When political analyst Susan Booysen heard the ANC celebrating the Constitutional Court’s decision to restore its excluded candidates to the election lists, she was more than a little amused.
“I thought: ‘Well, that is the closest you’re going to come to winning the election,’” she tells the FM.
For the party, which has dominated politics for 32 years, failing to click “submit as final” on the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC’s) online system before the August 28 cut-off date was an embarrassing blunder. The ANC lost at the Electoral Court, where it argued the last step wasn’t legally required. The nation’s top court overturned that decision in a majority ruling on October 15.
The ruling spared the ANC and secretary-general Fikile Mbalula the consequences of excluding 181 candidates across six municipalities, including the Mangaung metro (where it clinched a narrow 50.63% in 2021), from the November 4 elections.
“The constitution has spoken, and it has spoken for the people of this country,” Mbalula told journalists before breaking down in tears and collapsing.
‘Rookie error'
“It shows rank incompetence,” says Sithembile Mbete, executive director of the Public Affairs Research Institute. “The fact that this kind of rookie error could be made does raise concerning questions about the administrative competence of the ANC secretariat.”
It’s also a graphic display of how the party’s election machinery, which had historically rallied in the closing weeks of past votes to recover lost ground, has deteriorated. That was already evident in 2024, when the ANC’s national vote fell to 40.18%, from 57.5% in 2019. Mbete expects something similar this time.
The lists offer a window into factional fighting, Mbete says, as disputes over who should be included continued until the last minute. Either the leadership’s decisions were ignored, she says, or branches and communities were overridden: both point to “the inability to make the centre hold”.
While the court’s reasons are yet to be published, Mbete expects the majority prioritised candidates’ and voters’ political rights over administrative failings, a point she strongly opposes.
“The rule of pressing ‘submit’ on an online system is one that we take for granted with the South African Revenue Service and in e-filing.”
Mbete fears that excusing parties’ failure to follow nomination procedures undermines consistent enforcement and makes the IEC’s task harder. “You need to have a standard of rules that apply to everybody to be able to judge freeness and fairness,” she says.
The IEC has since extended relief to 32 similarly situated parties, which Mbete says at least shows equal treatment.
The ANC would’ve preferred they hadn’t, if the results of two separate recent voters polls are anything to go by.
The Social Research Foundation (SRF) and The Common Sense’s September–October survey puts the ANC on 32% nationally against the DA’s 26%. In Joburg, the survey predicts the DA leading by 36% to 22%. MarkData’s August–September survey for eNCA found a similar gap: 35% for the DA and 21.8% for the ANC. The ANC won 33.6% in 2021: both polls suggest a loss of about 12 percentage points. In eThekwini, the SRF puts the ANC on 13%, against roughly 42% in 2021. MK is now predicted to lead, on 43%, followed by the DA, on 28%.
Yet the ANC could still bargain its way into power. On MarkData’s Joburg figures, the ANC, MK and EFF together would have 46.2%; adding ActionSA takes that to 56.5%.
“Alternatives are possible there, which gives the ANC quite a lot of bargaining power,” says Booysen.
Mbalula has taken the fight to the DA, calling for a review of its role in the government of national unity (GNU) for opposing the ANC in court. Booysen is dismissive and expects President Cyril Ramaphosa to keep the DA in the coalition at least for the rest of his term.
“I just don’t think [Mbalula] makes national coalition policy.”
Mbete’s question is whether disaffected voters will coalesce around an alternative or scatter among smaller parties. “My sense is that we’re going to continue to see a lot more fragmentation, in a similar way to what we saw in 2024.”
Mbalula insists the court fight was about principle: “We did not go to court for a favour.”
For a man known as Mr Fix-It, Mr Fear Fokol and Razzmatazz, it was a terrible showing. The court did the fixing, the prospect of exclusion had cost him his health, and the razzmatazz gave way to waterworks and fainting at the media briefing.
And the polls suggest the ANC’s tears won’t end with its candidate lists.
“If the polls are borne out in the elections, it would really show that the ANC’s decline has turned from gradual to exponential,” says Booysen.
