Lindiwe Mazibuko
Democracy does not belong to political parties
Ihave written at length in this column about our tendency as South Africans to allow our entire political discourse to exist as a function of the ANC or to be interpreted through the lens of the ANC’s fortunes or failures.
Any discussion about the future of our democracy is almost always centred on the ANC. In our collective imagination, the only way that the governing party can ever possibly lose power is inch by inch, through a series of coalition governments — however unstable — because we lack the vision to separate our country’s prospects from those of the ANC.
This perspective has coloured the entire discourse around the decision by the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) to interpret the Constitutional Court ruling on the local government election date as permission to reopen both the voters’ roll and the candidate lists. The IEC’s decision has been analysed almost exclusively on the basis of whether or not it will benefit the ANC, which failed before the last deadline to register ward and proportional representation candidates in 93 municipalities around SA.
The principal complaint about the IEC’s decision from parliament’s three biggest opposition parties — the DA, the EFF and the IFP — seems to be that it has denied them the opportunity to win a series of local elections around the country uncontested and by default. Of course, since such a prayer would have no basis in law, their submissions to the Constitutional Court make arguments that seem altogether more magnanimous, but are no less self-interested.
Freedom Under Law is quite right to call out this kind of opportunistic “lawfare”. The section 19(3)(a) constitutional right to vote in elections for any legislative body is inextricably tied to the right in 19(3)(b) to “stand for public office and, if elected, hold office”. Opposition parties cannot expect the IEC to reopen the voters’ roll so that they may register more of their supporters to vote, but then deny those same voters — and others — the equal and parallel right to stand for office themselves.
The interests of political parties — including the ANC — are totally irrelevant to this matter, and to interpret the electoral process through the lens of how it will either benefit or disadvantage it politically is to miss the bigger picture. What matters is whether the rights of SA’s electorate have been adequately vindicated by the IEC’s amendments to the election timetable.
And they have — however imperfectly.
We have avoided the dangerous and untenable precedent of postponing elections and extending illegitimately the terms in office of the incumbents in local government; and we have afforded citizens, who may have been wrong-footed by the endless handwringing over the election date, the opportunity — however brief — to register both as voters and as candidates in the upcoming polls.
For anybody who is a passionate activist or leader of integrity or competence in their local community, the reopening of the candidate lists presents the opportunity both to put themselves forward for election to their local council, and to encourage eligible voters in their ward to support them in the coming election.
Our fixation on the fortunes of political parties has blinded us to the potential opportunities for voters — especially young people and those who have been irretrievably failed by their municipal representatives — to run for election on an independent or community leadership ticket, or as representatives of local associations.
It might be tempting to despair that the six weeks between next week’s candidate submission deadline and the election date leave little time for outsider and independent candidates to fundraise, campaign, canvass voters and secure a majority in their local wards. But consider how a combination of factors — from the limitations on public gatherings during the Covid-19 pandemic, to the uncertainty over the election date — has placed established candidates and parties at a similar disadvantage.
The paradox of the financial woes and campaign limitations experienced by established parties might well be that they have lowered the barriers to entry for new candidates and rendered these elections the most truly competitive in our country’s democratic history.
In addition, it is worth remembering that local candidates are not competing against political parties at the national level, but against other individual candidates in their wards. The average ward in SA comprises between 2,000 and 6,000 registered voters, with only the three most densely populated provinces — Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal — containing a significant number of metro wards with an excess of 10,000 voters.
Simply focusing a campaign exclusively on the people who comprise the ward electorate will render any imaginative and ambitious independent competitive against the incumbent.
Moving forward, the IEC must target more of its voter education drive at ensuring all citizens have access to the information necessary to empower them to stand as political candidates. The party liaison committee system envisioned in the Electoral Commission Act creates an asymmetry of information in which political parties have almost a monopoly on detailed information about the candidate process, while members of civil society are left in obscurity to google the same information. This cannot continue.
Our democracy does not belong to political parties, it belongs to the people whose constitutional right to elect one another to serve in public office for the public good should properly be discharged within our electoral system.
The paradox is that the current difficulties might make these elections the most truly competitive in SA’s democratic history