The Labour Party has received a directive from the Secretary of the Supreme Court of Appeal that its application will be heard with similar applications by a number of new parties that also experienced problems with uploading all their documents by the deadline of 8 March 2024. These parties are Hope For The Future, Afrikan Alliance of Social Democrats and African Congress for Transformation as well as an individual applicant. The hearing will be virtually tomorrow (5 April 2024) morning at 9:45.

“While we are disappointed that the hearing could not be physical, we are encouraged that we will at least be able to argue our case orally as there was an initial indication that the matter might be determined on papers only”, said Labour Party Secretariat Krister Janse van Rensburg. “As we have indicated before, we are extremely concerned about the delays caused in hearing our urgent application. It poses extreme prejudice to us and the voting public that our chances of being given more time to submit, is being intentionally limited by those who want to make it difficult for new parties”, he said.

The Labour Party served and filed its founding affidavit on 12 March 2024 and, while the IEC was supposed to serve and file its answering affidavit on 15 March 2024, it only did so close to midnight on 20 March 2024. 2

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, and 47 886 names, ID numbers and signatures of registered voters if it wanted to appear on all nine (9) provincial ballots. The Labour Party reported that it was able to get more than double the required names, ID numbers and signatures of supporters, but the problems and glitches with IEC’s online portal made it impossible to finish uploading supporting documents by the deadline of 17:00 on 8 March 2024.

“The fact of the matter is that the Labour Party was therefore in full compliance with the substantive requirements of section 27 of the [Electoral] Act, even though the [online portal] system let us down”, Van Rensburg said.

The purpose of the application is to re-open the online portal of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) which was unstable during the upload period, so that the Labour Party can finish uploading its supporting documents.

Parties that submitted evidence in support of the Labour Party’s application included the Land Party, the South African Royal Kingdom Organisation, the Active African Christians United Movement (AACUM), the People’s Revolutionary Movement (PRM), and the United Christian Democratic Party (UCDP). They all experienced similar problems with the online portal.

“We remain hopeful that the Court will see the unfairness of us being the guinea pigs of complying with new requirements on new, untested and highly unstable technology”, said Van Rensburg. “It would be a disaster if voters are punished for five years for something that is not their fault”, he concluded.

 

Issued by Labour Party SA