ANC Risks Losing 181 Candidates Over IEC System Glitch Ahead of Municipal Elections
- Around 181 ANC ward and PR council candidates face disqualification after technical failures on the IEC's Online Candidate Nomination System
- The ANC insists all candidate data was uploaded before the deadline, but a system lockout blocked the final confirmation step from processing
- President Cyril Ramaphosa confirmed the party is considering taking the matter to the Electoral Court to resolve the dispute
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SOUTH AFRICA — The African National Congress is confronting the possible exclusion of approximately 181 ward and proportional representation council candidates from the 2026 Local Government Elections, after critical failures on the Electoral Commission's Online Candidate Nomination System disrupted the party's submission process.
According to IOL, ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a door-to-door campaign in Tembisa, Ekurhuleni, confirmed that the party is actively pursuing both legal and institutional options to safeguard its candidate submissions.
The ANC contends that its provincial secretaries and list committees successfully uploaded all nominated candidates onto the IEC's backend system before the official cutoff. However, according to the party, system lockouts prevented the mandatory final electronic confirmation step from being completed, leaving submissions in an unfinished state.
The Electoral Commission has pushed back against this account, stating that no general technical failure occurred on its systems. The IEC's position is that candidates whose submissions were not finalised within the deadline remain disqualified, regardless of the circumstances cited.
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Electoral court challenge under consideration
The ANC leadership is now weighing its next move, with the Electoral Court emerging as a central option. Ramaphosa described the court as a specialist institution specifically mandated to resolve election-related disputes and indicated it remains a viable path to breaking the deadlock.
The party has made it clear that it is not requesting an extension to the nomination period. Instead, it is seeking formal recognition of the candidate files already captured in the IEC database prior to the cutoff, arguing that the data exists within the commission's own systems and that disqualification on procedural grounds would be unjust under the circumstances. No further official response from the IEC regarding the ANC's proposed legal challenge had been made public at the time of publication.
View Ramaphosa weighing in on the glitch on X:
EFF accuses ANC of manipulating 2026 LGE
In a related article, Briefly News reported that the Economic Freedom Fighters accused the ANC of colluding with an IEC official to manipulate the upcoming elections. The party's deputy president, Godrich Gardee, said that collusion between rogue IEC officials and ANC supporters could spark civil unrest.
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Source: Briefly News
