PRETORIA, Gauteng — The recent Electoral Court ruling on the MK Party election challenge has officially dismissed the political group’s urgent application to nullify the 2024 national and provincial election results. While the primary bid to declare the elections not free and fair failed, the court simultaneously granted the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) leave to amend its notice of motion—a procedural twist that was ultimately dismissed after further legal review.
Following the 2024 general elections, the MKP filed an urgent application arguing that over 9 million votes were unaccounted for due to a two-hour system outage by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). Constitutional law expert Advocate Lufuno Nevondwe explained that the MKP initially challenged the broad election results but was permitted to amend its notice of motion to focus specifically on the IT system downtime. This outage occurred between 6:30 PM and 8:30 PM, with a recount commencing at 8:29 PM. However, the court found the amended arguments unconvincing and dismissed them, concluding that the system remained functionally operational and did not compromise the accuracy of the vote count.
A central component of the dispute revolved around the public-facing results dashboard freeze, referred to in the proceedings as the “leaderboard incident.” The court accepted the IEC’s explanation that the visible public dashboard and the actual vote-capturing system are entirely separate entities. Advocate Nevondwe noted that the court drew a sharp legal line between the final results themselves and the IT systems used to produce them. The visible freeze did not tamper with the actual capturing of results, ensuring the election accurately reflected the will of the people. The IEC welcomed the judgment, emphasizing that the downtime had no impact on the integrity, reliability, or final tabulation of the votes.
Beyond the technical arguments, the court highlighted a “fatal defect” in the MKP’s legal approach regarding Section 55 of the Electoral Act. Advocate Nevondwe pointed out that the MKP failed to comply with the mandatory procedure of lodging formal objections with the IEC when preliminary results were initially released. Citing legal precedent from the African Transformation Movement (ATM) and IEC case, the expert explained that challenging final, declared results without first objecting to the preliminary counts is a critical non-compliance that fundamentally undermined the party’s legal standing.
The judgment arrives just six weeks ahead of the local government elections scheduled for November 4. Addressing public confidence heading into the next voting cycle, Advocate Nevondwe reaffirmed the IEC’s status as an independent Chapter 9 institution supporting constitutional democracy. She highlighted that South Africa’s elections have remained free and fair since 1994, a fact consistently verified by external agencies. The legal expert urged public support for the IEC to ensure the continued delivery of credible elections that accurately capture the democratic will of the citizens.
