The Labour Party of South Africa (Labour Party) on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) to ensure that its application to the Electoral Court is set down as soon as possible.

The party said it is concerned that the delays with the matter being heard will threaten the freeness and fairness of the 2024 national and provincial elections, and is therefore pleading with the SCA to set the matter down as a matter of urgency.

The party’s application seeks to re-open the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC’s) online portal, which the party said was unstable during the uploading period during which parties were asked by the IEC to submit the required documents needed to contest the elections.

Parties had until 17:00 on March 8 to ensure all documents were submitted.

The Labour Party did not complete uploading its supporting documents and said the problem was also experienced by several other political parties, some of which have supported the Labour Party’s court application.

The Labour Party served and filed its founding affidavit on March 12 and, while the IEC was supposed to serve and file its answering affidavit on March 15, it only did so close to midnight on March 20, said Labour Party Secretariat Krister J van Rensburg.

He noted that the Labour Party was making the “very reasonable request” to be allowed extra time to upload the supporting documents via the IEC’s online portal.

The new Electoral Amendment Bill signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa, which now allows for independent candidates to be nominated for provincial and national seats, sets additional requirements for new parties to gain seats at provincial legislatures and the National Assembly. These requirements include allowing the IEC to set thresholds of 15% of the quota seats allocated to a particular geographic area, to be the threshold for unrepresented political parties to submit in order to contest the elections.

Van Rensburg explained that this meant that, in order to contest the 2024 national elections, unrepresented parties had to secure the names, ID numbers and signatures of 13 890 registered voters in order to appear on the national ballot and the regional ballots, as well as 47 886 names, ID numbers and signatures of registered voters if the party wanted to appear on all nine provincial ballots.

“As the Labour Party, we were able to get more than double the required names, ID numbers and signatures of supporters,” said Van Rensburg.

However, the IEC’s online portal and procedures involved in uploading the supporting documents, made it impossible for the party to finish by the deadline of 17:00 on 8 March 2024, he added.

“We were, therefore, in full compliance with the substantive requirements of Section 27 of the [Electoral] Act, even though the [online portal] system let us down,” he argued.