JOHANNESBURG, Gauteng — The African National Congress (ANC) is accelerating its final preparations to submit its local election candidate lists to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), aiming to finalize the rollout today and beat tomorrow’s strict 5:00 p.m. cutoff by a full 24 hours. However, the rush to meet the deadline is complicated by internal legal threats and ongoing disputes over provincial list legitimacy.
A special National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting is currently underway to resolve outstanding issues, with a primary focus on ensuring strict adherence to the party’s 50/50 gender representation mandate. ANC Party Spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu confirmed that the committee is meticulously reviewing the rosters to guarantee both meaningful, substantive, and descriptive representation of women, alongside substantive representation for young people across all municipal districts.
According to Bhengu, the balancing process is progressing steadily. The lists for Mpumalanga, Limpopo, and KwaZulu-Natal have already been reviewed and balanced. The committee is currently evaluating the sixth province and anticipates concluding the remaining three by 5:00 p.m. today, positioning the party to submit the finalized documents well ahead of the IEC’s closing time.
Despite this structured approach, the ANC is navigating significant friction, particularly in the Eastern Cape. Unhappy party members have reportedly served a legal letter to the organization, threatening to interdict the candidate lists. The core of the dispute centers on the legitimacy of the provincial leadership structure; critics argue that the Provincial Task Team (PTT) currently operating in the region is under active legal challenge in court. Opponents contend that an illegitimate PTT lacks the bona fide authority to decide who should represent the ANC in local municipalities.
To mitigate this risk, the NEC has ensured that representatives from the province’s legitimate Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) are present at the current sessions to help verify and clean up the Eastern Cape list. Bhengu emphasized that the ANC possesses a well-established, formal dispute resolution mechanism to handle any internal disagreements or legal challenges regarding candidate deployment, expressing confidence that the final lists will meet all electoral committee rules and selection guidelines.
The current special NEC session follows a broader, special extended NEC meeting that commenced on Tuesday. That initial session was uniquely inclusive, inviting all NEC members, five representatives from each of the party’s leagues, and 15 delegates from alliance partners COSATU and the SACP.
This strategic inclusion of alliance partners marks a notable shift in the ANC’s deployment process. Historically, candidate deployment has remained the sole preserve of the ANC, a practice that previously caused tension and contributed to the SACP walking out of the alliance. By involving partners early in the consideration of mayoral and municipal candidates, the ANC appears to be applying lessons learned from past reconfiguration disputes.
Today’s follow-up meeting, however, is a specialized session restricted to core NEC members under special circumstances to address this single, pressing issue. Presiding over the critical finalization process is Kgalema Motlanthe, Chairperson of the ANC electoral committee.
The committee is tasked with locking in the names of thousands of candidates before the seal is applied. The final submission will include approximately 4,488 ward councilors and over 1,000 proportional representation (PR) councilors, totaling roughly 5,488 representatives destined for municipalities across the country. With the clock ticking toward tomorrow’s 5:00 p.m. IEC deadline, the ANC’s ability to harmonize its gender mandates, alliance dynamics, and provincial legal disputes will be tested in the coming hours.
