The MK party says the IEC should not give the ANC any special treatment.
The uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party has warned the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) not to treat the ANC with kid gloves.
This comes after the ANC appealed to the IEC to allow the party to finish registering more than 100 of its councillor candidates on the commission’s online portal. The ANC said it experienced glitches in the IEC’s system while attempting to submit the councillor candidates.
“The ANC is not asking the commission to condone a late nomination. We seek to add no name that was not on the OCNS by 17h00, and no amendment or reordering of any list.
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View Map“We ask only that the commission recognise and process what its own system received and stored before the deadline, rather than treat it as never having been submitted because of technical failures prevented the final confirmation,” said the party in a statement on Wednesday.
ANC, IEC engagements over alleged glitches
But the MK party says it is keeping a close eye on the IEC’s engagements with the ANC on this matter.
“The former liberation movement, the ANC, cannot expect the country to simply accept this explanation without scrutiny. And the IEC cannot expect political parties and millions of voters to have confidence in an electoral process where deadlines suddenly appear to become negotiable when the ANC is affected.
“The MK party will not allow the ANC and the IEC to play games with the electoral deadline,” said MK party spokesperson Sifiso Mahlangu in a statement on Thursday.
Technical issues
Mahlangu said that if there was a technical malfunction, then the IEC must fully account to the public.
“It must tell South Africans exactly what happened, and which submissions were affected. While doing so, the IEC must also account for the disappearance of the live results dashboard in 2024, which resulted in the adjustment of the MK party’s votes.
“What we will not accept is a situation where the rules are rigidly enforced against opposition parties while the ANC is given the benefit of the doubt, special accommodation or a political solution to alter the deadline. We have seen this movie before,” he said.
‘Accept the consequences’
Mahlangu said the ANC must be treated like all other political parties.
“If the MK party had failed to complete its submissions, we have no doubt that we would be told to accept the consequences. We therefore demand that the same standard be applied to the ANC.”
