The Constitutional Court has dismissed the Independent Electoral Commission’s application for a postponement of the fifth 2021 Local Government Elections to early next February.
After adopting justice Dikgang Moseneke’s report which recommended that elections will only be free and fair if they are held no later than February 2022, the IEC launched a bid in the apex court to have the polls postponed.
But the Democratic Alliance (DA) objected to the move, saying regular, free and fair elections were part of the foundational clauses of the Constitution and as such would require a super-majority of 75% in Parliament to be amended.
The apex court also orders the IEC to attempt to hold a voters’ registration weekend.
“The commission must within three calendar days after the date of the order to determine whether it is practically possible to hold a voter registration weekend with a view to registering new voters and changing registered voters’ particulars on the national voters’ roll in time for local government elections,” said the judgment.
Elections will be held on October 27 as earlier announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Each party was ordered to bear their own costs.
According to former IEC deputy chairperson, Terry Tselane, the court judgment allows the commission to reopen registration of party candidates for local government elections.
Earlier this week, the ANC withdrew its application to the electoral court, in which it requested an extension to the deadline to submit its candidates list for the local government elections.
The missing of the IEC deadline has affected the party in 93 municipalities.
However, DA’s federal council chairperson, Helen Zille, said Tselane’s interpretation and analysis was at odds with her party’s understanding of the Concourt judgment.
“Terry Tselane, formerly of the IEC and now from the Electoral Commission of SA, was on @Radio702, saying that the ConCourt ruling will enable the ANC to register its candidates. This is NOT how we read the judgment. It will enable voter registration, not candidate registration,” said Zille on Twitter on Friday night.
“Well, if Terry Tselane is right in his interpretation of the judgment (which we dispute) that the Concourt ruling enables the ANC to re-register its candidates, then my hypothesis still stands. We believe that the ruling enables voter registration but NOT candidate registration.”
The EFF said all political parties were afforded the same amount of time to submit their candidates by the 23rd of August 2021 under the same deadline.
Any attempt to reopen that process would confirm that the IEC operates on the whims of the ruling party, the ANC, and lacks independence and partiality, said the EFF on Friday night.
“To reopen the candidate submission process would be unfair on political parties who have their houses in order and have met the necessary deadline, notwithstanding that there is precedence in refusing to allow political parties that have missed the deadline from submitting,” said the EFF in a statement.
“The EFF calls on all of its structures and ground forces to activate the elections machinery towards total victory. We must begin an aggressive campaign of engaging our people in every street and work tirelessly to remove incompetence and corruption in local government.”
- Inside Metros