No Glitches says IEC

0:00the electoral commission is reiterated that it will not open the candidate nomination system for any political party or independent candidate after the cut of date. They made this announcement at the briefing in Centurion yesterday. This follows the ANC releasing a statement citing that it made several submissions of their candidate's names before the deadline, but the system kicked out some of the names. Deputy Chief Electal Officer for Outreach, the IEC Doctor Victor Shalley joins us on the line. A very good morning to you, sir. Welcome. Thank you, my brother. Good morning and thank you for having us this morning. So explain to our listeners why you have a cut of date and how that process is actually intended to work. Okay. First and foremost, it's important to indicate that the election is a process, not an event. We prepare for each election over a period of five years and you need at least about two year and a time to deliver a credible election.

1:02So everything started long time ago. We are where we are and where we are right now is what is an election space of the cycle. And we got to that phase or it started with the proclamation of an election day by the minister on the 7th of Augustas, you may recall. Effectively from that date, there are legalist stipulated deadlines leading up to the day when some of the guns go to the post. Now those deadlines are something and they are this or are legislated and therefore we even ourselves as a electoral commission have no authority to change anything in that process. This is because you are talking about a process that involves a lot of, you know, elements,

2:07logistics, candidate nominations, printing of the ballot paper. The elections are the biggest logistical operation in the country. So you cannot afford to be a moving date within any, every date is meticulously determined and has to be adhered to you without any, you know, deviation. Now what if these are system glitches as they incite claims? Can it be proven that there is a system glitch and if it can then does that change the dynamics a little bit? You know, we have issued a statement as a electoral commission of South Africa on this matter and we really hope that our position can be taken as the position of the I.C.

3:08We respectfully also would avoid having to answer to statements that are not from the commission. The position of the commission is simple. The nomination closed on Friday, 28th August at 5 o'clock. All political parties and all candidates who were ready and who submitted their list at that point were able to do so. And mind you, there were two channels of submitting candidate nomination. The one channel is via the online candidate nomination system. The other channel is the physical submission of the list at many I.C. offices around the

4:09country. So we are saying we have yesterday in our statement provided statistics of how many list were submitted annually, how many list were submitted online. So to answer your question, there were no glitches reported on our system. We had done sufficient testing on all our systems before this process began. And for the listless benefits, the commission has also come out to say anticipating almost the kind of issues that we are now hearing. The commission availed the online candidate nomination system on 21 June, 2026. This was almost two months before the official study in time for candidate nomination, meaning from June. Any candidate or party could log onto the system, perhaps you are aware that list they have

5:13log of come back later log of come back later. That's not by the by five or 12 on the 28. They would then be no excuse whatsoever by anybody to then say, oh, when we tried to do this last minute, then something went wrong. We do not have such a record on our side. And it is difficult and not really out that we are not then asked to respond on any other report other than that, which we have stated as the official position of the commission. So finally, then in terms of your own timelines, what's happening next when do you make the announcement then of the approved list? So it is possible that from a list that we now have or that list that we have, remember we have indicated yesterday that we have resisted around 142,000 candidates over early across

6:23the box. And this candidates are competing for no more than 10,500. This is available again, of course, about so you have 142,000 people hoping to get South African authorization to be occupied in the 10,500. So from that list, it is possible that when we then look at those submissions that were as journalists submitted to us, there may be issues around, maybe documents that are not clear as you know, because when you are capturing things online, it's possible that the images and other things may not come out clearly. So in such instances, we will call you and say, Daniel, please give us this document for completeness of your file.

7:23One that has happened by the seven of this month, we will be also winding up that process of just the refining the document. And by this week's time, I see you will then publicize a full list of people who have met all the requirements for a nomination and it is those people and those political parties that will be on the Wallot PayPal for November. All right. Thank you so much for your time and for chatting to us. We really appreciate it. We thank you so much. Good morning.