Court orders ANC to reinstate Lungisa on candidate list

The Johannesburg High Court has ruled that the ANC acted unlawfully when it removed Andile Lungisa, a member of the party’s national executive committee, from its proportional representation candidate list in Nelson Mandela Bay. Judge Nelisa Mali declared the removal unconstitutional, unlawful, invalid and of no force or effect. The responsibility for correcting it now rests squarely on the party’s leadership.

The court directed the ANC and its secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, to ensure that Lungisa’s name is reinstated on the party’s internal list. Both were also ordered to pay Lungisa’s legal costs, a financial consequence that underscores the finding against the party’s decision-makers.

The ruling carries direct implications for the Electoral Commission of South Africa, which appears in the order as the fifth respondent. Judge Mali directed that, to the extent the Chief Electoral Officer affords the ANC an opportunity to supplement its list under Item 17(1) of Schedule 1 to the Local Government: Municipal Structures Act 117 of 1998, Lungisa’s name must be submitted as part of that supplementary list. The provision gives the commission a defined statutory mechanism through which the reinstatement order can take effect.

The case reached the court on an urgent footing. “The applicant’s non-compliance with the normal rules of this Court is hereby condoned, and this application is dealt with on an urgent basis in accordance with Rule 6(12)(b) of the Uniform Rules of Court,” Judge Mali ordered. The urgency flowed from the electoral calendar: Lungisa filed his papers last month, ahead of the local government elections, challenging his removal from the party’s mayoral candidate list.

At the heart of the dispute was a question of internal accountability within the ANC’s own processes. In his court papers, Lungisa said he had been placed at the top of the list, with the provincial list confirming his position as the highest-ranked candidate for the Nelson Mandela Bay mayoral post. He alleged that the removal occurred outside the party’s established procedures.

Specifically, Lungisa said he had been confidentially informed that Mbalula had personally instructed ANC officials responsible for the administrative compilation and submission of the candidate lists to remove his name, and that those officials had acted on that instruction. “It is this decision that I ask the court to declare unlawful in terms of the ANC guidelines. I seek an order declaring that my name was indeed on the list of ANC candidates and was improperly removed on the unlawful instruction of Mr Mbalula,” he said in his papers.

The decision effectively tests the ANC’s internal candidate-selection guidelines against judicial oversight. By declaring the removal unlawful and attaching a costs order to the finding, the High Court has signalled that decisions about who appears on a party’s candidate list, even those taken at the level of the secretary-general, remain subject to legal challenge and to the rules the party has set for itself.

The order frames the next steps clearly. Compliance now rests with the ANC and Mbalula, who must reinstate Lungisa’s name on the internal list, while the Electoral Commission’s role is confined to the supplementary list mechanism provided for in the Municipal Structures Act. Further coverage of the ruling and its aftermath is available at https://mg.co.za/politics/2026-10-09-court-rules-lungisa-s-removal-from-anc-candidate-list-unlawful/.

Whether the reinstatement proceeds without further dispute, and how the party accounts internally for the instruction that triggered the litigation, will now be the measures by which the judgment’s effect is judged.