• The IEC has reportedly identified and fired an employee who leaked candidate lists for the ANC and MK Party last week.
• The IEC is still investigating the matter in a bid to determine the motive.
• Meanwhile, the ANC has had to run defence given several names on its list were implicated in State Capture.

Last week candidate lists for both the ANC and uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK Party) were circulated online. These lists weren’t meant to be public and it was quickly determined that the lists had been obtained from the Independent Electoral Commission.

Naturally, this has heightened concerns about the security measures at the body which oversees South Africa’s elections. In what is being dubbed as the most important elections since 1994, the integrity of the process is paramount and a leak threatens that integrity.

On Monday afternoon alongside a tally of the voters registered for the 2024 elections, the IEC reported that it had narrowed the source of the unauthorised disclosure of these lists to a single workstation.

This was seemingly a worthwhile lead as on Tuesday morning it was announced that an official at the IEC had been fired.

Chief electoral officer at the IEC, Sy Mambolo, told Newzroom Afrika that the commission had been able to trace downloads of the files to a workstation. Those files were subsequently deleted from the workstation most likely in a bid to bury the evidence.

“That terminal, the computer, is being subjected to a forensic analysis and as part of that we probably also establish the motive to the extent that it is possible,” Mambolo said.

It’s also not known why the official leaked the candidate lists for the ANC and MK Party but Mambolo says that the official in question also downloaded the candidate lists of other parties.

The immediate termination of the official’s employment at the IEC is likely to send a strong message to others in the organisation looking to threaten the integrity of the 2024 elections.

We hope that the IEC can establish a motive here but we suspect that motive might be rather simple – chaos.

The leaked list has forced the ANC to stop campaigning and address concerns that members implicated in State Capture investigations have appeared on the candidate list.

“Of the persons named in State Capture Commission Report, only 20 are current or former NEC members and / or public representatives. Of these only 6 appear on the ANC 2024 candidate lists,” the ruling party said in a statement on Monday.

Why the ANC would want those who have even just had their names mentioned alongside the phrase State Capture representing them in an election is an unknown quantity. ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula went to great lengths to try to absolve those who appeared on the list but we doubt that’s of any value to South Africans plagued by an energy crisis, an increasing cost of living and crumbling infrastructure.

We must commend the IEC here as it’s moved incredibly quickly to determine how the lists were leaked and who leaked them. While it’s not good news that officials within the commission leaked these lists, it’s good to know that the problem was a person in the office and not a cybercriminal hiding somewhere in the IEC’s digital real estate.