The ANC Could Lose Mangaung. The IEC Has the Records
The IEC has answered the ANC’s Electoral Court application by filing its own system records, showing what the party’s administrators were doing in the final hours before the 28 August candidate deadline. The records split the 6 affected municipalities into 2 very different groups: in Ngquza Hill and Port St Johns there was no system activity at all in the last 2 hours, while in Sundays River Valley and Walter Sisulu there was activity minutes before the cut-off that never became a final submission. Chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo also argues the commission never took a decision at all, which if accepted would end the case without any finding on whether a system fault occurred. The ANC has not yet answered the affidavit.
What the ANC is actually asking for
The ANC’s notice of application, dated 4 September 2026 and supported by an affidavit deposed by secretary general Fikile April Mbalula, asks the Electoral Court for leave to appeal under section 20(2)(b) of the Electoral Commission Act 51 of 1996 against what it describes as a decision taken by the commission on or about 1 September, based on a misinterpretation of the law.
The relief sought is narrower than much of the coverage has suggested, and the detail matters. The party asks the court to declare the following as timeously, lawfully and validly submitted under sections 14 and 17 of the Local Government: Municipal Electoral Act 27 of 2000:
The party list for Sundays River Valley. The party list for Walter Sisulu. The party list and ward candidate nominations for Ngquza Hill. The party list and ward candidate nominations for Port St Johns. The party list for uMshwathi. And the party list for Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality.
So in 4 of the 6 municipalities, including Mangaung, the ANC’s ward candidates are unaffected. What was not submitted in those 4 is the proportional list. Only in Ngquza Hill and Port St Johns did the party lose both.
The application also seeks costs against the commission, including the costs of 2 senior counsel and 2 junior counsel.
What losing a party list costs
In a municipal election a voter in a metro or local municipality casts 2 ballots. One elects the ward councillor. The other is a vote for a party, and roughly half of every council is filled from the party lists in proportion to that vote.
A party without a list on that second ballot receives nothing from it, however well it does in the wards. In Mangaung, one of only 2 metros where the ANC retained an outright majority in 2021 according to the party’s own 2026 manifesto, forfeiting the entire proportional side would almost certainly end that majority.
Mangaung is also considerably larger than Bloemfontein, which remains Bloemfontein. The metro is the largest in the country by land area, running from Soutpan in the north down towards the Lesotho border and taking in Botshabelo, Thaba Nchu, Wepener, Van Stadensrus and Dewetsdorp. The ANC has defended it repeatedly, holding all 4 of its Mangaung seats in a round of by-elections in July 2023 against breakaway former councillors and the EFF.
The commission’s records
Mamabolo’s answering affidavit attaches a table drawn from the online candidate nomination system showing, for each of the 6 municipalities, when data was last entered, what activity was recorded between 15:00 and 17:00 on deadline day, and the status at 17:00. For all 6 the status reads the same: not submitted as final.
The middle columns are where the 6 divide.
For Ngquza Hill and Port St Johns, data was last entered at 22:10 on 27 August, the evening before the deadline. Neither shows any recorded activity at all in the 15:00 to 17:00 window.
For the other 4, there was activity. Mangaung shows a last data entry at 14:53 and 1 record of activity at 15:04. uMshwathi shows a last entry at 13:31 and 2 records at 16:00. Sundays River Valley shows a last entry at 04:01 that morning and 1 record of activity at 16:52. Walter Sisulu shows a last entry at 22:06 the previous night and 2 records at 16:55.
The last 2 are the strongest material the ANC has, and it came from the commission. Activity on Sundays River Valley at 16:52 and on Walter Sisulu at 16:55, followed by nothing and no final submission, is not inconsistent with the party’s account of being logged out at 16:57.
The commission reads the same table differently, pointing out that none of the 6 shows recorded activity at 16:34 or at 16:57, the 2 moments Mbalula’s affidavit identifies.
The submissions that went through
Against that, the IEC filed screenshots showing the ANC submitting its final ward and party lists for Inxuba Yethemba in the Eastern Cape at 16:56 and 39 seconds, and again at 16:57 and 34 seconds.
On that evidence the system was accepting final submissions after both the 16:52 and 16:55 entries, and in the same minute the ANC says it was shut out.
There is a gap in that inference, and it is the one the ANC is best placed to exploit. The commission identifies 2 ANC administrators working that afternoon, under separate user numbers, on different municipalities. One encountering a problem while the other completes a submission is not impossible.
The warnings
The affidavit also sets out what the commission did before the deadline. It trained parties on the system in June, ran further sessions in all 9 provinces in July with ANC representatives present, and says 4 slides of that presentation carried a warning in red text that lists had to be submitted as final.
Two days before the deadline the system sent the ANC an automated email listing every ward list the party had not yet submitted as final. That email ran to 92 pages.
At 15:44 on deadline day, with 76 minutes remaining, the ANC withdrew a list it had already submitted as final, for Chief Albert Luthuli Local Municipality in Mpumalanga.
Mamabolo says the servers recorded no downtime in the relevant period, and that the ANC has produced no evidence at all, either supporting the alleged fault or contradicting the commission’s records. He argues that leaving matters to the last moment carries risk in any format, noting that a party submitting nominations on paper, which remained open to the ANC, might equally have car trouble or be delayed in traffic and miss the deadline, and would have to carry that itself.
The argument that could end the case
Mamabolo’s central legal answer is that the commission never took a decision at all.
On his version the IEC did not decide to exclude the ANC from those 6 municipalities. The party failed to submit by the statutory deadline, and in law those candidates were simply never nominated. If there was no decision, there is nothing to appeal against, and the court would never reach the question of whether the system malfunctioned.
That argument sits alongside the Electoral Court’s ruling of 4 September dismissing a similar application by the United Democratic Front, in which the court held that the commission has no power in law to exempt any party from a statutory deadline.
The ANC’s own errors, and the spread
Mbalula has said 181 ANC candidates were left off the ballot as a result of the submission failure, and separately that the party recorded incorrect identity numbers for 252 of its own candidates.
That second figure is the first time in this matter that the ANC has publicly located a failure inside its own organisation rather than in the commission’s system.
The list problems have since spread. On 10 September the party acknowledged further capturing errors affecting eThekwini and Ray Nkonyeni in KwaZulu-Natal, where ward candidates were entered under the wrong wards, duplicated, and swapped between wards.
What remains unresolved
Everything set out above is one side’s evidence. The ANC has not yet answered the affidavit, and it is entitled to test the commission’s records, which are after all the commission’s own account of its own system, produced by the body accused of running a faulty one.
The DA has applied to intervene. The ANC is opposing that application on the basis that the DA’s interest is purely electoral, which is true and does not by itself make the DA wrong.
The IEC publishes the final candidate list on 16 September, at which point it will be known precisely which lists and which wards the ANC will contest on 4 November. The Electoral Court may rule before then.
A court is not well placed to determine what a website felt like to use at 5 minutes to 5 on a Friday afternoon. It is very well placed to read a clock.
