First and foremost, we wish to thank political parties and independent candidates for their continued interest in electoral democracy. Such interest tells us that the electoral democratic project is well and alive in the country. It is not lost to the Commission that the unfolding nomination process had to be undertaken against the backdrop of a pernicious pandemic which is threatening our collective existence. The lengths to which parties and independent candidates have gone to ensure compliance with obviously tight timeframes is remarkable and indicative of agility within our political system.

In line with the Electoral Timetable, the first stage of the candidate nomination process concluded last night. The deadline for the submissions was 21h00. There is currently work in progress to collate all the nomination information. The preliminary figures indicate the total number of candidates standing at 59 272, including those captured through the Online Candidate Nomination System, as well manually in the local office of the Commission. 74 per cent of preliminary candidates were captured through the online system, whereas 26 per cent came through manual submissions. This innovative ICT solution continues to offer operational efficiencies whilst at the same time giving political parties and independent candidates greater control over the capturing process. 

Local offices of the Commission are currently still busy capturing manual submissions that were received by the cut-off time of 21h00 yesterday. The plan is to conclude this capturing by the end of today.

The total number of municipal council seats being contested in this year election is 10 478. There are 276 unique political parties that submitted candidates of which two are contesting in all the 257 municipalities in the country. The total number of independents currently captured is 944. In 2016 there were 855 independent candidates.

The compliance verification process is already under way. This is to ensure that candidates on the system are compliant with the electoral prescripts.

As at this morning the total election deposits paid amount to just over R7-million. Some payments were made late last night through electronic funds transfer and these may take up to 48 hours to reflect in the bank account of the Commission.

We confirm that the online system closed last night at 21h34. The reason for this was to enable the data transfer from the public website where the Online Candidate Nomination System is hosted into the internal business application. In the interests of sound election management practice, candidates whose details were entered after the deadline of 21h00 cannot and will not be accepted, but candidates captured before and up to 21h00 will be taken as duly submitted. This is facilitated through the date and time stamp which is a component of the Online Candidate Nomination System. The affected candidates who were captured during the 34 minutes before the online system actually closed are 74.

On Friday, 27 August 2021, the Chief Electoral Officer will notify political parties of any non-compliance that may have arisen. In this regard, contestants will have until Monday, 30 August 2021, to correct the non-compliance. Furthermore, on 31 August 2021 parties will be notified of candidates who may be appearing on multiple party lists. Parties may choose to remove such candidates and re-order lists by 2 September 2021.

The final lists of candidates will be certified and published on 7 September 2021. This date will mark the conclusion point of the candidate nomination process and the ballot paper production process will then be able to commence. Certified candidates will be issued with certificates on 13 September 2021.

Lastly, we experienced protests by members of a political party here at Election House yesterday. We wish to indicate that the Commission is not entrusted with the responsibility to mediate internal party disputes. Parties are urged to set processes to manage internal disputes. The Commission thus condemns protests action direct at it in circumstances where it has no lawful role to play in internecine party disputes.

ENDS

ISSUED BY THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION

Ensuring free and fair elections

Centurion

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