THE City of Cape Town has returned hundreds of Cosatu posters it had removed from poles last week.

This after the ANC lodged a complaint with the IEC after its members caught city workers removing posters of its mayoral candidate, Tony Ehrenreich, from the DA strongholds of Mitchells Plain and Atlantis.

City spokesperson Kylie Hatton told the media that the posters had been removed because parties were only allowed one poster per pole.

She said there was already an ANC poster on the pole and that the Cosatu poster on the same pole could be calculated as two for the same party.

Hatton said the Cosatu poster had an ANC logo and the face of their mayoral candidate.

But the ANC, said the city had not followed IEC regulations and notified them that it would remove the posters.

After being threatened with legal action, the city agreed to return the posters to the IEC's warehouse in Bellville early on Saturday.

But when a man delivering the posters on behalf of the city - who would only give his name as Desmond - showed up at the warehouse with them on Saturday morning, he instead threatened to beat up two photographers from Sowetan and News 24, who were waiting for the delivery.

"If you take photos of me, I will smash your cameras," he said.

When two more vehicles loaded with hundreds of posters arrived, IEC officials pulled down a steel shutter to allow the drop-off to take place in private.

Deon Simons, from the ANC affiliate, the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (Sactwu), arrived to take the posters back to Mitchells Plain, where Ehrenreich was waiting to put them up again.

"We were putting the mayoral candidate posters up last week but later noticed they were being taken down. We received a message that we could come and collect the thousand posters here," said Simons.

An angry IEC provincial manager, Granville Abrahams, lashed out at the ANC and refused to let its representatives count the posters.

"You must just take your posters and leave. You are just coming to pick up the poster, the city will give you an account," Abrahams told Simons.

Abrahams then started throwing the media off the premises.

"What is the story? There is no story here. The City of Cape Town is dropping the posters off.

"I am mediating but this is a secure operation. What you are doing here I don't know. This is not a media story," he said.