Constitutional Court opens the ballot to 181 ANC candidates, and 2 000 others who missed the cut-off

The Constitutional Court has ordered the Electoral Commission of South Africa to allow 181 ANC candidates to contest the municipal elections, ending a fight over late candidate lists that the party’s own secretary-general had been widely criticised for mishandling.

As Sunday World reported on 18 October, Fikile Mbalula wept and nearly collapsed when the ruling came through. The same judgment opens the door for more than 2 000 candidates from other parties who also missed the cut-off to be placed on the lists.

That second number is the part of the story that reaches beyond the ANC. The court did not carve out a remedy for the governing party alone. Candidates across the political spectrum who fell foul of the commission’s list deadlines now have a route onto the ballot, and voters in municipalities where those names were set to be absent will see them there after all.

Mbalula had been criticised for the way the ANC’s list process was run, and few in the party’s own ranks were said to believe an appeal to the apex court stood much chance. He pressed on with it. The ruling now stands as a personal victory for a secretary-general whose handling of the lists had been the subject of open complaint.

The mechanics matter for ordinary voters. The IEC administers the municipal elections, and its candidate lists determine whose names appear on the ballot paper in each ward and each municipality. A candidate left off the list cannot be voted for, however well known they are in their community. A court order that adds names after the cut-off changes what voters will find when they reach the voting station.

What the ruling does not do is settle the wider argument about how the lists came to be late in the first place, or who bears responsibility for the scramble that produced this litigation. Those questions remain political, and they will be asked again when the campaigns begin in earnest.