Mbalula must just own up about missing IEC deadline

So much has been written in the past two decades about what would happen if or when the ANC lost its electoral majority in both the national and local government elections.

The predictions were not always there because when the ANC was voted into power in 1994, the party’s victory was so overwhelming that it did indeed look like it would rule until the second coming of Jesus, as former president Jacob Zuma once proclaimed.

So, when it became clear that the possibility exists that the party would lose power at some point before that boastful proclamation, predictions were as wild as “they would rig elections like their friends Zanu-PF”, to “they would return to the bush to fight again”.

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The worst that has really happened in the cases that the ANC lost power is some of its members being party to decisions that have led to unstable coalitions in some municipalities. Nothing as wild as taking up arms or rigging elections, at least not yet.

While losing its grip on power has not resulted in anything that has threatened the country’s democracy, there have been some actions that could be classified as desperate on the part of this once-mammoth liberation movement.

The latest in that list of actions is the invoking of the possibility of the party taking the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) to the Electoral Court over the ANC’s failure to submit candidate lists on time for the 4 November local government elections.

It is important to note that in the time leading to the submission deadline on 28 August at 5pm, the ANC went through its own candidate selection process which, in the case of many branches, was reportedly chaotic.

This process was aimed at getting the candidate lists ready for submission by ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula.

Mbalula is a veteran of many elections and has, in fact, run the ANC’s election campaigns in the past and would have been well aware of the consequences of missing the IEC deadline.

Yet, he still missed it and wants his organisation and country to believe that it was not his fault, but the IEC’s fault.

He claims there were technical glitches when he tried to submit the lists for some regions in the Eastern Cape before the deadline.

Those who did try to predict what would happen when the ANC lost its majority did not predict that the party would try to cast doubts on the credibility of the electoral process by, for instance, taking the IEC to the Electoral Court just two months ahead of an election.

Although not completely underway just yet, the ANC and its leaders need to be aware that although it is the right of any political party to challenge unfairness on the part of the IEC, it is a very dangerous route to take when the cause of the alleged unfairness is completely of the party’s own making.

Mbalula and the ANC know that they had ample time and opportunity to avoid submitting their lists on the last-minute.

Shifting that responsibility to a fault on the IEC’s part is not only mischievous, but is almost an attack on the integrity of the election itself, well before it takes place.

This might sound alarmist to some because they think the Electoral Court will simply dismiss the case if there are no grounds for the ANC’s allegations.

What they forget is the country’s biggest party complaining about the electoral process, to the point of taking it to court, already says to some people: this election is flawed.