JOHANNESBURG, Monday 7 September 2026 — The ANC has asked the Electoral Court to order the Electoral Commission to accept disputed candidate lists and ward nominations in six municipalities across the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Free State, escalating a submission failure that could materially affect the party’s prospects in the 4 November local government elections.
Court papers reported on Monday evening seek an order setting aside the IEC’s refusal to register the affected candidates and declaring the ANC’s submissions to have been made lawfully and on time.
The ANC wants the Electoral Court to direct the IEC to treat its disputed party lists and ward nominations as having been “timeously, lawfully and validly submitted” under sections 14 and 17 of the Local Government: Municipal Electoral Act.
It also wants those candidates included in the nominations for the 4 November 2026 local government elections.
The application turns what had been a political and administrative dispute with the IEC into a direct judicial challenge with potentially significant consequences for several councils.
The ANC maintains that technical problems with the IEC’s electronic candidate-nomination system prevented it from completing submissions before the 17:00 deadline on 28 August.
The IEC has repeatedly rejected that account.
Chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo and other commission officials have said the IEC’s records do not indicate a system malfunction during the relevant period and have questioned why parties waited until the final hours of a nomination window that had been open for weeks.
The commission has also maintained that it does not have authority to selectively reopen nominations for a party after the statutory deadline.
That position received substantial support from an Electoral Court judgment delivered last week in an unrelated case brought by the United Democratic Front Party.
In that case, the court held that the IEC cannot exempt an individual party from an election-timetable deadline and has no discretion simply to accept a genuinely late nomination.
The ANC’s case is potentially distinguishable because it is not merely asking for condonation of an acknowledged late submission.
Its requested order is framed around a contention that the affected nominations should be legally regarded as having been submitted on time because, on the party’s version, it had taken the necessary steps but was prevented from completing the process by problems on the IEC platform.
The Electoral Court will therefore have to consider both what occurred technically and whether that factual situation, if established, provides a legal basis for compelling the IEC to accept the nominations.
Six municipalities at stake
SABC News reported on Monday evening that the litigation covers six municipalities in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Free State.
Previous reporting has identified Port St Johns, Ingquza Hill, Sundays River Valley and Walter Sisulu among the Eastern Cape municipalities affected by failures to complete ANC submissions.
Daily Dispatch reported that the ANC faced having no ward or proportional-representation candidates in Port St Johns and Ingquza Hill, while its PR lists in Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley were affected.
In Port St Johns alone, reporting indicated that 20 ward candidates and 19 proportional-representation candidates were not successfully submitted.
KwaZulu-Natal reporting has identified uMshwathi Local Municipality as affected, while earlier reporting has linked the Free State component of the dispute to Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality.
The final municipality-by-municipality scope will depend on the Electoral Court papers and the IEC’s formal response.
The political consequences differ considerably between the affected councils.
Port St Johns and Ingquza Hill are within an Eastern Cape region where the ANC has historically held substantial support, meaning an inability to field complete candidate slates could change council composition irrespective of the party’s underlying voter support.
Mangaung carries greater national significance because it is one of South Africa’s eight metropolitan municipalities.
The ANC currently governs Mangaung and is attempting to retain control amid challenges from the DA, EFF, MK Party, BOSA and other parties.
An incomplete proportional-representation slate there could affect how effectively the ANC converts votes into council seats.
uMshwathi is also politically important because the ANC is attempting to recover ground in KwaZulu-Natal after the emergence of the MK Party dramatically changed the province’s electoral landscape.
ANC faces its own internal backlash
The court application comes as the submission failure produces mounting pressure inside the ANC.
Sunday Times reported that members of the party’s National Executive Committee have demanded accountability from secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, arguing that the candidate-registration process should have been completed significantly earlier.
At least nine NEC members interviewed by the publication blamed Mbalula for the failure, while others argued that responsibility is shared more broadly across the ANC’s electoral structures.
Mbalula has rejected suggestions that he personally caused the problem and has continued to attribute the missing nominations to difficulties involving the IEC system.
ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa has supported the party’s assertion that technical problems occurred.
He said on Friday that electoral administration problems should not prevent voters from choosing their preferred candidates and identified the Electoral Court as one of the mechanisms available for resolving the dispute.
The IEC says the same problem was not limited to the governing party.
It recorded 2,274 prospective candidates from 45 political parties whose details had been captured on its online platform but whose nominations were not formally submitted before the deadline.
That broader figure is likely to feature in arguments about equal treatment.
Granting relief exclusively to the ANC without a legally distinguishable basis could affect other parties whose candidates were excluded for missing the same deadline.
The ANC’s allegation of an IEC system malfunction could therefore become pivotal.
If the Electoral Court concludes that the nominations were simply incomplete when time expired, its recent UDF judgment presents a substantial obstacle to the ANC.
If the ANC establishes that compliant submissions were prevented or incorrectly rejected because of a failure attributable to the IEC’s system, the court would face a different question about whether electoral fairness requires corrective relief.
Candidate-list deadline approaching
The litigation comes days before the IEC is scheduled to complete the candidate process.
Parties and candidates had until Monday to provide outstanding identity documents or signed acceptance-of-nomination forms where the IEC had requested them.
Multiple nominations are due to be identified on 9 September, with permitted substitutions following before the final lists are compiled.
The IEC is scheduled to publish the certified candidate lists on 16 September.
That creates a compressed timetable for the Electoral Court to resolve a dispute affecting multiple municipalities before the commission finalises the ballot.
The ANC is not asking the court merely for another opportunity to load names onto the IEC system.
It is asking for a judicial determination that its disputed submissions should be regarded as having complied with the original deadline.
The outcome could determine whether the ANC contests some municipalities with the candidates it intended to field — or enters the November election with significant gaps in its slates.
