MK Party reinstates challenge to the rigged outcome of SA's 29 May elections

The uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party has reinstated its electoral court challenge to the outcome of the 29 May national and provincial elections and has asked it to order a rerun of the poll.

The party served notice of the application to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC); chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo; the speakers of parliament and the nine provincial legislatures; the president and the parties represented in the legislatures and parliament on Thursday.

MK is the third-largest party in parliament, having taken almost 15% of the vote, and effectively costing the ANC its majority nationally, in KwaZulu-Natal and in Gauteng.

It is also the largest party in KwaZulu-Natal, where it secured 47% of votes on 29 May. It is the official opposition in both parliament and the KwaZulu-Natal legislature but has disputed the outcome of the elections since they were announced on 2 June.

It has asked the court to hear the matter urgently, arguing that it is in the public interest and has requested that it issue an order declaring that the outcome of the poll was not free and fair as stated by the IEC.

It wants the IEC declaration set aside and an order compelling President Cyril Ramaphosa to issue a proclamation to hold an election within 90 days of the result being set aside.

It further wants the costs of the application to be paid by the IEC and Mamabolo.

The party withdrew its first application to have the results set aside as it was unable to compile an analytical report it had commissioned on the IEC's results system in time.

The IEC had in turn attempted to have the court rule on the application in its form at the time, rather than allowing it to be withdrawn.

In his affidavit submitted to the court, MK national organiser Nkosinathi Nhleko was highly critical of the IEC's actions, saying the electoral body had attempted to force a ruling on the application to create a "legal barrier" to having his party's analysis of the results presented to the court.

"The application was not ready for hearing and our experts required time to process the information and evidence on which we make this application. It was not only reasonable to withdraw the application but necessary in the interests of justice and the proper administration of justice," Nhleko said.

"Our case had to be supported by export reports and any attempt to force a hearing on the condition of the original application would have been prejudicial," Nhleko said.

He said they not only had to deliberate on their analytical report but also subject it to a "stress test" by other experts "until we were satisfied that our complaint of serious voter irregularities is justified".

There was "incontrovertible evidence" that the national and provincial elections were "neither free nor fair" and that the process was "riddled with serious irregularities" which were "so egregious as to vitiate the entire elections", Nhleko said.

His party would be "irresponsible" if it did not persist with the application and was, in fact, constitutionally bound to do so as "the survival of our democracy depends on lawful and credible elections".

Their expert, Dr Vusi Mhlongo, had uncovered "massive voter fraud" while the IEC had been unable to prove the integrity and accuracy of its systems and data, which had been affected by a two-hour downtime from 6.30am on 31 May.

Nhleko said that the IEC had relied on a report by Deloitte to attest to the integrity and accuracy of its systems but that the report had failed to do this.

"The report concluded that the Deloitte report cannot be considered any kind of guarantee of the integrity of the IEC system and data integrity. The Deloitte review was an attempt by the IEC to obtain a rubber stamping of the integrity of their system without a thorough evaluation of that system," Nhleko said.

Deliotte's review was limited to several functional assessments and nothing more and, as a result, the IEC's assurances were not backed up by any tangible evidence whatsoever, Nhleko said.

It was "absolutely astonishing" that the IEC had decided to change the reporting system while "the process was hot and brewing, tensions were at boiling point and there were only hours left in the process".

Nhleko said the IEC's decision to update the system had been "deeply questionable" and had resulted in "grave inconsistencies in reports generated by the electronic dashboard".

Tuning to the content of the inconsistencies, Nhleko said that the totals of valid votes at all 23 291 voting stations were "incorrect" and that more than 15 million excess national, and 16 million regional, ballots had been included in the IEC's final tally.

At 73 voting stations, the number of votes counted was higher than the total registered population for the station, totalling 10 983 additional votes at stations across KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and North West, he said.

Nhleko said the inconsistencies and the inability to prove that the systems and data were accurate and reliable cast doubt on the results and on the capability of the IEC to provide a credible outcome.

"It appears that the IEC does not want to be placed under scrutiny over these obvious instances of voter fraud and irregularities," Nhleko said. "The attempt to force an order dismissing the withdrawn application was an attempt to create a legal barrier to these figures being published."

This was an unlawful and deliberate attempt to "subvert the will of the people and the democratic outcome", he said.

The findings contained in the expert report had "profound implications for the 2024 elections" as they showed that there were errors in 46 576 polling station reports in which the number of valid votes counted exceeded the number of votes cast.

"It would have been difficult not to detect these errors, even as a lay observer," Nhleko said. "It is inconceivable and astounding that these were not discovered by the IEC."

The IEC had not responded to queries from Mail & Guardian at the time of writing.