Mbalula collapses after Constitutional Court hands ANC back its 181 candidates

Fikile Mbalula collapsed on Thursday shortly after the Constitutional Court ruled in the ANC’s favour and ordered that 181 of the party’s excluded councillor candidates be reinstated for the 4 November local government elections.

The ANC secretary-general had been addressing the media from the steps of Constitution Hill when he broke down in tears. During an interview afterwards he said the words “I’m not feeling..” and then appeared to collapse. Reports from the court said an ambulance was called.

As Sunday World reported on 15 October, Mbalula wept after the judgment and was overcome during the briefing that followed. That account is accurate on the events it describes. What it does not carry is the part of the ruling that matters most to a voter in Gqeberha, Polokwane or Soweto deciding on 4 November, which is what the court actually ordered and what the ANC now has to answer for.

The court’s decision restores 181 candidates to the ballot. The party had gone to court after failing to complete the final step of the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s online nomination process before the 5pm deadline on 28 August. It lost its first bid in the Electoral Court and won on appeal to the Constitutional Court. The practical effect is that voters in the wards those candidates were to contest will see ANC names on their ballot papers that, until Thursday, were not going to be there.

Mbalula framed the case as larger than a missed administrative step. “The right to vote is not a privilege handed down by an institution. It is not a setting in a computer programme, and it is not a pattern on a screen. It is a fundamental right, and it belongs to the people,” he said at the briefing.

He thanked ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa for what he called his leadership through the hard month and for insisting that the party take the lawful road. “The Constitution has spoken, and it has spoken for the people of this country,” he said.

He also turned to the party’s coalition partners. “There are matters, comrades, that this movement will now have to sit down and discuss. And one of those matters is our partners in the Government of National Unity, and that is the DA. We must review the DA in the Government of National Unity,” he said. That remark will land inside the ANC as well as outside it. The Democratic Alliance is one of the most prominent partners in the national government, and a call to review its role from the secretary-general is a signal about where internal argument is heading after the elections.

The judgment is a reprieve for Mbalula personally. As secretary-general he sat at the centre of the party’s administration, and the failure to complete the candidate submissions before the IEC deadline had raised direct questions about his office and his leadership. The setback had also become a point of attack for those inside the ANC unhappy with his stewardship.

The legal victory does not close that question. Nobody has been held accountable for the missed deadline, and the court’s order restores the candidates without answering who was responsible for their exclusion in the first place. The IEC ran the process it published, and the ANC did not meet it. That is the fact the party will carry into the campaign, whatever the steps of Constitution Hill looked like on Thursday.

What South Africans will notice first is simpler. On 4 November they will vote in wards where the ANC’s presence on the ballot was in doubt until this week. The party now has its full slate. It also has a secretary-general who collapsed in public on the day he got it back, and a coalition partner he has just publicly asked his own movement to review.

The Enquirer will follow the IEC’s preparations for the 4 November elections and the ANC’s internal discussion on the Government of National Unity as both develop.