Jardine’s withdrawal from polls predictable – analysts
It was no surprise that former FirstRand Group chair Roger Jardine’s political start-up, Change Starts Now (CSN), will not make it to the elections, says an expert.
Lecturer at North-West University Dominic Maphaka said it was bound to happen that CSN would not contest the polls.
“A glance at the newly emerged parties demonstrates that they do not have a clearly defined ideological outlook, hence their policies bring no novelty to the left and right of established parties.
“Arguably, this is a good development that sets a precedent for potential or upcoming parties to have a clear ideological outlook and policies,” he said.
Jardine said in a statement on X that independent research has shown that 41% of voters will still vote for the ANC because there was still no acceptable alternative.
“Unfortunately, the recent Constitutional Court (ConCourt) ruling and the barriers imposed on newly established political parties means CSN, like several other parties, faces a prejudicial logistical timetable to qualify for the ballot,” he said.
The party, which was launched almost three months ago, cited a recent ConCourt ruling as part of the reason for this decision.
This related to signature quota required by the Electoral Amendment Act.
According to the Act, independent candidates and political parties need to submit to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) a list with names,
identity numbers and signatures of registered voters to meet the eligibility criteria for contesting the elections.
Before the ConCourt ruling, they needed to secure signatures equivalent to 15% of the votes necessary to attain a parliamentary seat in the preceding elections.
However, only 1 000 signatures are required for independent candidates to contest an election, after the apex court ordered the amendment of this provision of the Electoral Amendment Act.
Political analyst Piet Croucamp
said Jardine’s withdrawal from the election was predictable.
“He doesn’t have enough of a party structure or democratic requirements in place,” he said.
“There is simply no traction
for a political party with the type of identity that he portrays. It is already difficult to convince a sceptical voting public of the extent to political parties that represent their real interest.”
Croucamp said it was difficult to establish yourself in an already congested market because there had to be something special and something different about you.
“There is nothing that he said that either confused, or surprised anybody,” he said.
“There was really nothing coming from him. He was never a real candidate and his political ideas were a bit of a fabrication of business interests that thought they could advance and combine their ideals about a free market and liberation in history.
“They thought somewhere in the middle there was a little sweet spot he could make some political hay, but he was really never a candidate.”
Maphaka said Jardine should have never tried politics, never hung around for so long and never have been considered.
Another political analyst, Khanya Vilakazi, said what SA is witnessing, is proportional representation was good for 1994 and having many parties that mushroom towards the elections because of the low threshold of political participation, does divide any form of resistance against the dominant political parties.
Vilakazi said Jardine overplayed his hand – just as many others have.
“Jardine was only known in Gauteng and parts of the Eastern Cape, but if you take him to Limpopo or KwaZulu-Natal, nobody knows who he is,” said Vilakazi.
“In South African politics, it is who leads the party that generates the votes in the election. These people are not known by the common man so it becomes extremely difficult for their political parties to get a strong foothold in any election.”
Vilakazi said evidence of this stems from the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party.
“Without [former president Jacob] Zuma’s endorsement of MK, they wouldn’t have such a strong hold,” he said.
1 000 is the number of signatures an independent candidate needs to contest the elections.
It used to be said, rather cruelly, of the Congress of the People (Cope) that the party was no more than “two men and a fax machine.” Its poor results in elections proved that summation to be spot-on, although it did at least get seats in parliament. Cope might well appear as a political colossus compared to most of the 300-odd minnows all trying to access the parliamentary or provincial trough in the upcoming elections.
Has South Africa brought the continent to the point where instead of intoning “one man, one vote”, we begin to shout “one person, one party”?
And, following from that, are we not in danger of devaluing the very concept of democracy and elections by allowing so many tiny parties to get into the fray? Have we not set the barriers to entry to politics too low?
Those are questions which must be asked in the wake of the announcement that the highly touted (by the media, anyway) Change Starts Now (CSN) organisation has decided to pull out of the election because it does not have enough time to surmount the “barriers” imposed by the Constitutional Court. According to CSN’s much-interviewed founder, Roger Jardine, these “barriers” mean that the party, “like several other parties, faces a prejudicial, logistical timetable [challenge] to qualify for the ballot”.
The reality? The party needs to assemble 1 000 signatures to comply with registration requirements in the Electoral Amendment Act, which was ordered to be amended by the court.
There are two comments to be made about that plea for sympathy. First, you started organising too late in the day. That’s not the fault of anyone but yourselves. Secondly, if you can’t get together a meagre 1 000 people to publicly back you, maybe you’re not as popular as you and some journalists believe you should be.