ANC's ConCourt bid to field candidates in six municipalities

The African National Congress heads to the Constitutional Court on Monday, 12 October 2026, in a final bid to add at least 180 candidates to its party lists ahead of next month’s municipal polls. At stake is the party’s ability to field candidates at all in six municipalities where it missed the August registration deadline, including the Mangaung metro, a lapse that has left the door open for rivals to contest control of those councils.

The party’s legal position rests on an operational argument. Having already uploaded the details of its candidates by the cut-off, the ANC says it intended them to be included on its lists, even though the submit button on the Electoral Commission’s system was never pressed. The party has dropped an earlier claim that the commission’s online nomination system was not working optimally on deadline day, and will instead ask the apex court to accept its explanation of what happened in the final hours of the registration window.

That argument failed before the Electoral Court last month, where the ANC contended that the Electoral Commission was taking its candidate registration rules too far. The loss left the party with few options beyond the Constitutional Court, and its filing is due next Monday.

The consequences of the missed deadline are already visible on the ground. In the Eastern Cape, the Democratic Alliance has moved into the gap left by the ANC’s failure to register candidates, announcing mayoral candidates in the ANC strongholds of Port St Johns and Ingquza Hill. DA Eastern Cape leader Andrew Whitfield said the ANC’s faux pas had created an opportunity for long-suffering residents of these municipalities to vote for an alternative government.

“The DA’s growth in the Eastern Cape is undeniable. The ANC is falling apart. We must be there to protect good governance, stability and basic services in the best interest of all residents,” Whitfield said.

Whitfield also pointed to possibilities for his party in Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley, two further municipalities where the ANC has been unable to field candidates. “When it comes to Sundays River, the DA is particularly excited because the Sarah Baartman District Municipality is on the cusp of DA government and victory in Sundays River will place the DA in government not only in Sundays River but in the Sarah Baartman district,” he said.

For municipalities that have struggled to deliver basic services, the ANC’s registration failure raises the prospect of new governing parties taking office after the polls, a shift Whitfield framed in explicitly governance terms. Whether voters in Port St Johns, Ingquza Hill, Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley get that choice depends in part on the outcome in the Constitutional Court this week.

Meanwhile, the list debacle has generated internal legal trouble of its own. Eastern Cape party members have launched challenges alleging that the party’s lists were manipulated, adding a second legal front to a crisis that began with a missed administrative deadline.

The ANC’s argument before the apex court amounts to a claim that its intentions should count as compliance: the candidate data was in the system, the party says, and only the final submission step was omitted. The Electoral Court was not persuaded, and it now falls to the Constitutional Court to decide whether that explanation is enough to restore the party’s candidates to the ballot in the affected municipalities.

With the municipal polls set for next month and the filing due Monday, the party has little time left to fix an operational failure that has already reshaped the contest in at least six councils.