The uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party has asked the electoral court to hear oral evidence in its application to have the results of last year’s national and provincial elections set aside.
(Darren Stewart/Gallo Images)
The uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party has asked the electoral court to hear oral evidence in its application to have the results of last year’s national and provincial elections set aside.
The court earlier reserved the right to decide on the merits of the application brought by the party — which also wants a re-run of the 29 May elections — on the papers it has submitted, without oral argument by the legal teams.
The party has claimed that the results of the election were manipulated during a period of several hours in which the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC) leader board went offline.
In court papers, it argued that the results from a number of voting districts did not tally with the voters’ rolls for each district, and that this prevented the MK party from securing a two-thirds majority.
On Monday, MK party lawyer Barnabas Xulu wrote to the court requesting that oral evidence be led, specifically with regard to the reliability of the IEC votes capturing and reporting system.
In the latter, Xulu said the request was based on the “discrepancies recorded by the parties in respect of inter alia the voting results, the IEC’s system’s integrity and the expertise of the various deponents in the matter”.
“We believe that hearing oral evidence from the deponents is crucial in determining the
disputed issues by giving the parties the opportunity of cross-examining expert
witnesses on the evidence that they are giving,” Xulu wrote.
“This will also, no doubt, give the court the opportunity to clarify highly technical aspects involved in the dispute.”
The IEC, in its responding papers in the application, has sought to challenge the authority and qualifications of the MK party’s technical expert, Vusi Mhlongo, who compiled the report backing up the party’s challenge to the outcome of the elections.
The party made an initial attempt to have the election results set aside but withdrew without authorisation, prompting the IEC to seek punitive costs against it.
It then brought a second application before the electoral court in October, this time adding the report by Mhlongo, which it claims is proof that it secured more than the 14.5% of the vote that it took nationally last May.
Xulu asked that in addition to granting the request for oral argument, the court also instruct the IEC to supply the party with all the documents it had requested in the exchange of documents during the application.
In response, the court said that the request would be considered.
Last week the electoral court dismissed an application by the African Transformation Movement to have the results of the election set aside and to have a rerun of the poll on the grounds that it had failed to prove its case.