Any vote rigging could explode into violence
THE integrity of the ANC’s electoral commission and the issue of rigging of elections will be one of the items taking centre stage at the party’s elective conference in December.
This election in two months’ time is set to be one of the most highly contested in the 105-year history of the ANC.
Everything is at stake: control of state, access to government resources and especially who gets to control the Treasury.
The contradictions between the corrupt ANC led by the Gupta family and the remnant of the democratic ANC struggling to survive have never been as evident as they are at present. It is a life-and-death struggle. After the campaigning by the seven presidential candidates ends, everything will boil down in December to the election of the president, the top six office bearers and the national executive committee. And also the role of the electoral commission.
Up to a certain point, elections are rigged in many countries. Software programs can be manipulated and tampered with in electronic voting systems.
Similarly when traditional methods of voting take place, rigging occurs through the printing of excess ballot papers which are then marked to favour a particular candidate. Or the ballot papers of rival candidates are secretly destroyed or discarded.
Come December, the stakes could not be higher for the supreme offices in the ANC, with the prize as tempting as ever. Can an election be lost by default? Al Gore in the US lost the presidential elections against George Bush jnr by default, and in 2002, Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai lost an election to President Robert Mugabe by default – although in their report Khampepe commissioners – the then Pretoria High Court judge Dikgang Moseneke and Johannesburg High Court judge Sisi Khampepe – found that the Zimbabwean elections had not been free and fair.
Then consider the case of Kenya, where Raila Odinga lost an election to Uhuru Kenyatta and the Constitutional Court showed that the independent electoral commission had not followed the correct procedure.
Electoral commission members can be bribed by business barons and all sorts of other crooks into delivering victories for specific candidates who will, in turn, pursue their crooked interests.
This happens across the world, and it is therefore imperative that an electoral commission is always beyond reproach.
In South Africa, the stakes are so high and the political landscape so combustible at present that any indication of fraud in the ANC presidential election and the favouring of a certain slate has the potential to be exceptionally dangerous, possibly even result in fatalities.
Unfortunately in the ANC, the conflicts between slate rivals at different levels cascade down into state and government institutions. This means that any hint of electoral fraud at the ANC elective conference in December could ignite widespread violence.
The low-intensity internal war between ANC members in KwaZulu-Natal, for instance, may blow up completely and get totally out of control.
All of this underlines the crucial need for the integrity of both the Independent Electoral Commission and the ANC presidential electoral process to be beyond reproach.
The election could be the organisation’s most terrible moment or alternatively, its finest hour.
With seven candidates vying for the highest office in the organisation and ANC members spoilt for choice, democracy could flourish – if everyone is free to vote for their preferred candidate in a fair and integrous election.
The availability of seven presidential candidates – Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, National Speaker of Parliament Baleka Mbete, Treasurer-General Zweli Mkhize, Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe, Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu and former ANC treasurer-general Mathews Phosa – shows a maturing of democracy within the ANC and South Africa.
If all ANC members were free to vote according to their consciences for who should be president, this would transform and democratise the party.
Up until now, the electoral system within ANC rests on decision-making by branch delegates.
This system is, however, notoriously open to corruption and vote-rigging, as already proven through recent court decisions.
If all ANC members were instead allowed to vote for their preferred president, this problem could be eliminated.
With the less popular candidates eliminated by a popular vote, the candidate getting more than 50% of the vote could become president, or the candidate with highest number of votes could become president.
Such a system could be implemented for all top six positions of the ANC and also for the national executive committee positions.
If this “one ANC member, one vote” electoral process for electing the president of the ANC and all the office bearers was to be adopted it would be the most democratic in the party’s history.
That way we would get rid of the slates and the factions within the ANC and eliminate vote-rigging because nobody would have sufficient money to bribe all the members of the ANC.
This is surely the only way to renew the ANC and transform it into a modern political party of the 21st century.
Omry Makgoale is a rank and file member of the ANC. These are his personal views