Behind the ANC’S elections chaos
Complaints in the post: The branch disputes backlog Suspended Ace left a ‘mess at Luthuli House’ Ineptitude leaves party facing massive poll losses
Whether the ANC gets a lifeline from the Constitutional Court to postpone the local government elections or not, the ruling party is in serious trouble.
More than 1 000 branches, about a third of the party, have laid formal complaints about the list process being manipulated and the outcomes not reflecting the wishes of the communities.
Several regions are expected to approach the courts if their disputes are not dealt with. The ANC faces massive potential electoral losses over its failure to meet the deadline to register its local government candidates in 95 municipalities for the impending local government poll.
In the 2016 local government elections the party was only able to scrape together 53.9% of the vote. In the coming local government elections the slide will likely continue, especially as the party has failed to submit its lists on time. Party members are concerned that even if they get more time to rectify the lists the adjudication of the complaints will be a laborious process with some complaints possibly still to flood in, stuck in the post.
Researcher and elections analyst Paul Berkowitz painted a bleak picture for the ANC should the Constitutional Court reject the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC) application to postpone elections, saying that it was likely that the result of 2016 would be replicated, where the four traditional ANC metros would again be governed through coalitions.
Berkowitz said that in some municipalities the ANC is already competitively close with smaller parties, such as the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in Kwazulu-natal.
“Even losing a few seats can have a huge impact. Tshwane is obviously one where 12 wards are not registered in traditional ANC strongholds. There are a few municipalities in the north of KZN [Kwazulu-natal] where the ANC is neck-and-neck with the IFP. Even in some of the North West municipalities, it would be an opportunity for the Economic Freedom Fighters to make life difficult. Gauteng and KZN will be tough for the party if the list remains as it is,” he said.
Even in municipalities that are not closely contested, the ANC could lose a big chunk and have a smaller majority, he said. Independent candidates contesting these elections have risen in number from 855 in 2016 to 944 captured by the IEC for this year’s local government election.
Areas such as the Nelson Mandela Bay and Maluti-a-phofung have seen a rise in independent candidates who might take a chunk of votes from the governing party and the Democratic Alliance.
In Maluti-a-phofung, the ANC attempted to reclaim a crop of independents, who were expelled from the party after they fell out of favour with suspended secretary Ace Magashule’s then-government and voted against the ANC in council.
However the 16 independents have since gained favour with the community and have refused to go back to the ANC, confident they will fare better on their own.
In Kwazulu-natal alone more than 200 disputes have been lodged by branch members with the provincial list committee, which is tasked with resolving them before the elections take place. Nearly half of the ethekwini region’s 111 branches have declared disputes over candidate nomination and are threatening to go to court next week.
Most of the ethekwini disputes are focused on the nomination of secondor third-choice candidates by the national executive committee (NEC) ahead of the branches’ first choices, who were chosen by the community and the branches in terms of the new selection guidelines.
Political analyst Ongama Mtimka said that while the ANC may lose wards due to its bungled list process, the local government elections guidelines the party set for branches to elect ward candidates were good on paper and produced a crop of credible candidates endorsed by communities.
“It shows that processes of rebuilding can be messy. It was a lot simpler for the ANC to select candidates when its process was not as cumbersome. In the criticism about the lack of being organised better and prepared, one of the things we must factor in is the exact nature of processes of bringing about reform,” he said.
The ANC, with the help of former party deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe, produced a list of guidelines for branches to select candidates, which included that branches should select five nominees, including women and youth.
These candidates would then be introduced to the community of the voting station and the community would have the deciding vote on whether it chose one of them.
The community was also given an option to veto the nominees selected by the branch and choose their own preferred candidate for the final list.
However, in many branches this did not happen. Last week branches from ethekwini staged protests outside the ANC’S provincial office over the alleged interference in the selection process and over the removal of former mayor Zandile Gumede and six other corruption-accused councillors from the list.
Njabulo Mchunu, a spokesperson for the 55 branches in the region that have lodged disputes over the candidate selection, said that they would return to the provincial office to find out what was happening.
“We are not going to wait forever. By Friday [3 September]… if they haven’t dealt with the disputes and resolved them we will go the legal route if necessary. We have given them space to deal with these matters because these are matters of the ANC,” Mchunu said.
In Pietermaritzburg, the situation was the same with branches marching on Monday and Wednesday last week, accusing the regional task team of bringing in unpopular choices as candidates by manipulating the list process.
Kwazulu-natal provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli confirmed more than 200 disputes were lodged by branches, but that in some cases, more than one branch member had lodged complaints, inflating the number.
“All of the outstanding disputes and complaints will be considered and resolved in the best interests of the ANC,” Ntuli said, and appealed to members to be patient.
However, even the provincial list committee chairs, who are charged with settling disputes by branches, have raised concerns that they were incapacitated and inundated with disputes that were not likely to be resolved by the time the Constitutional Court rules on the bid to postpone the poll.
Mpumalanga ANC chair Ben Mthembu said the province was still wrestling to resolve 98 disputes, adding that 75 disputes were processed. The party veteran said resolving the disputes was a laborious process that was made more challenging by the Covid-19 restrictions.
“We are using a virtual hearing, which entails that we have to get the complainant as well as the respondent to give their side of the story virtually. We then have to interrogate their presentation and after that we sit and deliberate and make a determination. If we are lucky, we manage to deal with six complaints on the day at the most,” he said.
Mthembu explained that there were “no shortcuts” and the provin
cial list committee — which consists of a party of elders — must ensure it upholds the principles of fairness and legality in its dealings with complaints.
“The process is slow. Whether the IEC rules in favour of the ANC, we remain guided by the past that the ANC did not hesitate to recall a person and we are guided by the principle of administrative justice. We are trying our best to speed up the process but because of the methodology, we have to be fair and when we give outcomes, we have to give reasons.”
Mthembu said, however, that he was confident that disputes in the Mpumalanga province would be concluded in the coming week.
Professor Alfred Nevhutanda, who chairs the ANC provincial list committee in Limpopo, said resolving disputes through virtual platforms had posed a problem in the mainly rural province.
The provincial list committee in Limpopo has more than 400 disputes it is charged to resolve, 260 of which have been processed, he said.
Nevhutanda explained that the process is laborious. It doesn’t help that some branches don’t know what to dispute, and the committee has to sift through dozens of complaints to redirect regions and subregions. Some branches wrote letters by hand and other areas have no photocopier or scanner so they have to post handwritten letters.
“In Limpopo we had only two ladies assisting us. When these disputes come, you find that the factions have penetrated to branches, sometimes some of the disputes will arrive late, maybe because they are hidden and a certain faction doesn’t like how it has been raised. There were times we would knock off at 2am,” he said.
Both party veterans spoke of how factions of the ANC had penetrated and caused rifts in branches.
In the Eastern Cape, the party’s third-largest province, the ANC said it was confronted by a series of violent incidents in its branch general meetings, adding that a number of reports were received of individuals seeking to manipulate the outcomes of the community vote.
Eastern Cape secretary Lulama Ngcukayitobi said most of its complaints were concentrated in the Dr WB Rubusana and Amathole regions. The province is one of the few that managed to meet the deadline and register its candidates on time.
“Due to the seriousness of these allegations the ANC Eastern Cape [an] extended provincial executive committee meeting resolved to appoint an investigation committee to investigate these allegations,” Ngcukayitobi said.
“If there are leaders of the ANC who deliberately manipulated the processes, the ANC wouldn’t hesitate to act harshly. If any of the candidates were wrongly selected, the ANC will have no choice but to remedy that situation,” he said.
Free State branches from the Thabo Mofutsanyana region have written to the party also complaining that the lists were manipulated by the interim provincial committee, (IPC) alleging that it had generated those names “from the streets” and outside the nominations made by the ANC branches.
“The actions of the Free State IPC members undermined the will of the branches and such conduct violates the letter and the spirit of the guidelines which were duly developed and adopted by the NEC of the ANC to guide the processes on the nomination and selection process for [proportional representation] councillors,” their letter reads.
Free State branch leaders who spoke to the M&G on condition of anonymity have threatened to take the party to court should the matter not be resolved.