Johannesburg - The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) says it will be opposing an application made by Black First Land First (BLF) challenging the circumstances that led to the disqualification of 89 of its 2021 local government elections candidates from the city of eThekweni.
Administrative issues, the BLF said, prevented it from filing its list of candidates before the 2021 local government elections, forcing it to manually submit its list to the IEC offices in Durban before the submission deadline.
The party has taken the IEC to court over the matter, with the Durban High Court date set for the April 11, 2023.
This is not the first time the party has been barred from participating in the country’s political arena, as it was de-registered in 2019.
The electoral commission said it has enough confidence that the Durban High Court will rule in its favour in their case against Black First Land First (BLF), which is challenging the outcomes of its case against the electoral commission.
This matter is expected to resume at the Durban High Court on April 11, 2023.
Last week, the BLF called the disqualification of its members from taking part in the 2021 local government elections illegal. It said the party suffered after more than 89 of its candidates were denied the right to stand for elections.
“During the 2021 local government elections, more than 89 of our candidates were denied the right to stand for election after the IEC suspended BLF’s right to stand as a political party, resulting in the party being struck off the ballot paper and de-registered as a political party,” Mngxitama said.
However, the IEC, which has filed its answering affidavits with the court, contends that BLF is using the same arguments it used against it in its previous court case.
“The BLF, once again, has launched another application before the same high court under case number: D46/2023. The issues raised in the current court application have been tested and tried by a competent court and therefore may not be pursued further by the same parties (’res judicata’), in that the same issues have been raised by the same parties before the high court and the matter was finally decided by the High Court."
“The commission is, therefore, opposing the matter and has filed its answering affidavit,” IEC spokesperson Kate Bapela said.
Bapela added that on October 7, 2021, before the 2021 general Local Government Elections, the BLF and its provincial chairperson launched an urgent application in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court under case no. D9294/21, seeking orders (a) directing the commission to register the BLF’s candidates in the municipality who could not be registered due to the network outage.
The Star