‘LIFE’S A GLITCH’: ANC to appeal after IEC disqualifies 181 municipal candidates

The Electoral Court has rejected the ANC’s appeal over 181 candidates excluded in six municipalities. The party says it will explore further legal avenues and maintains that technical problems prevented it from completing the final electronic submission.

The ANC has suffered a big blow in the lead-up to the local government elections as the Electoral Court dismissed its appeal against the exclusion of its 181 candidates in six municipalities.

The affected municipalities are Port St Johns, Ngquza Hill, Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley in the Eastern Cape, as well as uMshwathi in KwaZulu-Natal and Mangaung in the Free State.

In a judgment handed down on Wednesday, 16 September 2026, the court rejected the ANC’s argument that its candidates should be accepted because the party had substantially completed the nomination process before the 28 August deadline.

Appearing virtually before the court on Tuesday, the ANC’s legal team, led by advocate Daniel Burger, argued that the party had completed candidate forms, uploaded supporting documents and paid the required deposits. However, it had not completed the “Submit as Final” step on the IEC’s online system before the deadline.

In its papers, the party said the system had received the required information, but technical difficulties prevented its administrators from completing the final electronic step.

The ANC said that at 4.34pm on deadline day, its administrators were logged out of the system and returned to the landing page. According to the party, the problem was reported to an IEC official at 4.35pm, before its officials were logged out again at 4.57pm.

The IEC therefore treated the nominations as not having been formally submitted.

The ANC argued that its candidate information and supporting documents had reached the IEC system before the deadline, demonstrating its intention to contest the elections.

The party also argued that the Municipal Electoral Act and regulations did not make pressing the “Submit as Final” button a legal requirement. Its case was that it had substantially completed the nomination process and should not lose its candidates because of the final electronic step.

The IEC’s position that failing to click the final submission button meant the ANC’s candidates were excluded was based on the commission’s interpretation of the law which the party wanted the court to interpret.

“They have made a decision that we are disqualified from participating in the election because we have failed to click the button,” Burger argued.

But the IEC, represented by advocate Terry Motau, rejected this argument and said the ANC should be held to its original case that technical glitches had prevented it from completing the submission.

Motau argued that the ANC could have submitted its candidate lists by hand, which would have avoided the dispute over the electronic submission process.