‘We are going to prove you wrong at every step’ – Maimane after submitting signatures

Build One South Africa (Bosa) leader Mmusi Maimane said his party will be on the ballot paper, come the election on 29 May, after challenging the minimum requirement of signatures for the party to be there.

“Bosa will be on all national ballots. We are today submitting over 140 000 signatures to the IEC [Electoral Commission of South Africa],” he said.

ALSO READ: Mmusi Maimane | Police need to be a force again

Bosa would still go to court to challenge what Maimane said were “burdens” of requirements placed on new parties which “favoured parties in parliament” and will continue to challenge “unfair rules”.

“You can set up many rules. You can make it difficult, but we are going to prove you wrong at every step. We will fight you headto-head and we are going to challenge the parties that sit on the status quo,” Maimane said.

The IEC required close to 60 000 signatures for new parties that want to contest. “We got 140 000 – what does that tell you,” he said.

While it wasn’t easy, Bosa managed to submit the signatures yesterday to the IEC, ahead of the deadline today.

“Being a new political party has not come without its challenges. Between the government, the IEC and the Constitutional Court, many unnecessary – and some unjust – hurdles have been placed in our path.

“One has been the signature requirements for new entrants. Previously, a new party needed only 1 000 signatures of support to qualify to contest elections.

“However, the new Electoral Amendment Act has radically hiked this number up in a sinister effort to stymie competition and political choice,” Maimane said.

Bosa will be challenging the Act in the Constitutional Court after the May elections.

ALSO READ: Maimane says IEC signature policy puts new parties at a disadvantage

“There are parties that had support in 2019 – do you want to tell me they still have support in 2024? There are parties who sit in parliament today and won’t get those signatures again,” he said.

Bosa was pursuing over a million votes.

“Don’t ask later how we came across that. If we can get these signatures in the start, wait until we arrive on election day,” he said.

ActionSA national chair Michael Beaumont said ActionSA has concluded all of its filings with the IEC that will ensure that the party is on every ballot paper.

“The requirements for signatures for ActionSA to contest the elections was something which was known about since last year and the challenge was welcomed by our leadership structures as an opportunity to engage more South Africans about ActionSA,” he said.

Beaumont said the candidate lists have also been submitted for the National Assembly and provincial legislatures that combine diversity, excellence, youth and experience in a manner that will disrupt these bodies that have become beacons of failure to the South African people.

Political analyst Khanya Vilakazi said the requirement of the signature as a prescript of a new party coming in and registering with the IEC was a measurement to weed out those who want to mushroom the system.

ALSO READ: Elections 2024: ‘Maimane has a clean track record,’ says supporter

“Can you imagine 10 000 people trying to open political parties and challenge national elections?

“Big existing parties should be taken on the membership value and don’t need the same threshold of being on the ballot box because they have had historical barriers of showing membership,” Vilakazi said.

Vilakazi said the political system was already saturated – even if the barriers to entry were small.

“To have a stable political system you need to have as minimal parties as possible to force voters to choose among the few instead of saturating the votes to smaller parties.”