The Constitutional Court of South Africa (SA) is set to deliver its judgment today in an urgent legal challenge brought by the governing African National Congress (ANC), which is fighting to reinstate 181 local government election candidates ahead of the upcoming November 4 poll.<\/p>\n
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The legal battle stems from an ongoing dispute with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), which disqualified the ruling party’s candidate lists across six municipalities. The core of the controversy centers on the ANC’s failure to click the final “Submit as Final” button on the IEC’s online nomination portal before the strict deadline.<\/p>\n
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While the IEC maintained that the candidate lists were never validly submitted and that all parties were bound by the platform’s procedural rules, the ANC argued its case before the apex court as a matter of “law versus system design.” Representing the party, advocate Daniel Berger contended that the ANC fully complied with all substantive statutory requirements, arguing that the missed portal click was merely a technical and administrative oversight rather than a deliberate violation of electoral law.<\/p>\n
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The ruling is expected to determine whether the disqualified candidates will be allowed back onto the ballot, a decision that carries major implications for the party’s local governance ambitions as the country counts down to the November elections.<\/p>\n
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–ChannelAfrica\/SABC–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":40841,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-48008","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"SA Constitutional Court rules on ANC appeal to reinstate 181 disqualified candidates","published_date":"2026-10-15 07:24:16","news_description":"SA Constitutional Court rules on ANC appeal to reinstate 181 disqualified candidates","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48008","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":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48010,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48008\/revisions\/48010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=48008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}