The presidency has also indicated that it will oppose the application by Jacob Zuma’s party
The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has asked the electoral court for more time to respond to the renewed challenge to the outcome of the 29 May national and provincial elections by the uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party.
The presidency has also informed the court and the Jacob Zuma-led party that it will also oppose the application to have the declaration of the elections as free and fair set aside, and for the poll to be conducted afresh within 90 days of the court’s ruling.
The party took 45% of the vote in KwaZulu-Natal and 15% nationally, but believed that it was robbed of a two-thirds majority during the count and went to court.
It withdrew the original challenge to the election outcome during July because it was not ready to proceed, but the IEC has opposed this and has sought an order and costs against the party.
The MK party has since brought the matter back to court, this time with a technical report challenging the integrity of the IEC’s results and information technology systems. The IEC objected to this on the grounds that the original matter had not been concluded.
Despite the IEC application, the court last week issued directives setting timelines for the exchange of documents in the application, in terms of which the IEC should have filed its responding papers by Monday, 21 October.
In correspondence with the court, which the Mail & Guardian has seen, the IEC’s lawyers at the weekend requested an extension until 4 November because it would “regrettably” not be in a position to meet the deadline.
The IEC said that in its notice to oppose the MK party application, it had brought in the timeline objection in which it sought the dismissal of the application — alternatively a stay of proceedings pending the determination and payment of costs in the previous application instituted by party in the same court — prior to the filing of any further pleadings.
The IEC said it had not started to prepare its answering papers until it received the court’s directions last week.
As a result it would require an additional two weeks to respond in detail to the allegations in the founding affidavit by the party’s national organiser, Nathi Nhleko, and to an “alleged expert report” challenging the integrity of the election results and the IEC’s information and communications technology infrastructure.
In response, MK party lawyer Barnabas Xulu said that while they did not oppose the request for an extension, they wanted to highlight the IEC’s “hypocrisy” and its disrespect for the court’s directives.
“We would be remiss if we did not highlight the hypocrisy of their request for indulgence in the circumstances where they have inter alia sought to deny our client indulgence of any
kind and been martinet in procedural matters,” Xulu wrote.
He said the IEC in its correspondence had admitted to deciding to disregard the directives of the court regarding filing but was now seeking an extension.
“The commission’s failure to prepare its answering papers constitute a deliberate disregard of the court’s directives, is extremely disrespectful to this honourable court, and is inexcusable,” Xulu concluded.
While the presidency had initially referred all comments on the MK party application to the IEC, it has now indicated that it will be opposing the matter, in which President Cyril Ramaphosa is a respondent.
Its legal team wrote to the lawyers late last week informing them that they had not received all the documents necessary to “enable us to proceed on an urgent basis”.
These included the notice of motion, Nhleko’s founding affidavit and the filing notice and confirmatory affidavit from the MK party’s technical expert, Vusi Mhlongo.
In his report, Mhlongo claimed there had been “massive voter fraud” in the election result and that the figures for all 23 200 voting stations were “incorrect” because of the inability of the IEC to prove the integrity of its systems.
At 73 voting stations in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and North West, the number of ballots counted was far higher than the number of registered voters, while millions of additional votes had been added nationally to the final tally, he said.