Voting With Their Feet: Perceptions of Political Party Conference Delegates in South Africa:A Case of the African National Congress

The African National Congress held its 55th National Elective Conference on December 22nd at Nasrec in Johannesburg. When the Electoral Committee announced the top seven results, it revealed that 46th ballots were spoiled by delegates. There was anxiety about the impact of the spoiled ballots on the election results. A qualitative study used literature and KII to investigate the reasons for the spoiling of ballot papers by conference delegates. Several findings emerged from the study (i) spoiled ballots could not affect the outcomes of the conference elections since the gap between the competing candidates was wide (ii) If the gap was narrow among the candidates, they could certainly affect the outcomes (iii) lack of political education among the party delegates largely led to the incidence of spoiled ballots (iv)delegates used ballots to register protest action against some candidates (v) changing of mandate from branches also contributed to the spoiling of ballots (vi). Spoiling ballots showed some level of democratic maturity by not being forced to vote for candidates did not support. The study recommended that (i) the party should consider political education to enhance party members (ii) it also proposed a framework for mitigating future spoiling of ballot papers.