, an ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) member, did not identify who he believed was responsible for removing his name from the party’s candidate list.

But by the time Lungisa approached the court, his allegations had become decidedly more fiery and specific.

In his affidavit, he alleges that Mbalula personally instructed ANC officials at a meeting in Johannesburg to remove his name from the list after it had been approved by the NEC. While he was not at the meeting, Lungisa says he was “confidentially informed” of the instruction by people who were there. And he claimed he had witnesses who would testify to this.

In his August email, Lungisa made it clear that he regarded the decision as an unexplained political intervention that had overridden the support he said he had received from ANC branches and community organisations.

“I did not manufacture a campaign for the mayoralty of Nelson Mandela Bay out of personal ambition. I responded, despite serious reservations, to approaches from community organisations, civic formations and residents who urged me to make myself available,” Lungisa wrote, saying he had agreed to stand because he did not want to witness the ANC’s “electoral humiliation” in the metro.

He said the municipality was in free fall, citing failing electricity and water supplies, sewage running through streets, broken traffic lights, unreliable refuse collection, unemployment and crime.

He warned the ANC that it could not claim that branches were the foundation of the organisation while treating their overwhelming preference for a candidate as “an irritating recommendation”.

The fight over Lungisa’s candidacy comes as the ANC battles a wider candidate-list crisis after failing to complete some submissions to the IEC by the 28 August deadline, which the party said was caused by technical problems. The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has disputed that .

In his founding affidavit, Lungisa says he is not seeking changes to the list already submitted to the IEC.