By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Electoral Court of South Africa reserved judgement in the Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party’s urgent bid to set aside the 2024 National and Provincial elections.
The party is seeking to have the outcome set aside, arguing that the results were compromised after the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) results dashboard went offline for about two hours during the counting process.
The commission has rejected the claims, citing there is no evidence of manipulation and describing the case as an abuse of litigation processes.
The MK party filed a letter of objection on 31 May, four days after the vote. In its founding affidavit to the electoral court, it claimed that it was wrongly dismissed and that the election was blatantly rigged, but for which it would have won an outright majority, instead of 14.5% of the vote.
Section 55 (1) of the Electoral Act says that “any interested party may make an objection concerning any aspect of an election that is material to the final result of the election”.
IEC said the party’s objection was not filed in line with the requirements of the Act. Notably, the details of its complaint and the reason for the objection was not set out in an affidavit or sworn statement.
As for a technical problem that affected the IEC’s leaderboard and online result dashboard for about two hours on 31 May, the Commission said this had no bearing on the integrity of the capturing process.
MK Party’s legal representative Adv. Thabani Masuku SC questioned the urgency of the IEC’s intervention on technical glitches that resulted in the election results dashboard going offline during the vote counting phase of the 2024 general polls.
The system went offline, causing panic among South Africans.
When it came back up, the results page showed the governing African National Congress on 42.1% of the vote with results in from 54.9% of polling stations.
Masuku, argued that the IEC’s explanation for the blackout has never been tested.
“There is a non-negotiable requirement on the IEC to act accountably, transparently, responsibly and with integrity. “
IEC legal representative Adv. Wim Trengove SC in response, said the MK Party’s argument before court is irrelevant, only the reporting system was interrupted, causing the dashboard to go offline, not the results system.
Trengove SC argued that the manner in which the party had conducted itself was indicative of “an abusive and dilatory litigation strategy”.
The African National Congress (ANC) has received only 40.18 percent votes, well short of a majority.
For the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994, the once-dominant party had to make a deal with other parties to form a coalition.
The Democratic Alliance (DA), the main opposition party, received the second-highest number of votes (21.81 percent) followed by the MK party (14.58 percent) and EFF (9.52 percent).