{"id":45073,"date":"2026-09-09T18:25:06","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T16:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=45073"},"modified":"2026-09-09T18:25:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T16:25:06","slug":"sa-legal-battle-erupts-over-excluded-municipal-candidates","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/sa-legal-battle-erupts-over-excluded-municipal-candidates\/","title":{"rendered":"SA legal battle erupts over excluded municipal candidates \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa&#8217;s Democratic Alliance (DA) has launched a legal counter-move in the Electoral Court, opposing attempts by the African National Congress (ANC) to register candidate lists that missed official filing deadlines.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The DA insists that election deadlines must apply equally to all contesting parties, and that no organisation should receive special concessions. The dispute follows court papers filed by the ANC challenging the Independent Electoral Commission&#8217;s (IEC) decision to exclude 181 candidate nominees across six municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, and the Free State.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>While the ANC claims technical glitches in the IEC&#8217;s online system prevented final electronic submissions before the cutoff, the DA argues that granting an extension compromises electoral integrity. The Electoral Court is expected to hear the matter on September 15th.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;ChannelAfrica&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":31616,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-45073","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Democratic Alliance opposes ANC candidate list dispute in electoral court","published_date":"2026-09-09 18:24:37","news_description":"Democratic Alliance opposes ANC candidate list dispute in electoral court","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/45073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/45073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45074,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/45073\/revisions\/45074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=45073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}