ConCourt holds ANC get-out-of-jail card – IRR

On Monday 30 August, the ANC sent papers to the Electoral Court asking for an order to reopen the candidate lists for municipal elections, but withdrew that appeal the next day. This means that the ANC will have to face the October 27 elections without candidates in over 90 municipalities, in part due to low morale among unpaid ANC staff, according to its own court papers.

The ANC has locked itself into an electoral trap, especially in KZN – but if the Constitutional Court postpones the national municipal elections and calls for the whole process to begin afresh, the ANC may look back on this moment as one of expedience. While other parties struggled, and succeeded, in completing their candidate lists, the ANC’s failure to do so will make no practical difference. It will, so to say, get out of jail free.

“To see why this matters democratically”, said IRR head of campaigns Gabriel Crouse, “remember that in 2016 the ANC spent over R1 billion on campaigning during the municipal elections, but still dropped 8 basis points to 55%. If it took a similar knock this time the ANC would fall below 50% nationally, on the basic trend of poor service delivery, brazen corruption, and resultant falling standards of living. But this time is different.

“This time the ANC goes into the national municipal campaign unable to pay its taxes, pensions, polling agents, or even its own staff. This time the ANC goes into the campaign on the back of riots in which over 300 people died. This time the ANC goes into an election with a single potential route to holding its national majority, namely that the election is postponed beyond the Constitution’s deadline as signed by the late President Nelson Mandela in 1998.”

Added Crouse: “Only the ConCourt has the power to decide whether granting the ANC this get-of-jail-free card would be fair on the public in the face of a pandemic that could not break the election cycles of Zambia, and a hundred other countries.”
 

Media contacts: Gabriel Crouse, IRR Head of Campaigns – 082 510 0360; gabriel@irr.org.za
Duwayne Esau, IRR Campaign Officer – 081 700 0302; duwayne@irr.org.za
 
Media enquiries: Michael Morris Tel: 066 302 1968 Email: michael@irr.org.za
Kelebogile Leepile Tel: 079 051 0073 Email: kelebogile@irr.org.za