ANC branches granted another extension to select candidates for members of legislatures

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African National Congress (ANC) branches have been granted another extension to select candidates for the nine Provincial Legislatures and the National Assembly after the 2024 national elections.

This as only 46% of the over 4000 party branches had convened.

Some of the reasons cited for the delays were that several ANC branches were not in good standing. Now the party’s Electoral Committee led by former ANC deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe says is confident that the candidates’ list process will be concluded by the 15th of October.

Thousands of ANC branches have just three weeks to finalise the candidates’ list for the party’s public representatives that would serve in the provincial legislatures and in Parliament. The Secretary of the ANC Electoral Committee Chief Livhuwani Matsila says they expect to complete the process expeditiously.

“The NEC received a recommendation from the Electoral Committee, wherein the committee was saying the deadline should be extended to the 15th of October. We had to re-evaluate the whole program to ensure that come the 2nd of January, we have candidates that will be deployed to campaign for the ANC. Having looked at the program we thought that, if we extend the deadline beyond the 15th of October, it was going to be nearly impossible for us to complete the all the processes of vetting and checking the good standing of the candidates, doing financial declarations, doing criminal record checks and so forth. It was going to be virtually impossible for us to do it in a congested time frame.”

ANC branches granted another extension to select candidates: 

In keeping with the party’s renewal, the committee has barred anyone with criminal record. It has up the leadership bar to a minimum matric qualification for all candidates as Matsila explains.

“You need not to have a criminal record for you to be on the list. So all comrades who have criminal records are not going to be on the list. Also comrades that have been found guilty be by the ANC disciplinary committees and have their suspension of membership in the last 10 years will not be allowed to participate in the process. Comrades who are also facing disciplinary charges that are not completed will not be allowed to participate and also those comrades who are appealing against disciplinary cases in the ANC will be disallowed from the process and that also applies to comrades whose issues of misconduct or ill-discipline will have been referred to the Integrity Commission. And if the Integrity Commission makes recommendations that have been accepted by the NEC and implemented including the step aside rule, those comrades will not be allowed to be on the list. We emphasise that issue because there will be comrades who are still having issues with the Integrity Commission, but the NEC in terms of the constitution has not taken any decision on their fate. So those comrades will not be affected until such time that the NEC says step aside or be removed from office.”

Lifestyle audits

Chief Matsila says all the candidates will have to undergo interviews to assess their capacity to do the work as well as undergoing lifestyle audits.

“We have three interview processes; one is national to national list, candidates who are going to be interviewed by the Electoral Committee. Then there are two lists at a provincial level, it’s the provincial to province list and also it’s the provincial to national list where the provincial list committee will take charge of the interviews. Then there is a third category of interviews that is for the premier candidates in the various provinces where the rules are saying that the extended PEC session must recommend three premier candidates of which two should be shortlisted.”

All parties wishing to contest the 2024 elections will have to submit lists of their candidates to the IEC. Lists that comply with the legislation will be available to the public for inspection.

Anyone can object to a candidate by submitting a written objection to the IEC and once objections and appeals are processed, the final candidate lists are published.