ANC explains decision to approach Electoral Court over candidates list debacle with IEC

The party has claimed technical difficulties with the IEC's system, which the commission has denied. On Tuesday, the African National Congress moved to explain why it's approached the Electoral Court to challenge why some of its candidates, expected to contest the November local government elections, were not captured by the Electoral Commission of South Africa before the deadline. ANC faces local council blow as IEC stands firm on candidate deadlines At a briefing at the Luthuli House headquarters on Tuesday, the party's secretary general, Fikile Mbalula, confirmed that the party had successfully registered 9,128 candidates to contest the upcoming polls across the nine provinces. Mbalula further added that 130 proportional representative candidates and 51 ward candidates in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Mangaung metro were affected by this latest hiccup. The ANC said its court challenge against the IEC deadline to register candidates to contest the November election is not intended as a slight on the commission. But it insists the IEC system already captured the details of the 181 candidates not officially registered to contest the 4 November polls ahead of the deadline, but technical hiccups prevented their final upload to the registration portal. "The ANC is not attacking the Electoral Commission. The ANC disagrees with the Commission on a point of law, and it has taken that disagreement to the court that Parliament has created to hear it," said Mbalula. This is not the first time the party has found itself in this situation, having also failed to upload candidates in time for the 2021 municipal elections. Never miss a major story. Get breaking news and the latest developments from South Africa and beyond as they happen.