Johannesburg –The ANC has finally registered all its councillors-elect to contest the upcoming local government election in 257 local municipalities, including the metropolitan councils in the country.
This was revealed by ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte when she addressed the media on Tuesday about her party’s readiness to contest the November 1 local government elections.
Duarte said her party has registered 4 468 ward councillors-elect in all the municipalities. While the Electoral Commission (IEC) deadline for the registration of candidates was set for September 21, Duarte said she registered much earlier on Monday, in an apparent reaction to their failure to register all their candidates during the IEC’s initial registration date of August 23.
“We have registered to contest in all the wards, 46% of our wards and proportional representative councillors are women. We wanted 50 percent to achieve gender parity. There is still a lot of work to be done. It has not been drilled yet in some of our communities,” Duarte said.
She said their candidates came from all sectors of communities, including the LGBTQI community, as well as various community leaders.
“The youngest of our candidates is 20 in Buffalo City and Joburg. Twenty-five percent of our candidates are young people, so that we can build for the future. Most of them are graduates who can breathe life into local government,” she said.
Duarte also said that they are now receiving exception reports from the IEC regarding some of their candidates.
“We are going to discuss the exception reports with their respective leaders before taking any decision to remove them from the list. If a decision to remove them is taken, we would then consider a candidate who obtained a second spot and register him or her,” she said.
Duarte, however, conceded that the ANC was still troubled with disputes over the nomination of candidates in provinces such as the North West.
She confirmed reports that the ANC’s electoral committee head Kgalema Motlanthe tabled a report to the party’s NEC, and complained about the conduct of the North West inter-provincial committee coordinator Hlomane Chauke.
In the report, Duarte confirms that Chauke was accused of having interfered in the work of the North West provincial list committee, conduct described as “unbecoming” by Motlanthe.
Political Bureau