There was a “complete lack of evidence” in the MK Party’s (MKP) court case to support allegations of vote rigging, the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC) chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo says in court papers.
Mamabolo’s affidavit was filed in the Electoral Court on Tuesday, responding to the application by the MKP to set aside the recent national and provincial elections.
The MKP wants the court to declare the elections were not free and fair, saying there were “massive acts of fraud, rigging and manipulation of the result”.
However, Mamabolo said what the MKP claimed as “evidence” was no evidence at all, “let alone clear and irrefutable evidence”.
The commission has repeatedly advised the applicant it must produce evidence in support of its complaints. The applicant has repeatedly failed to do so, and yet has continued to repeat its unfounded and prejudicial allegations.
— IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo
“The commission has repeatedly advised the applicant it must produce evidence in support of its complaints. The applicant has repeatedly failed to do so, and yet has continued to repeat its unfounded and prejudicial allegations,” he said.
Mamabolo said it was “deeply concerning” that the MKP had made the “egregious” allegations. When it made the allegations, it must have known there was no evidence to support them but it decided to make them nevertheless.
“The only inference which can be drawn from this approach is that the allegations were made with the aim of inflaming the passions of the public,” he said.
In the MKP’s application, national organiser Nathi Nhleko produced tables of numbers — including of votes cast and votes counted — which he said were drawn from the IEC’s own data, and which were analysed by the MKP’s “experts” who alleged “discrepancies”. Through this analysis, Nhleko claimed more than 9.3-million votes were unaccounted for in the declared election results.
The allegation was “patently false,” said Mamabolo.
The source of the MKP’s data was not disclosed and did “not align with the actual data of the commission”, he said.
“On the correct figures as published by the commission, all votes are accounted for and all valid votes have been counted,” said Mamabolo.
He attached the commission’s own spreadsheets, saying “there are no ‘discrepancies’ in the commission’s numbers”. Instead, there were “fundamental errors in the applicant’s figures”.
He said the MKP’s document claimed to be expert analysis but had “no standing in law”. The authors of the document were not disclosed, and it was therefore unknown what expertise, if any, they possessed.
“Mr Nhleko has not even bothered to qualify the alleged expert as such. Having failed to do this, the applicant cannot expect the court to take its ‘expert evidence’ seriously,” said Mamabolo.
He explained how votes were handled by the IEC after they were cast, the involvement of party agents in the process, and, over six pages, listed “procedures and key safeguards” in the results process for the 2024 elections.
He said the performance of the Results System was subject to independent assessment before the election by Deloitte. It was tested by two simulated dry runs of the election before the IEC was “satisfied it was ready”.
Mamabolo said all contesting parties were invited to conduct their own examination of the Results System and four parties did — the DA, UDM, ACDP and SARA.
“The applicant chose not to use this opportunity,” he said.
Mamabolo also addressed the MKP’s claim that the IEC “rushed” to declare the election results despite many objections from political parties. He said in total the commission received 951 complaints and objections.
Of these, 110 complied with the requirements for objections in the legislation. However, the IEC considered all of them “out of extreme caution”.
It was not true they were all dismissed, he said, as 17 objections were upheld. This led to 36 vote recounts (some objections covered more than one voting district) and 19 “edit windows opened” to correct discrepancies between original results slips and captured results.
“The commission and its legal team worked through the nights of May 31 and June 1 to process all the objections and complaints,” said Mamabolo.
It had enlisted 28 attorneys to assist and had trained them in advance.
“This added to capacity, together with the commission’s own internal legal capacity.”
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