Ace Magashule’s African Congress for Transformation (ACT) party and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union’s (Amcu) Labour Party are in a last-ditch attempt to have the May 29 elections postponed.
They are also seeking to have an electoral court decision that refused to accept their parliamentary candidate lists reviewed and set aside.
The case is set to be heard before the apex court on Wednesday.
The two political parties will argue that decision by the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) not to extend the deadline to allow them to submit their full candidate lists infringes on their constitutional right to participate in the polls.
For its part, the IEC contends that should the elections be postponed, it does not guarantee that the polls will be delivered in a free and fair manner. Reopening the list process will require the electoral body to reprint ballot papers.
“Deadlines matter. Electoral authorities, like the commission, cannot facilitate a free and fair election without clear rules regulating the submission and verification of party and candidate information,” IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo said in the commission’s court papers.
ACT, which was formed in August 2023 after Magashule was expelled from the ANC for contravening the party’s rules and constitution, claimed there was a glitch on the IEC system that led to its failure to submit the full list of its candidates. The party managed to submit the name of Magashule as well as 10 other candidates onto the IEC’s system for the National Assembly.
ACT said the system malfunctioned in March and it was unable to submit the names of 27 candidates to parliament.
The National Assembly is made up of 400 seats, 200 of which are contested only by political parties. Independent candidates can contest only half of the seats in the National Assembly.
“If ACT’s candidates are excluded it means the exclusion of at least 470 (89.69%) of ACT’s candidates from the provincial and regional election ballots/list,” the party’s treasurer-general, Mamiky Mkhabela, said in court papers.
“The insistence of holding the elections on May 29 2024, come what may, can operate to legitimise or render free and fair that which has already been rendered unfree and unfair by the events on March 8 2024. The responsibility lies at the door of the commission.”
Amcu’s Labour Party will not participate in the elections as it also failed to adhere to the IEC’s timelines for submissions. It seeks a declaratory order by the Constitutional Court that its exclusion from the upcoming elections on the ground that it failed to adhere to the IEC’s timelines was unlawful and unconstitutional. It seeks a reopening of the IEC online portal to submit its candidate names.
The Labour Party was an addition to the many opposition political parties that will contest what had been called the most crucial elections since 1994.
The formation of political parties by unions is not without precedent. The National Union of Metalworkers of SA, one of SA’s largest unions with more than 400,000 members, formed the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party to contest the 2019 national and provincial elections. It mustered a mere 24,439 votes nationally.
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