The ANC has formally requested that the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) recognise and process candidate details that the party says were successfully captured and stored on the system prior to last Friday’s deadline, rather than the IEC treating the submissions as non-existent, owing to the party's belief that “technical failures” blocked final confirmation.

The party on Thursday clarified that it is not asking the Commission to condone late nominations. Instead, it is seeking only the inclusion of names that were already on the Online Candidate Nomination System (OCNS) by the 17:00 deadline, with no amendments or reordering of any lists.

The ANC had claimed on Tuesday that the IEC’s candidate-capture system experienced technical disruptions on the final submission day, affecting multiple contesting political parties across various municipalities.

According to ANC national spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu, the Commission itself reported that 2 274 candidates across 45 political parties were captured on the system but not recorded as finally submitted, and were thus not officially submitted by the deadline.

She further explained that provincial secretaries, working alongside provincial list committees and under the guidance of the ANC Electoral Committee, had uploaded all branch and regionally nominated candidates onto the OCNS.

“That upload was one hundred per cent complete before 17h00 on August 28. This was a collective undertaking of the whole movement, from the branch to the National Executive Committee, and it was carried out,” Bhengu stated.

However, she noted that the system's final electronic confirmation step failed to close for a portion of those lists.

“The difficulty emerged in the closing hours of the window and was reported to the Commission as it arose. The records of the affected candidates were already captured and held on the OCNS before 17h00. We are addressing these system failures with the Commission through the proper channels,” she explained.

IEC chairperson Mosotho Moepya said on Wednesday that candidates who failed to finalise their applications are officially out of the running but emphasised that the electoral commission is currently reviewing all submissions to ensure full compliance with legislative frameworks.

ANC Electoral Committee chairperson Kgalema Motlanthe declared the overall candidate nomination and submission process a resounding success. He expressed confidence that a solution would be reached, one that expands, rather than constrains, democratic participation.