Litigating LGE 2021

Felled by form-filling ❌  [View this email in your browser]( October 25, 2021 [Mail & Guardian]( Hi there, ActionSA has always felt like something of a meme come to life. Which is not to say that they won’t do well – they very well might – but rather that its philosophy reads like the ramblings of a person who peaked in high school and whose perception is pockmarked by the nostalgia of “glory days”. It doesn’t take a profound analysis to work out that Herman Mashaba has fashioned himself as a Donald Trump character: a business tycoon unafraid to cut through political correctness to get things done; unapologetically xenophobic and eager to not think things through. Chirp: One of Herman Mashaba's deleted tweets. But even among those standards, the party’s squabble with the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) is the kind of comic relief we didn't know we needed. The party has lost its fight to force the IEC to include its full name in the ballot paper ahead of the November 1 local government elections. The short of it is that on Thursday, the party applied to the Electoral Court sitting in Johannesburg to force the IEC to include its full name in the ballot paper, arguing that the electoral body’s registration papers did not indicate that parties must include their abbreviated names when contesting for elections. ActionSA also claims that its candidates were initially not featured on the IEC’s lists. Amid cries of bias, it was soon revealed that the party didn’t have an acronym on the printed ballots because they had failed to provide one on their registration forms. That is correct – before voters could even have their say, Mashaba’s cohort was stumped by bureaucracy. In a statement earlier this month, ActionSA national spokesperson Michael Beaumont accused the IEC of breaching its overarching responsibility to ensure free and fair elections, saying voters must be able to identify a political party in the ballot papers in many ways including the party logo, name, acronym and party leaders. The IEC previously rejected ActionSA’s application to register as a political party after another party complained that it had pilfered its colours and logo. In its statement in September last year, the IEC said research into the ballot paper design in 2018 had shown that voters used logos as the primary distinguishing identifier to select their party. It said more prominence had been given to party logos on the ballot paper for this reason, so as to limit the number of votes inadvertently cast for the wrong party. ActionSA later [changed its party logo](. Beaumont said it was ironic that its latest skirmish with the IEC was also focused on the issue of the party’s identifying symbols, when the commission had previously highlighted their importance. “How the commission can hold this view when denying our registration and disregard it when denying our present request defies all logic,” he said. “There is no provision in law which limits or empowers the IEC to rely solely on the party’s registration documentation for the construction of ballot papers — our law remains silent on what information goes into a ballot paper. In the absence of such provisions of legislation the IEC must act in the interests of free and fair elections and administrative justice,” he said. In its defence, the IEC put the blame squarely on ActionSA for that aforementioned administrative faux pas. On Friday, the Electoral Court dismissed ActionSA’s application, with reasons to be provided at a later stage. The IEC says it is impossible to amend ballot papers to include ActionSA’s name. But the party is not backing down, saying the commission must “find a way”. It proposes that stamps or stickers of the party’s name be placed next to its logo if ballot papers cannot be reprinted given the remaining time. Its latest excuse is that “ActionSA” was already intended as an acronym – hence the comical use of no spaces. And ActionSA weren’t the only ones complainin’ and litigatin’. In September, the Democratic Alliance (DA) insisted the IEC’s decision to reopen candidate registration was a political favour to the governing party, after the Constitutional Court dismissed its application to declare the move unlawful. The ruling was widely expected after the court published its reasoning for an order dismissing the IEC’s application to postpone the local government elections until 2022. That meant the ANC had another chance to register candidates in 93 municipalities after missing the original 23 August deadline to do so. The IEC interpreted the initial court order as allowing it to amend the electoral timetable where reasonably necessary, but the DA argued that the court order did not envisage any adjustment to the timetable in respect of party lists and ward candidates. The court noted that the political motivation for objecting to reopening the registration of candidates was easy to see. “Notably, the ANC failed timeously to submit its party lists and ward candidate nominations in respect of 20 municipalities and 598 wards. In 13 of these municipalities, the ANC has comfortable majorities in the municipal councils, and has enjoyed these majorities in 11 of them for many years,” it said. Whatever your political colours, and proficiency at form-filling, it does give one pause to see that a party that wants to govern massive bureaucracies can hardly do basic administrative tasks. Choose carefully, Kiri Rupiah & Luke Feltham [Support the M&G's election coverage]( Copyright © 2021 Mail & Guardian Media LTD, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in to receive communications from the Mail & Guardian either at our website or by taking out a print subscription. Our mailing address is: Mail & Guardian Media LTD 25 Owl St BraamfonteinJohannesburg, Gauteng 2001 South Africa [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe]( here.