GOOD asks legal team to probe whether Zille is allowed to run as Joburg mayoral candidate

The GOOD party says it has asked its legal team to investigate whether the DA breached any electoral laws by fielding Helen Zille as the party’s mayoral candidate in the City of Johannesburg. In a statement on Friday, the party’s secretary-general, Brett Herron, said Zille is a resident of Cape Town and that her immediate family is based there. “GOOD has asked its legal team to advise whether Zille’s registration in Johannesburg complies with sections 7(3) and 8(3) of the Electoral Act and, if not, what remedies are available. Section 7(3) defines ordinary residence as the home where a person normally lives and regularly returns to after a temporary absence. LIVE interactive map, latest news, multimedia and more! View Map “Ms Zille has made her home in Cape Town for more than 40 years. By her own public account: 1. her husband, his church and their retirement village are in Cape Town; 2. she returns home regularly; and 3. she will not commit to staying in Johannesburg if she loses. “Section 8(3) requires a voter to be registered only in the ward where they are ordinarily resident.” Is Zille a Joburg resident? Zille, who was born in Johannesburg, relocated back to Johannesburg in September last year. But Herron said Zille is not a committed resident of Johannesburg and is in the city to bolster her mayoral ambitions. “Zille’s presence in Johannesburg looks suspiciously like a temporary absence from Cape Town, where she ordinarily resides, not a change of hometown. “The thorough scrutiny of lists is good. If GOOD is advised that Zille’s candidacy is unlawful, it will be challenged in the appropriate legal forum,” said Herron. PR lists court case Herron said GOOD will also defend its decision to submit only one name on its proportional representation (PR) lists. This comes after the DA launched a legal battle in the Electoral Court against GOOD and several other parties for only submitting one name on the PR lists submitted to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC). “The DA’s application, seeking the exclusion of GOOD, ActionSA, the EFF and MK from the PR ballot, or to restrict the number of seats they may fill, reflects bad-faith desperation to manufacture legal technicalities and voter confusion, and subvert voters’ choices. “Neither the Municipal Electoral Act nor the Municipal Structures Act prescribes a minimum number of names on a party list. The Municipal Structures Act expressly provides that if a party wins more seats than it has names on its list, the IEC must notify the party and ask it to add eligible candidates within two days. “The honest underestimation test on which the DA relies is gobbledygook that appears nowhere in the Act. Before submitting its lists, GOOD asked the IEC in writing whether single-candidate lists were permissible,” said Herron. According to Herron, the party has a plausible reason for submitting only one name for its PR lists. “Supplementing lists after the election enables parties to reward ward candidates who drew strong support, recognise excellent campaign work, match expertise to responsibilities and, ultimately, maximise the quality of public representatives. “The DA has itself filed single-name lists in 12 municipalities… GOOD will defend its lists in court; they comply with the law as Parliament wrote it, not as the DA would prefer it to have been written,” said Herron.