The Constitutional Court has ruled in favour of the African National Congress (ANC) in its legal battle with the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), allowing 181 of the party’s candidates across six municipalities to contest the 4 November local government elections.

The ruling, delivered today, overturns an earlier Electoral Court decision that upheld the exclusion of the candidates.

The dispute arose after the ANC failed to complete the final step of the IEC’s electronic candidate nomination process before the 28 August deadline. Although the party had uploaded its candidate information, supporting documents, and paid the required deposits, it had not clicked the system’s “submit as final” button.

The IEC consequently excluded 181 ANC candidates across six municipalities, including Mangaung in the Free State, uMshwathi in KwaZulu-Natal, and Sundays River Valley, Walter Sisulu, Ngquza Hill, and Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape.

The ANC argued that electoral legislation did not expressly require parties to click a final submission button and that the information already captured on the IEC’s system satisfied the legal requirements. The IEC maintained that nominations remained incomplete until formally submitted and that the same rules had to apply to all parties.

The consequences extended beyond the ANC. More than 2 000 candidates from various other political parties were excluded after their nominations were captured but not finalised before the deadline.

The ruling is unlikely to materially alter the broader electoral picture, the ANC is still likely to face heavy losses in municipalities across the country, including in those six where it can now stand its full slate of candidates. The party’s much greater challenge is the erosion of its electoral support, which cannot be reversed by a court ruling. The judgement may protect the ANC from losing seats through an administrative failure, but it will do little to improve the party’s standing with voters or change the broader balance of political power ahead of November’s elections.