JOHANNESBURG, Gauteng — The African National Congress (ANC) is pressing forward with plans to submit its local election candidate lists to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) today, despite facing a legal threat from unhappy party members seeking to interdict the submission.
The party remains confident it will meet the IEC’s strict 5:00 p.m. deadline tomorrow, aiming to finalize and seal the documents a full 24 hours in advance. A special National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting is currently underway to resolve outstanding issues, with a primary focus on ensuring strict adherence to the party’s 50/50 gender representation commitment across all provincial lists.
ANC Party Spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu confirmed that the special NEC is actively reviewing the lists to guarantee both meaningful, substantive, and descriptive representation of women, as well as substantive representation of young people. Bhengu noted that the committee has already reviewed and balanced the lists for Mpumalanga, Limpopo, and KwaZulu-Natal, and is progressing through the remaining provinces with the expectation of completing the task by late afternoon.
However, the process has not been without significant friction. Unhappy party members have reportedly sent a legal letter to the ANC, threatening to interdict the candidate lists. The tension is particularly acute in the Eastern Cape, where the legitimacy of the Provincial Task Team (PTT) is currently being debated in court. Critics argue that an illegitimate PTT lacks the bonafide authority to decide who should represent the ANC in local municipalities.
In response to the Eastern Cape complications, the NEC has ensured that representatives from the province’s Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) are present at the meeting to help clean up and verify the list. Bhengu emphasized that the ANC has a well-established, proper dispute resolution mechanism to handle any internal disagreements or legal challenges regarding candidate deployment.
The current special NEC meeting follows a special extended NEC session that began on Tuesday. The earlier extended meeting included league members and 15 representatives from alliance partners COSATU and the SACP. This inclusion marked a strategic shift, as candidate deployment has traditionally remained the sole preserve of the ANC, a lesson learned following past tensions and the walking out of the SACP.
Today’s special NEC session, restricted to core NEC members under special circumstances to address this single pressing issue, is being presided over by the Chairperson of the ANC Electoral Committee, Kgalema Motlanthe. The committee is tasked with finalizing the names of thousands of candidates, including approximately 4,488 ward councilors and over 1,000 proportional representation (PR) councilors, ensuring the final roster meets all ANC candidate selection guidelines and electoral rules before submission to the IEC.