By Celani Sikhakhane
The National Freedom Party will only have 14 days to register with the Independent Electoral Commission to contest the 2024 general elections after the date has been officially proclaimed in the Government Gazette.
This was revealed by Mawethu Mosery of the IEC after an NFP faction, who were not happy about the party’s elective conference held in December, approached the Pietermaritzburg High Court to reject the conference.
“When 29 May 2024 is proclaimed by the president in the Government Gazette, no new party will be allowed to register to contest the upcoming elections,” said Mosery. “[But] the NFP is a different scenario because they are in the system. Therefore they will have to register within 14 days after the day of proclamation.”
Teddy Thwala of the NFP told Scrolla.Africa that the party’s elective conference was corrupt because many irregularities took place on the day.
“The electoral committee of the NFP have reported that the elective conference was a fraud and has to be nullified.
“The problem is that some [people] are masquerading as elected leaders. They went to [the] IEC after stealing my ID number to register for the upcoming elections,” said Thwala.
NFP president Ivan Barnes said those taking the party to court are “witches” who don’t want the organisation to contest in the upcoming elections.
“The case is taking place on March 30 and this means we might miss the date to submit our documents to the IEC to contest elections,” said Barnes, adding that he would do “everything in our authority to register the NFP to contest the general elections”.
NFP leaders were taken by surprise in 2016 after the party was told that it couldn’t contest in the local government elections because it failed to meet the payment deadline.
Pictured above: The I NFP will have only 14 days to submit its general-election application after gazetting of the date.
Image source: X
