Don’t do a Trump with the MK party

Keeping uMkhonto weSizwe off the ballot paper is no different than trying to exclude Donald Trump from the US presidential election — and at least as potentially explosive.

It is always better for electoral disputes to be settled by voters in a polling booth, rather than by a court.

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It’s an uncontroversial historical reality that using legal stratagems to prevent a significant portion of the population from expressing their electoral preferences guarantees a world of future pain, chaos and uprising.

In light of the turmoil of a revolution in America – and a protracted low-grade civil war in South Africa – one would think that the governing parties of both countries would be alert to the dangers of voter exclusion. It seems not.

In the US, Democratic Party-inclined activist groups, assisted by public officials elected on Democrat tickets, got the highest courts in three states to bar Trump from the presidential ballot.

At least 34 other states geared up to follow suit, which would effectively have ended Trump’s presidential bid just as it was starting.

The US Supreme Court was quick to unanimously reverse Trump’s exclusion. It was a judicially sound decision and politically savvy.

Our courts are confronted with a similar steaming bowl of crud. The ANC, shaken to the core by polling that shows a remarkable performance by MK, a party that’s only a few months old, is desperately trying to exclude MK from the 29 May election.

We shouldn’t underestimate the extent of the ANC’s desperation. With two months to go, it is doing badly in voter surveys; there has been a cascade of political setbacks such as an 11-day failure of water supplies in Johannesburg and continued load shedding.

ALSO READ: Mpofu argues ANC only went to court after Zuma announced his support for MK party

In its application asking the Electoral Court urgently to declare MK’s registration unlawful, unconstitutional and invalid, we see the ANC at its most cynical and reckless.

On Wednesday, the court reserved judgment on the matter. The grounds for the ANC application are tenuous, resting on the dubious claim that MK is “stealing its legacy” by using the name of the party’s long-disbanded armed wing, along with some hair-splitting on whether MK’s registration by the Independent Electoral Commission was legal, given that the IEC had allowed MK to some rectify errors and omissions.

The IEC, which opposed the ANC application, noted that the ANC had failed to challenge MK’s registration within the prescribed timelines.

The IEC generously did not drive home the point that the ANC’s sudden nitpicking appears to have been triggered by the belated realisation that MK, which they had initially dismissed as a joke, was making inroads into ANC support.

It is difficult to see that the Electoral Court will overturn on what would likely amount to technicalities, a decision of the IEC, an independent Chapter 9 institution charged with protecting the constitution.

ALSO READ: ANC threatens to go to high court if decision on MK party registration doesn’t go its way

Especially since such a ruling would deprive possibly a couple of million Zuma supporters from voting for MK.

None of this is to suggest that MK – or Trump, for that matter – should have carte blanche to incite violence and mayhem should they be thwarted in the courts or at the polls.

The statute books in both countries have plenty of laws that fair but unshakeably firm law enforcement and prosecuting authorities can use to nip such behaviour in the bud.

The problem is that political appeasement has left the credibility of both the SA Police Service and the National Prosecuting Authority in shreds.

South Africa has for years suffered because of a dangerously weak president’s instinct for expediency. It looks like it’s at last the ANC’s turn to feel the pain.