The ANC’s secretary-general is suspended due to corruption charges, the party is broke and unable to pay staff, and now it has made a royal mess of its candidate nomination process for the local government elections.
The ruling party’s electoral fortunes rest with the courts after it failed to properly register and pay deposits for candidates in 94 municipalities across the country — including key metros such as Tshwane and Mangaung — which could culminate in its national share of the vote slipping below 50% and it being forced into a legion of power-sharing deals.
The ANC has only itself to blame for its woes. Its own members elected Ace Magashule to run the engine room of the party; and it requires members who are public representatives to pay a paltry 5% towards its running costs, despite most of them using the organisation to line their own pockets.
In a dramatic move on Tuesday, it abandoned an Electoral Court bid to force the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) to give it more time to complete the submission of its councillor candidate lists and pay the deposits required to contest wards in those municipalities. Its acting secretary-general Jessie Duarte said the party would wait for the outcome of a Constitutional Court judgment on the postponement of the election instead. The IEC, accused of kowtowing to the ANC by both Helen Zille of the DA and EFF leader Julius Malema, has its own problems. It is waiting for the crucial Constitutional Court judgment on whether it can postpone the local government elections, scheduled for October 27, due to the pandemic.
The commission is in a tight spot. It will have to run an election at lightning speed if its Constitutional Court bid fails and may have to rerun its councillor registration process if the ANC application to the Electoral Court succeeds — all of this amid a global pandemic, which changes the social dynamics required in the running of an election, from voting to counting and verifying results.
The party has only itself to blame for its woes. Its own members elected Ace Magashule to run the engine room
Chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo tells the FM the IEC had earlier received the ANC’s court papers for its bid to reopen registration, but had not yet been informed that it had abandoned its court bid.
It is not the first time it is being hauled to court by a political party that failed to meet deadlines. The implosion of the National Freedom Party (NFP) in 2016 was set in motion by its failure to pay a deposit for its election registration. It approached the Electoral Court to force the IEC to allow it to do so, but lost the case.
But the circumstances now are different: the ANC had argued that the national state of disaster and Covid restrictions meant it did not have enough time to run its processes to select candidates. It has requested a further 36 hours to conclude the submission of its nominations and pay the outstanding deposits.
Mamabolo has defended the IEC against accusations that it was pandering to the governing party. He says there is no evidence to suggest the IEC has been biased towards the ANC in preparing for the local government elections. "Everything we do has to be according to the law. We believe we must be judged according to the prescripts of the law," he says.
While these are unprecedented times, other countries have held successful free and fair elections during the pandemic.
Mamabolo says the IEC will be ready on October 27 if the Constitutional Court rejects its request for a postponement. As for the ANC, victory for the IEC in the Constitutional Court could be crucial if the party is to turn around what’s shaping up to be its worse elections yet. Should the court shift the polls, its now-abandoned Electoral Court action would have become moot because a new timetable will be set. The apex court once again has our political fate in its hands.
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