EAST LONDON, Thursday 3 September 2026 — The Electoral Commission of South Africa has rejected suggestions that the ANC could receive preferential treatment over incomplete candidate submissions in the Eastern Cape, after the EFF formally sought answers about whether the governing party met the nomination deadline in several municipalities.
EFF Eastern Cape secretary Simthembile Madikizela wrote to the IEC on Tuesday asking whether the ANC had successfully submitted ward and proportional-representation candidate lists before the 28 August deadline and whether any post-deadline engagement had taken place over alleged technical difficulties.
The EFF specifically raised allegations involving Ingquza Hill, Port St Johns, Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley municipalities, according to the Daily Dispatch.
The party said it wanted an authoritative response because all contestants had prepared on the basis that the IEC’s 17:00 deadline was final and equally applicable to every party.
IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo rejected suggestions that the ANC or any other party would be granted special treatment.
“No political party or independent candidate will receive preferential treatment,” Mamabolo said, according to the report.
The commission has also rejected the ANC’s earlier suggestion that problems with the IEC’s Online Candidate Nomination System prevented some of its entries from being completed.
Mamabolo said the IEC’s technical records showed no evidence that its own nomination system had been unavailable on deadline day.
The ANC has said it successfully submitted the overwhelming majority of its candidates but that a small number of entries were affected by technical problems.
That explanation remains disputed by the IEC.
The commission announced this week that 2,274 potential candidates across 45 political parties had been captured on its online system but were not finally submitted before the cut-off.
They comprised 480 potential proportional-representation candidates and 1,794 potential ward candidates.
The IEC’s position is that those names were not formally submitted and therefore are not currently in contention for the election.
The commission has not publicly attributed all 2,274 incomplete nominations to specific political parties.
That distinction is important because the ANC’s Eastern Cape difficulties form only part of the wider group of incomplete submissions.
The latest intervention by the EFF follows an escalating internal dispute inside the ANC over the same nomination process.
Eastern Cape ANC provincial secretary Lulama Ngcukayitobi has asked secretary-general Fikile Mbalula for a municipality-by-municipality account of the party’s submissions, including compliance information for several Eastern Cape regions.
The IEC has separately confirmed that its election timetable will not be reopened to permit late nominations.
Parties will, however, move through a statutory compliance process in which the commission may request outstanding supporting documentation for candidates who were validly nominated before the deadline.
That process should not be confused with allowing parties to submit entirely new candidates after the cut-off.
The Eastern Cape dispute is politically significant because the municipalities identified by the EFF include areas where the ANC has historically enjoyed strong support and where losing access to ward or PR contests could directly alter council representation.
Port St Johns and Ingquza Hill fall within the OR Tambo District, one of the ANC’s strongest traditional electoral regions.
Walter Sisulu in the Joe Gqabi District and Sundays River Valley in Sarah Baartman are more competitive environments where individual seats can have greater consequences for control or coalition arithmetic.
The precise electoral impact remains uncertain because the IEC is still verifying nominations.
The commission is expected to publish the final candidate lists on 16 September, when it should become clear which ANC candidates have been accepted and whether any of the affected Eastern Cape municipalities contain wards or PR contests the party will be unable to enter.
Until then, the dispute is likely to remain both an electoral compliance issue and an internal ANC accountability problem as opposition parties scrutinise whether the nomination rules are being applied consistently.
