The ANC will be going into the general election with notoriously tainted candidates on its parliamentary list, but the party is hoping that they will resign voluntarily.
A one-day special national executive committee (NEC) resolved this week that the lists be referred to the ANC’s integrity commission for review.
This seems more of a cosmetic move for the governing party, which has come under heavy criticism after candidates such as Nomvula Mokonyane, Malusi Gigaba, Bathabile Dlamini and Mosebenzi Zwane appeared on the list submitted to the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC). But there is no way that political parties at this stage can amend the lists they submitted to the commission.
The IEC’s chief electoral officer, Sy Mamabolo, said political parties would go into the election with the lists as they stood.
The only time a list could be changed was if an objection was lodged against a candidate and the IEC upheld the objection. The window for objections to candidates on party lists expired at 5pm on Tuesday.
Mamabolo said on Tuesday afternoon that the IEC had so far received 18 objections, but had not looked at them yet.
The ANC’s integrity commission had before the NEC’s decision been unable to look into the candidates on the ANC’s lists, as it acted only on referrals by the NEC, the party’s highest decision-making body between conferences.
Business Day understands that if tainted individuals on the lists are hauled before the integrity commission they will be told to resign voluntarily.
The ANC is going on the premise that members will be led by their conscience and put the party first.
While this is easier said than done, a member could also appeal against the commission’s decision. It is yet to be seen if any candidate will be willing to step aside for the good of
the party.
In a statement after the special NEC meeting, ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule defended the processes the ANC went through to compile the lists for the National Assembly, the National Council of Provinces and the provincial legislatures.
Magashule, the subject of corruption allegations in the book Gangster State, chairs the ANC’s national list committee.
He said the ANC, in addition to the legal requirements for candidates set out by the constitution and the Electoral Act, "set an even higher bar, removing all candidates with criminal records [not just for five years, but longer] and subjected all its candidates to a vetting process".
Magashule said that as a further measure in dealing with the lists, the NEC had "referred its lists in their totality to its integrity commission for review, within the ambit of the list guidelines, the rules of natural justice and the 54th conference resolutions. We again remind all candidates that representing the people of SA and the ANC is an honour, and not a right," he said.
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