The Electoral Court dismissed the ANC’s appeal against the IEC on Tuesday 15 September 2026, ruling that the party missed the 28 August candidate deadline for six municipalities and will not contest those seats in the 4 November 2026 local government elections. Image: Sharon Seretlo / Gallo Images)
The Electoral Court dismissed the ANC’s appeal against the IEC on Tuesday 15 September 2026. The ANC Electoral Court candidate deadline appeal dismissal came from a bench comprising Judge Modiba, Acting Judge Mangcu-Lockwood and Professor Phooko. Furthermore, the ruling leaves the ANC completely off the ballot in Ngquza Hill and Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape. As a result, 181 ANC candidates across six municipalities will not appear on the November ballot.
The court granted the DA leave to intervene as a party. It rejected the ATM’s application to intervene, finding the ATM brought it inordinately late without applying for condonation. There is no order as to costs. Furthermore, the six affected municipalities are Port St Johns, Ngquza Hill, Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley in the Eastern Cape, uMshwathi in KwaZulu-Natal and Mangaung in the Free State. As a result, voters in Ngquza Hill and Port St Johns will have no ANC candidate to vote for in November.
The ANC argued a technical glitch prevented its administrators from clicking the final submit button before the 5pm deadline on 28 August. The party said all candidate details were already on the system. It asked the court to treat those uploads as valid submissions. The IEC rejected that argument. IEC server logs showed zero downtime before the cut-off. Furthermore, IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo noted that the ANC submitted lists for other municipalities within the last five minutes before the deadline. As a result, the court found no basis to accept the technical glitch defence.
The ruling follows precedent. The Electoral Court dismissed a similar application by the United Democratic Front Party on 7 September 2026. That judgment ruled the IEC has no legal power to condone a missed statutory deadline. The Constitutional Court set the same precedent in 2024 when it dismissed cases by the Liberal Party and the African Congress for Transformation. Furthermore, the DA filed papers opposing the ANC’s appeal and the court granted it leave to intervene. As a result, the ANC faced opposition from the IEC and from the DA.
ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula acknowledged the seriousness of the situation before the judgment. He said the party registered 9,128 candidates nationally and the affected municipalities represent a small fraction of its overall pool. He rejected blame on any one individual. “That is a serious loss and I will not minimise it. But it is not the loss that has been described. So when I am asked who is to blame, I give you the collective answer and I give it without hesitation,” Mbalula said. Furthermore, the ANC submitted 97% of its ward candidates before the deadline. It also submitted 90% of its PR candidates nationally. As a result, the appeal loss is an embarrassment rather than an existential threat to the ANC’s November campaign.
The ANC may still approach the Constitutional Court to challenge the ruling. The ANC had not issued a formal statement at the time of publication.
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