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The Constitutional Court has declared the Electoral Act unconstitutional.

Every adult citizen has the right to stand for public office and if elected hold office.

Electioneering is about to come interesting in South Africa!

— Tumi Sole (@tumisole) June 11, 2020

Following the New Nation Movement’s (NNM) bid to allow an independent candidate to run for elections challenged the current Electoral Act 73 of 1998, the Constitutional Court has declared the Electoral Act unconstitutional.

NNM argued that it infringes on the right to exercise individual political choices.

The NNM wanted the Electoral Act to be amended to allow independent candidates to run in provincial and national elections.

“I can conceive no reason that the limitation is justified. The Electoral Act is unconstitutional the appeal must succeed,” Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga said in his judgment.

The court also ruled that the deficiency in the Act that does not provide for adult citizens to be elected to the national and provincial legislatures as independent candidates is inconsistent with the Constitution.

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The Constitutional Court gave parliament 24 months to fix the electoral system. The Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) said it was ready to assist parliament.

“In accordance with the principle of objective invalidity, a declaration of invalidity that is not coupled with a limit to its retrospective effect would invalidate all elections that followed the first election under the constitution,” said Madlanga.

“For that not to happen, the declaration of invalidity must take effect from the date of this judgment and it is fitting to suspended the declaration of invalidity to afford parliament an opportunity to correct the defect, and a reasonable period of suspension is 24 months.”