ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa has expressed confidence that the party's election candidate nomination registration issues will be resolved, describing the issue as "containable and manageable".

Speaking during a campaign trail event in Ekurhuleni on Friday, Ramaphosa downplayed the impact of what the party says are Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) system failures, noting that the issue was confined to only a few municipalities.

“So, I think it’s containable and it’s manageable and there should be a solution that can be found,” Ramaphosa said, acknowledging that while the party had to manage over 10 000 candidates, the alleged interface glitches with the IEC system only affected a small number.

The dispute followed the closure of the IEC’s Online Candidate Nomination System (OCNS) last Friday at 17:00 as planned. Earlier in the week, IEC chairperson Mosotho Moepya stated that candidates who failed to finalise and officially submit their applications before the cutoff were technically out of the running.

However, Moepya emphasised that the commission is actively reviewing all submissions to ensure compliance with legislative frameworks.

He clarified that the candidate list was complete for the entire country and had been submitted, but acknowledged the occurrence of issues during the final transmission stage.

Crucially, Ramaphosa claimed that these system failures did not only affect the ANC but had also impacted 34 other political parties.

He argued that a technical glitch should not ultimately “deprive citizens” of their democratic right to vote for their chosen candidates, expressing certainty that a solution would be reached through cooperation between the Political Party Liaison Committee, the IEC, and the affected political parties.

The ANC has clarified that it is not asking the IEC for a late extension or condonation.

Instead, the party formally requested on Thursday that the IEC recognise and process candidate details that were successfully uploaded and stored on the system prior to the deadline, but were blocked from final confirmation due to the technical failures.

ANC national spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu stated that provincial secretaries and list committees had successfully uploaded 100% of the branch and regionally nominated candidates onto the OCNS before the 17:00 cutoff 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 said.

She said the system failed during the final electronic confirmation step in the closing hours of the window. She cited IEC figures showing that 2 274 candidates across 45 different political parties were captured on the backend of the system but were not recorded as officially submitted by the deadline.

The ANC has stressed that it is seeking the inclusion of these pre-existing names with absolutely no amendments or reordering of the lists and is currently addressing the matter with the IEC through established regulatory channels.