JOHANNESBURG, Monday 7 September 2026 — ANC veteran Frank Chikane and senior party figures Andile Lungisa and Nocawe Mafu were left off proportional-representation candidate submissions for the 4 November local government elections, turning the ANC’s broader nomination dispute with the Electoral Commission into a direct threat to several of its high-profile mayoral options.
TimesLIVE and the Sunday Times reported that the three were among prominent names absent from lists formally submitted before the 28 August nomination deadline. The Citizen subsequently reported the same omissions while detailing the internal backlash facing ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula.
The development is materially different from the initial dispute over whether the IEC’s online nomination system suffered technical problems.
The affected names now include politicians who had been formally placed in the ANC’s metropolitan mayoral selection process.
Chikane was one of three finalists announced by the ANC for Johannesburg, alongside incumbent Mayor Dada Morero and Deputy Mayor Loyiso Masuku. The party confirmed the shortlist in August after Chikane, Morero and Masuku underwent its vetting and interview process.
Chikane, a former director-general in the Presidency and current chairperson of the ANC Integrity Commission, had also been widely viewed inside the party as a possible candidate to contest Johannesburg against the DA’s Helen Zille and ActionSA’s Herman Mashaba.
Lungisa was one of four ANC mayoral prospects for Nelson Mandela Bay, alongside incumbent Mayor Babalwa Lobishe, Xolani Vela and Ntombi Nama.
The former ANC Youth League deputy president has previously served in the Nelson Mandela Bay council and had received backing for his mayoral bid from ANC-aligned youth structures in the metro.
Mafu, an ANC National Executive Committee member and Deputy Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, was among four candidates being considered for Buffalo City, together with incumbent Mayor Princess Faku, Simphiwe Dzengwa and Ncedo Kumbaca.
Buffalo City is particularly important for the ANC because it remains the only metropolitan municipality where the party currently holds an outright council majority.
The omissions therefore affect three metros in which the ANC has been conducting leadership-selection processes ahead of the election.
Johannesburg is expected to produce another fragmented council, Nelson Mandela Bay has repeatedly changed political control during the coalition era, and Buffalo City is one of the ANC’s most important remaining metropolitan strongholds.
The IEC has not publicly confirmed the individual names of all candidates who failed to make formally submitted lists.
It has, however, confirmed the scale and legal status of incomplete online nominations.
IEC chairperson Mosotho Moepya said that 2,274 candidate names from 45 political parties had been captured on the Online Candidate Nomination System but had not been finally submitted by the 17:00 deadline on 28 August.
Of those, 480 were prospective proportional-representation candidates and 1,794 were prospective ward candidates.
“The Commission’s position is that, in practical terms, these potential candidates have not been submitted to the Commission and therefore are not in contention for this election,” Moepya said.
That position is significant because it conflicts with the ANC’s expectation that at least some omitted names could still be restored during subsequent adjustments to candidate documentation.
Lungisa has reportedly said he was assured that his name would be added during an amendment process.
The IEC has distinguished between fixing defects in nominations that were actually submitted and allowing contestants to add candidates who were never formally submitted before the deadline.
The commission previously said it would not reopen nominations or allow political parties to introduce candidates after the statutory cut-off simply because names remained in draft form on the online system.
The ANC maintains that technical problems affected its submissions.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said last week that the party had compiled its candidate lists nationally but experienced difficulties interfacing with the IEC system while finalising some entries.
He said the ANC remained prepared to pursue available processes, including the Electoral Court, to seek a resolution.
The IEC disputes the ANC’s explanation.
The commission says its systems remained operational and has rejected the suggestion that a general malfunction prevented the ANC from completing its nominations.
The disagreement has already produced a formal legal and political strategy inside the ANC.
In the Eastern Cape, the party has launched an investigation into changes allegedly made to its candidate lists and is preparing Electoral Court action relating to candidates who were not properly submitted.
That province appears to be among the areas most severely affected.
According to TimesLIVE, the ANC failed to submit 20 ward candidates and 19 PR candidates in Port St Johns, while further problems were reported in municipalities within the OR Tambo and Alfred Nzo districts as well as Sundays River Valley and Walter Sisulu.
KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State are also affected by incomplete submissions.
The political consequences now extend beyond potentially uncontested wards.
The absence of Chikane, Lungisa and Mafu from PR submissions raises questions about whether some of the ANC’s announced mayoral options can legally enter the councils they were being considered to lead.
Municipal mayors are not directly elected by voters.
They must first be councillors and are then elected by the newly constituted municipal council after the election.
A mayoral hopeful who does not obtain a council seat through either a ward or PR list therefore cannot simply be elected mayor after 4 November.
That makes the nomination status of the affected figures central to the ANC’s metropolitan strategy.
In Johannesburg, for example, Chikane’s exclusion would effectively narrow the party’s options unless he appears elsewhere in a valid nomination or succeeds through whatever legal remedy the ANC pursues.
The same principle applies to Lungisa in Nelson Mandela Bay and Mafu in Buffalo City.
The IEC is currently checking submitted nominations for compliance.
Political parties can be asked to supply outstanding supporting documentation for candidates who were properly nominated, while separate notices concerning multiple nominations are due on 9 September.
The commission plans to publish the final certified candidate lists on 16 September 2026.
Those lists will provide the authoritative answer on whether Chikane, Lungisa, Mafu and other disputed ANC candidates remain eligible to contest.
Until then, the ANC faces two interconnected problems: a legal dispute with the IEC over what can still be corrected after the nomination deadline, and an internal political crisis over how senior candidates were left out of submissions in the first place.
The final candidate lists — and any Electoral Court ruling issued before then — could consequently reshape the ANC’s mayoral choices in several key municipalities before campaigning enters its final phase.
