Operation Dudula off poll list over ‘glitch’

A technical glitch “that was attended to” became a “sorry, your application is too late” – that is the crux of Operation Dudula’s complaint against the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC) “unfair” exclusion of the party from the ballot paper.

Isaack Lesole, deputy secretary-general of the political party, says the IEC “misled us under the pretense that they will do something about our matter”.

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Unlike the other three parties fighting in the Constitutional Court against the IEC’s decision to leave them off the ballot paper because they missed the March deadline, Lesole says Operation Dudula was failed by an online system that let them down.

System error

“Our complaint is completely different: the system opened, but when I had to upload the national candidate list, it had an error.”

A reference number then came on screen and “all we could do at the time was to escalate the issue to the IEC. “We captured the screen.

All we needed was their technicians to tell us what to do. We sent them the list and asked them to do it on their side, because we wanted to make deadline.”

They received communication from the IEC saying they were attending to the matter, but heard nothing – “until 26 March, when they told us they concluded their investigation and regarded us as late applicants.”

The other three applicants are part of a group of over 20 parties that failed to comply with Section 27 of the Electoral Act when submitting their candidate lists for provincial and national elections.

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The parties took the matter to the Electoral Court without success, and now have taken their fight to the Constitutional Court.

The IEC has always been strict with deadlines, election analyst Michael Atkins said. “However, the Electoral Court very easily believed the IEC when they said the system was fine, only because so many parties succeeded.”

In court, the point that the majority were able to use the system successfully was argued to translate to the system being sufficient.

Independent analyst Sandile Swana said the ruling of the electoral court proved this was a matter of competence, “whether these people were skilled enough to use the system, given that parties that are even larger than them by far successfully registered in a matter of one or two days”.

Atkins said it cannot be predicted what the outcome of the hearings will be.

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“Resolving this is difficult. If the court finds that the IEC systems could not cope adequately with the expected usage near the deadline, and that parties had a right to submit their details successfully near the deadline, then they could find that the right to free and fair elections is important enough to delay the election to allow parties time to rectify their submissions.”

While Lesole said the outcome does not change that party’s barring, “regardless of the outcome of the court, it is irrational and unfair to those who want to vote for us”.

Swana said an extension won’t work if there is a chance parties will still have issues submitting