The uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), which already has approached the Electoral Court in its bid to set the recent election results aside, has revealed that it will be approaching international courts over the alleged rigging of last month’s elections.
The party’s decision comes after its bid to have the results of the elections declared invalid failed in the Electoral Court.
On Sunday, MKP leader Jacob Zuma revealed that the party had instructed its legal teams to take the necessary steps, inside and outside South Africa, to ensure that justice was served.
Zuma said: “I want to tell you what our legal person was telling me. The judges here who make judgments not based on facts are likely to tell you that this is all wrong. We are going to the international court so that this country does not have South African judges doing so.
“Judges who get angry and sentence you because they hate you. We are going to the judges who look at things and look at issues. We are going there to the judges that look at things and issues … For the record, the MK Party is of the strong view that the 2024 elections were rigged and that the results announced by the IEC are not a true reflection of the will of the people.”
Ahead of the media briefing, the party said in its documents it had enough evidence that the results were manipulated and, according to its team of researchers, the results tallied did not match the the number of the total votes.
Zuma accused the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) and the Constitutional Court of having ignored volumes of its evidence of election fraud as well as of having cooked the numbers.
Zuma said: “Before and after the results we have presented concrete evidence to the IEC showing widespread irregularities in the voting process and the voting system.
“It has all fallen on deaf ears. We have also tried peaceful means to address our grievances, but all in vain.
“We have even approached the highest court in the land but it rejected our pleas without even giving us a hearing and relying on technicalities while democracy itself is being destroyed. Such a legal system must be changed as soon as possible.”
Advocate Dali Mpofu, who represents the MKP, indicated that the party had been engaged in various legal challenges in the past few weeks.
Mpofu said: “The MK Party has been involved in what I call an unprecedented 11 cases in a space of about three months. I do not think there is any organisation that has been to court this many times in a short space of time.
“In short, as you might know, from the 19th of March we were in the Bloemfontein Hight Court where we had been taken by the ANC to de-register the party. They failed.
“On the 27th of March the ANC also took us to the Durban High Court to fight over the logo and the trademark. They failed. In June.
“We pointed out the matter of irregularities in the results and the composition of the National Assembly to the Constitutional Court which was dismissed last week. Currently, there is an Electoral Court matter and that of the ATM where the MK Party is cited.”
Mpofu said the party had done well in the majority of the cases except for two cases that sat before the apex court.
“In all of the cases the party has done well, except for those cases that are in the Constitutional Court, which dismissed both its cases.
“My final point is that we, as the legal team, are awaiting judgment on Visvin Reddy and Bonginkosi Khanyile … We have been asked as the legal team to look at ways in which to look at those matters both locally and internationally,” he said.
In spite of complaints from opposition political parties including the MKP over allegations of electoral fraud and vote rigging, the commission has stood firm in its assessment of its performance, saying it had fulfilled its role in ensuring that the people of South Africa exercised their democratic rights.