The MK party’s renewed challenge to the outcome of the May 29 polls seeks to attack the integrity of the Electoral Commission of SA’s (IEC) vote capturing and reporting system based on an analysis by its own “expert”.
MK on October 3 reinstated its case challenging the outcome of the election in the electoral court. This is the second time the party has launched the application in this court. It withdrew the first to buy time for its “expert” to examine the election results.
In the latest submission to the court, it again raised concerns linked to the two-hour system outage experienced by the IEC during the vote-counting process and again alleged that in some instances more votes counted than had been cast.
In July, it withdrew its initial challenge and has now claimed in the latest court papers that its “expert” needed more time to analyse the election results, particularly in light of the IEC’s response to that application.
The party wants the election results to be set aside and for fresh elections to be called within 90 days.
Party chair Nkosinathi Nhleko, the former police minister who infamously described the swimming pool at Nkandla as a “fire pool”, deposed the affidavit, which relied on an analysis by MK’s own expert, identified as Vusi Mhlongo, an executive in innovation and technology at the Moses Kotane Institute.
Mhlongo filed a confirmatory affidavit in the matter, describing himself as an expert in “information systems and technology”. He said he was not affiliated to any political party and had “no personal interest in the matter”.
“I was requested by the applicant to conduct an analysis of the IEC’s digital votes capturing and reporting system in respect of the May 29 2024 national and provincial general elections for purposes of producing a report,” he said.
He concurred with Nhleko’s allegation that there were flaws in the IEC’s vote capturing and reporting system and called into question the outcome of the election.
IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo confirmed to Business Day on Monday that the commission would soon file its notice of opposition to MK’s latest bid to have the election outcome overturned.
The latest filings from MK in the matter suggest that the party is using the court bid to draw out the inner workings of the IEC’s internal systems.
Nhleko in the affidavit said MK’s report demonstrates that the “integrity, accuracy and reliability of the IEC’s digital votes capturing and reporting system is clearly unreliable”. This, he argues, has “profound” implications for the 2024 election.
“If the IEC’s system used to capture, aggregate and report on votes lacks integrity ... the only logical conclusion that can be drawn is that there is currently no basis to conclude that the 2024 elections were free and fair, without carrying out a detailed investigation into the IEC’s digital votes capturing and reporting system ... [and] moving to assess whether the aggregation and reporting on the 2024 elections carried out was accurate,” Nhleko said.
MK’s “expert” had analysed the information contained in the IEC’s court papers in the matter withdrawn to further expand on MK’s initial allegation of procedural flaws in the vote-counting process. The basis of the application remains the same, barring the responses to the arguments led in that case by the IEC.
In response to the previous application, Mamabolo said MK did not provide a shred of evidence for its allegation of vote-rigging and it misrepresented election data. He described in detail the steps taken by the commission to ensure that all votes were captured accurately.
The IEC had refused to accept MK’s earlier withdrawal of the case, insisting that the case be heard to the serious allegations the party had made against the commission.
The party took the matter to the Constitutional Court, where it was dismissed. The court said the party had not provided the facts to establish a prima facie case, according to reporting by the Sunday Times.
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