The ANC has formally filed an application with the Electoral Court challenging the Independent Electoral Commission’s decision to exclude candidate nominations that were not formally submitted by the August 28 deadline, arguing that technical glitches in the IEC’s online system prevented several of its submissions from being finalised across three provinces.

Court Ruling Complicates ANC Legal Strategy

The ANC’s application faces a significant legal hurdle following the Electoral Court’s September 5 dismissal of a similar bid by the United Democratic Front Party, which sought to extend the candidate submission deadline. The court found that the IEC has no statutory power to condone a missed deadline regardless of the reason, citing Constitutional Court precedent from 2004 and 2025.

However, the UDF judgment left open a narrow path: if the ANC can persuade the court that its submission was technically complete before the deadline and that the problem stemmed from a malfunction in the IEC’s own system, rather than a request for deadline extension. The ANC argues in its court papers that the word ‘submitted’ in the Local Government: Municipal Electoral Act should apply equally to nominations submitted by hand and electronically, according to IOL.

The IEC has rejected the ANC’s claims of a system malfunction. According to BusinessDay, the Commission stated that its system logs show no evidence of a malfunction on the day and that the platform operated as designed. The IEC said parties had been given access to the online system since June.

Scope Of The Dispute And Political Impact

The IEC confirmed that 2,274 potential candidates from 45 political parties had their details captured on the online system but were not formally submitted by the 5pm deadline on August 28, comprising 480 proportional representation candidates and 1,794 ward candidates. The Commission received 142,072 nominations to contest 10,526 council seats from 504 political parties overall.

According to Daily Maverick, the ANC’s affected nominations involve just under 200 ward and proportional representation candidates in Mangaung metro and Lejweleputswa District Municipality in the Free State, uMshwathi Local Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, and Port St Johns, Ingquza Hill, and Sundays River Valley in the Eastern Cape. President Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking during a door-to-door campaign in Tembisa, Ekurhuleni, on September 5, acknowledged the glitches were limited in scope.

This time around, the error was in a limited sort of area. It’s not as wholesale as it was the last time. So I think it’s containable and it’s manageable and there should be a solution that can be found.

Ramaphosa also noted that the issue extends beyond the ANC, though which other parties among the 45 affected blame the IEC system rather than their own administrative failures has not been independently confirmed. The IEC is expected to publish the final list of candidates on September 16 after completing compliance checks, ahead of the November 4 local government elections.