ActionSA’s application over IEC ballot paper omission could be heard on Friday

The Electoral Court on Friday is expected to hear ActionSA’s application over the absence of its name from the ballot paper for the upcoming local government elections

This comes after the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) was ordered to file its responding affidavit by the Electoral Court in the matter.

ActionSA had lodged urgent papers at the court last week to set aside the IEC’s decision to exclude its name from the ballot paper for the municipal elections, which is scheduled to take place on 1 November.

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ActionSA spokesperson Lerato Ngobeni told 702 that the IEC has until the end of business on Tuesday to file its responding affidavit.

“The directive we received today is that [it] will be heard via the papers. We will not necessarily be appearing physically in court.

“We expect this to be done at latest by Friday and we are hopeful that we will have a response from the Electoral Court by [then as well]. We are also supposed to be filing our own responding affidavits to [the IEC’s] response, but we are ready,” Ngobeni said.

Ballot list

ActionSA previously threatened to take legal action against the IEC, with the party giving the commission a chance to correct the ballot list.

However, the IEC indicated that it was unlikely it would be able to add the names of political parties that were omitted from the ballot paper.

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The commission said it was unlikely to change this because the parties had elected not to register an abbreviated name or acronym when they registered their political parties.

It also rejected claims it was not acting impartially, saying the allegations were “without foundation and mischievous”.

The IEC had presented final draft ballot papers for wards in Gauteng a week ago, but ActionSA’s name was not on the list, although the party’s logo does appear.

‘Sabotage’

The president of ActionSA, Herman Mashaba, accused the IEC of sabotaging his party ahead of the elections.

This is not the first time that ActionSA has encountered problems with the IEC, after the commission had rejected the party’s application to register as a political party.

The IEC had rejected the application due to ActionSA’s logo being deemed to be similar to another party’s logo, and contained the colours and design of the South African flag.

The application was then given the greenlight in December last year, after ActionSA tweaked their logo slightly, replacing all colours of the logo found in the South African to green.

ActionSA’s candidates were also erroneously omitted from the IEC’s lists for Gauteng.

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Additional reporting by Thapelo Lekabe and Gareth Cotterell