Zuma pledges MK will not cause problems in South African elections — Daily Maverick
Former South African president and leader of the uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) party Jacob Zuma said in Midrand that his political force would not cause problems during the local elections on November 4. At the same time, he repeated the claim that MK was allegedly “robbed” in the 2024 general elections.
As Daily Maverick reports, Zuma spoke on September 23 during a ceremony to sign the Electoral Code of Conduct. Parties and independent candidates participating in the vote pledged to follow rules for free, fair and peaceful elections.
Zuma’s statements on the 2024 elections
Zuma said that MK intends to continue raising questions about the results of the 2024 elections, even though the legal process can no longer change their outcome. According to him, the party wants to establish what exactly happened and believes that South Africa’s Electoral Commission acted improperly.
In the 2024 elections, MK came third nationally, winning 14.58% of the vote and 58 seats in the National Assembly. In KwaZulu-Natal province, the party received 44.91% of the vote, won 37 of 80 seats in the provincial legislature and became the largest political force there.
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Electoral Court decision
On September 25, the Electoral Court dismissed MK’s challenge to the reliability of South Africa’s Electoral Commission’s digital system for counting and publishing results. It concerned an incident on May 31, 2024, when zero results were displayed for about two hours on the commission’s public information dashboard.
The court concluded that the party had failed to follow the mandatory procedure set out in Section 55 of the Electoral Act. The court also found that the dashboard failure did not affect the entry or verification of results: the main system continued operating, and no data were lost. The court explained discrepancies in certain reports as a website coding error that did not affect the announced results.
The Electoral Code applies to 136,790 candidates and 547 parties admitted to the municipal elections. The Electoral Commission also introduced a separate code on countering disinformation and reminded participants of possible fines, loss of an electoral deposit or imprisonment for violating the rules.
