ActionSA welcomes the opportunity before the Electoral Court to demonstrate the cynical nature of the DA’s application which will be proven to be an effort to disenfranchise votes the party cannot win.
While the DA wants South Africans to believe their application is about the supplementing of PR lists, which is legally provided for in Item 17 of Schedule 1 of the Municipal Structures Act of 1998, the truth is that they have never taken any step to amend this legislation in the 28 years of its existence while they have been represented in the National Assembly or during the two years in which the DA has held the Ministry of Home Affairs – the portfolio responsible for all electoral legislation.
This is to say nothing of the fact that the DA has previously supplemented PR lists in previous elections using the very provision of Schedule 1 they now seek to challenge and have no less than 12 municipalities in these 2026 elections in which they have submitted a municipal PR list of one and would, accordingly, be invited to supplement their lists should they be entitled to further representation. This is a fact confirmed in the IEC’s papers filed in opposition to the DA’s application.
Item 17 allows for political parties whose submitted PR lists are insufficient (too short) to provide for the number of PR councillors they are entitled to once the votes are counted to supplement their lists:
“If a party list contains fewer candidates than the party is entitled to, the Electoral Commission must in writing immediately notify the party of the exact shortfall and request the party to deliver within two days of the notice a list supplemented by the name or names of one or more eligible candidates.”
The real intentions lie in the prayers set out in their court papers. It is here where the DA ask the Electoral Court to prevent parties representing 25% of the South African people to be unable to have more than one PR councillor elected per municipality or to prevent supplementation until after mayors are elected in inaugural council meetings. Voters can tell a lot about what issues a party chooses to litigate over, and for the DA to seek to disqualify 25% of the South African electorate from being proportionately represented is reminiscent of its roots in a qualified franchise and minority rule.
The DA has sought to characterise ActionSA’s candidate selection system and anti-transparency and goes as far as to accuse the party of trying to defraud the South African people. They make these allegations contrary to the fact that ActionSA’s policies provide for the PR list to be constructed after the elections by ranking unelected ward candidates (who have been weighed and measured by the South African people) to be ranked in order of performance on the PR list. Nothing could be more transparent or democratic.
The notion that the buddy-buddy system of DA Fedex meetings and ANC NEC meetings producing more democratic PR lists is laughable when it has been demonstrated that the, amongst other cases the DA’s system has placed at number 2 on the Garden Route District Municipality the current Deputy Mayor of George who was found by the party to be sextorting a schoolgirl with serious questions as to whether the said schoolgirl was a minor. Had the voters of that community been invited to rank such a candidate, as provided for by the ActionSA system, that candidate would never be elected. If this is what the DA calls transparency – they can keep it.
With barely three weeks to go to the 2026 local government elections, the IEC in its opposing papers has confirmed ActionSA’s position that the relief sought by the DA would put the entire elections in peril.
“The Commission is firmly of the view that the DA’s case is without merit in law. Many of the arguments made by the DA are factually opportunistic and legally specious. What is more, the application was brought on 21 September 2026, weeks before voting day, after nominations had closed and the lists had been certified, against a practice that parties, including the DA, have followed openly in successive local government elections. The relief it seeks would be seriously disruptive, and would put the integrity of these elections at risk” (Paragraph 13 of the IEC’s affidavit).
ActionSA has asked the courts to dismiss the DA’s application with a punitive costs order against the party for wasting the court’s time and basing its ill-founded litigation on a combination of unfounded allegations and opportunistically reading matters into law that legislators simply never enacted. It appears the DA has run out of ideas for how it will ever become a majority party and is not moving to disenfranchise the votes they will never receive.
The greatest irony is that the DA will presume itself entitled to the support of parties like ActionSA in coalitions around the country after the elections with zero appreciation for the irony that it is our constituents (who they seek to disenfranchise in this application) who will direct our choices in coalition.
ActionSA Economic Stance: Supports a free-market economy with reduced red tape.
Roadblock
Kazakhstan: You have two cows. They are both better cows than cows from Uzbekistan, who have bones in their brain.
Silver Agent
Van is hitch-hiking and he gets picked up by a larnie in a merc. After travelling awhile and making small talk, Van asks the larnie what the 3-pointed star on the bonnet is for. The larnie decides to have some fun with Van.
\”Oh, that\’s the sights, you know, for aiming. When I see someone on the side of the road and I want to run him over, I just line him up in the sights.\”