By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Constitutional Court has dismissed the Labour Party, African Congress for Transformation (ACT) & Afrikan Alliance of Social Democrats’ (AASD) final bid to contest the 2024 elections.
On Wednesday, 8 May, three political parties were seeking urgent intervention, claiming that technical faults and “hanging” in the online registration system of the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) barred them from registering on time.
ACT’s legal representative Advocate Gregory Amm told the ConCourt that at least 120 000 of the party’s supporters would be denied the constitutional right to vote for the party of their own choice as a result of the exclusion.
The exclusion would also deny ACT’s candidates their right to stand for public office.
“The frustration of either of those rights, which we submit is presently the status quo, has the effect of rendering the elections unfair,” he argued.
The advocate said the IEC had the powers in terms of Section 20 of the Electoral Act to amend the election timetable and extend the deadline for the submission of their lists.
However, he revealed that ACT only wanted “an hour or two” for the IEC to reopen its online portal to submit outstanding documents to the IEC and only resort to postponing the elections as the last measure.
ACT appears on the IEC’s national and regional candidate lists, but it missed the deadline for inclusion in other regions.
Advocate Chris Loxton, representing the Labour Party, argued that the IEC’s contention that its online candidate nomination system functioned without any mishaps because other parties were able to upload the required information did not hold water.
We submit that the central submission by the commission namely that the system was working really well and that those who acted reasonably and with due diligence could comply with the requirements has a fatal flaw to it,” he said on Wednesday.
The IEC argued that postponing the elections at the parties’ request would cost the country almost R600 million.
(1/3) Order issued on 10 May 2024 at 09h30: The application for direct access is dismissed (CCT 113/24 Labour Party of South Africa v Electoral Commission of South Africa and Others)
— Constitutional Court (@ConCourtSA) May 10, 2024
A fourth case was submitted by the Defenders of The People party on the same issue, but the court is yet to provide directions on how it will be handled.
South Africans will go to the polls on 29 May 2024 to the elect the leadership for the seventh administration out of the 70 political parties and 11 independent candidates that were published by the IEC as final contestants in these elections.
South Africa has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, and is ranked by the Thomas Piketty-backed World Inequality Lab as the most unequal country in the world for which data is available.
Opinion polls suggest the African National Congress (ANC) may win less than half the vote, forcing it to rely on smaller rivals to continue governing Africa’s most-industrialized nation