The ANC asked the Constitutional Court on Monday to rule that its candidates in six municipalities were validly nominated for the 4 November 2026 local elections.
The party wants the court to overturn an Electoral Court order. That order upheld the decision by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) to leave the candidates off the ballot.
“We say, when you complete the form and save the form on the system, you have complied with the form,” Advocate Daniel Burger SC, for the ANC, told the court.
The case is about one button. The ANC did not press “submit as final” in the IEC’s Online Candidate Nomination System for six municipalities. The deadline was 17:00 on 28 August.
According to News24, the party had uploaded all the required candidate details and paid the deposits. Even so, 181 ANC candidates were excluded from the elections.
The affected municipalities are Sundays River Valley, Walter Sisulu, Ngquza Hill, Port St Johns, uMshwathi and Mangaung.
Burger said the ANC was not asking for special treatment or more time. He said the party only wanted its compliance to be judged according to the law.
He argued that neither the law nor the regulations provide for a “submit as final” button. He said the ANC handed in the required documents and paid the deposits, as the law requires.
Deputy Chief Justice Dunstan Mlambo said the question before the court was how to read the phrase “submit in the prescribed manner”. He asked Burger to respond to the view that not pressing the button meant the form was not complete.
Advocate Terry Motau SC, for the IEC, said the ANC had followed the other steps of the online system. He said those steps are also not set out in the regulations.
Motau said the party wanted the benefits of the system but “disavows” the one step it did not follow. He said many training sessions were held on the system.
He also said the system reminds parties three times when their submissions are not yet final. “You can’t upload whichever way you want,” Motau told the court.
The ANC first blamed technical faults in the online system for the problem. It dropped that argument in the Electoral Court after the IEC showed the claim had no basis.
The Electoral Court upheld the exclusion on 16 September. It accepted that the result was “disenfranchisement rather than enfranchisement, exclusion rather than participation”. It found this did not make its reading of the rules wrong.
In its appeal, the ANC said it is not asking for condonation or a later deadline. It wants the Constitutional Court to declare that its nominations were validly submitted in law.
The Constitutional Court heard arguments from both sides on Monday. The local government elections are set for 4 November 2026.
Source: this article is based on reporting by News24. Image: News24. Written with the help of AI and published by the Tzaneen Voice News desk. See our Editorial Standards.
Kgomotso Maake covers news and politics for Tzaneen Voice. Kgomotso reports on government, Parliament, municipalities, courts, crime and service delivery across South Africa, with a close eye on how national decisions reach towns like Tzaneen and the wider Limpopo province. Stories are written in plain English and focus on the facts: who made the decision, what it means, and what happens next.