Apex court dismisses appeal by ACT, Labour Party

For apex court to dismiss our application, supported by 19 other parties, is almost unbelievable.

The African Congress for Transformation (ACT) will contest the national elections in all nine provinces and for the provincial ballot in six provinces – excluding Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Western Cape – and in one regional ballot in the Western Cape.

ACT national spokesperson Prince Mabena emphasised the party was on ballot papers, although their list of candidates didn’t go through.

“We were not going to plead with the IEC [Electoral Commission of South Africa”] if we’re not on the ballot,” he said.

“We are shocked because we thought our submission was fair enough to get a good understanding from the judge.”

The Constitutional Court yesterday dismissed ACT, the Labour Party, and the Afrikan Alliance of Social Democrats’ (SASD) final bid to contest the 29 May elections.

The court noted it would provide reasons for these orders in due course. The three parties had appealed to the apex court, seeking a second opportunity to register their party candidates.

They blamed their exclusion on technical glitches in the IEC’s digital submission platform.

Mabena said ACT was “digesting the outcome”, and will be seeking legal advice on what to do going forward.

The court dismissed the Labour Party’s application for direct access and disregarded the additional information provided by the party as it was submitted in a format not recognised by the court. The Labour Party labelled the judgment “baffling”.

Krister Janse van Rensburg, the Labour Party’s secretariat, said it seemed the court took an easy way out and avoided dealing with the merits of their case. It rather focused on the technical legal aspect of direct access.

He said the application for direct access centred on the online submission system of the IEC malfunctioned, “leading to a substantial number of unrepresented parties not being able to finish uploading their documents to comply with Section 27 of the Electoral Act”.

He added: “For the apex court to disregard our application supported by 19 other political parties, is almost unbelievable.”

Elections analyst Michael Atkins said the most important fact was the ConCourt did not make any decision on the merits of the application. They didn’t decide the IEC was correct that it was the parties fault.

“They similarly didn’t decide the parties failed because the IEC systems were not good enough,” he said.

“The court simply made no decision about who was correct in the failure of those parties to complete the processes by the deadline.”

Atkins said ACT did not complete all of their regional applications.

“Those regional ballots count just as much as the national ballots count for the National Assembly,” he said.

“ACT would have gone to court because they were losing the opportunity to gain votes in some of those regional ballots.

“They’re not on the Free State regional ballot, so their supporters in the Free State can vote for ACT on the national ballot, but not on the regional ballot for the National Assembly,” he said.

According to the Labour Party’s summation based on media reports and announcements, there was a failure rate of around 62% for the 101 parties who attempted to upload on the system.

“The IEC, however, claims the failure rate was only 35%, as indicated in their answering affidavit,” the party said.

Janse van Rensburg said they “will await the detailed reasons for the judgment before we make further comment on this matter”.

Krister Janse van Rensburg

Labour Party secretariat