ANC now targets officials after ‘bungling’ registration for elections

HUNDREDS of ANC candidates would have missed out on standing for the upcoming local government elections, had the party not been allowed to re-register councillor candidates.

ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte yesterday said there were 359 candidate councillors that the governing party failed to register in the North West, Limpopo and Gauteng.

“We will live with whatever comes up,” she said.

Duarte blamed party officials, who procrastinated and took too long – and were too late to meet the August 23 deadline, set by the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) for the submission of candidate councillors.

She said there would be no forgiveness for those found to have bungled the process.

According to Duarte, the failure to register candidate councillors affected about 35 municipalities, where people’s registrations were not accepted.

“It’s not the IEC’s fault,” she said, adding that it was a difficult arrangement for the ANC and was not a glitch.

She said the reason the ANC withdrew its Electoral Court challenge to the closure of the registration of candidates was that the organisation sat down and went through the its lists minutely.

Duarte admitted that the ANC made a mistake in its input to the IEC, and in one instance was definitely late.

She warned that the ANC could not be lackadaisical in its preparations for the elections.

Duarte said the ANC had put its argument before the IEC’s national political liaison committee, and that six other political parties agreed with it.

She said all disputes relating to the candidate nomination process had to be finalised.

Duarte maintained that the ANC was not in control of the dispute resolution process, as it was headed by former president Kgalema Motlanthe.

Motlanthe was also scheduled to deal with the disputes yesterday, according to Duarte.

The ANC, according to Duarte, was dealing mostly with minor disagreements.

“Some of the disputes are not disputes, they are complaints over who is more popular in the community,” she said.