Court orders ANC to restore Lungisa to candidate list

The Johannesburg High Court ruled on October 9 that the African National Congress unlawfully removed Andile Lungisa from its candidate list for Nelson Mandela Bay, ordering the party to restore him to its internal list. His inclusion on the ballot for the November 4 local government elections remains conditional on the Electoral Commission of South Africa allowing a supplementary list. Judge Nelisa Mali declared the ANC’s decision unconstitutional, unlawful and invalid. The case concerned Lungisa’s removal from the party’s proportional-representation list, shortly before the August 28 deadline for submitting candidate nominations. The ANC had argued that Lungisa failed to attend vetting and biometric fingerprinting and had not provided satisfactory proof that his criminal record had been expunged. Mali found that the party had not adequately established that he missed vetting; the evidence as a whole supported his account that he attended. The judgment also questioned whether a final vetting decision had been made and who had authority to disqualify him.