Court Ruling Keeps ANC Candidates on Ballots in Six South African Municipalities
South Africa's Constitutional Court has restored ANC candidates to the ballot in six municipalities ahead of the November 4, 2026 local government elections. In an order handed down on Thursday, October 15, the court granted the ANC's appeal and set aside an Electoral Court decision that had excluded the party's candidates, directing the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) to take all necessary steps to include the affected nominations on ballot papers and in the wider election processes.
The 181 council hopefuls affected are in Sundays River Valley, Walter Sisulu, Ngquza Hill and Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape, uMshwathi in KwaZulu-Natal, and Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality in the Free State.
The dispute began when the IEC rejected the ANC's nominations because the party had not completed the final submission process on the commission's online nomination system before the deadline. The ANC challenged the outcome, arguing its candidates' details had already been uploaded to the system. (GSM, based on South African local media reports, October 17)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 开普敦桌山。 Photo by Dietmar Rabich, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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