Civil society pushes for speedy electoral reforms
Civil society movements are determined to put pressure on politicians to bring about a new electoral system that gives more power to the people.
This emerged this week when several NGOs including the Rivonia Circle, the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Defend Our Democracy and My Vote Counts convened an indaba with a view to “building consensus towards significant electoral reforms”.
The session was precipitated by the Constitutional Court ruling of June 2020 which ordered parliament to amend the Electoral Act to ensure the participation of independent candidates in national and provincial elections.
The Electoral Amendment Bill was brought before parliament at the beginning of this year.
Since then, various interested parties have opposed the bill in its current form, leading to parliament on Friday opening up for some parties to make their contributions before the December deadline envisaged to finalise the impasse and enact the matter into law.
With the tabling of the bill having come almost two years after the judgment and parliament asking for a six-month extension in June, many are sceptical that the December deadline will be met, including the NGOs.
Lawson Naidoo, executive secretary of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution, laid bare parliament’s track record in attending to the problems in the Electoral Act, which he said date back to 2002.
This, he charged, started in 2002 when the cabinet electoral task team, chaired by Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, produced a report which, among other things, would have prevented the current quagmire on what kind of electoral legislation the country ought to follow.
The report was ignored and is still gathering dust.
“There have been several other recommendations over the years that the electoral system be changed and these have all been ignored. They include the independent panel assessment of parliament in 2009 which said in its report: ‘It was noted that the party list system tends to promote accountability of MPs to their parties rather than to the electorate,’” said Naidoo.
“Next came the high-level panel on the assessment of key legislation in 2017 which was chaired by former president [Kgalema] Motlanthe. That report states: ‘Effective parliamentary oversight is dependent on MPs acting in the best interests of the people of SA without fear, favour or prejudice.’
“And most recently, the report of the state capture commission in reflecting on parliament’s failure to take action, and therefore the Zondo report recommended that parliament should consider whether introducing a constituency-based but PR [proportional representation] electoral system would enhance the capacity of MPs to hold the executive accountable.”
The common thread in all these attempted interventions, said Naidoo, was the call to change the electoral system — but 20 years later little to nothing has happened.
Broadly, there are three options on the table. Civil society must seek to agree on one and campaign for it to emerge.
The first calls for district and metro cities to be considered constituencies for the National Assembly and provincial legislature representatives. In this system, independent candidates would contest with individuals from political parties in an open-list process.
The second choice proposes the creation of 200 or 300 constituency-based seats for the National Assembly. In this system, each constituency will be a single member “first past the post”.
The third way envisages a dispensation wherein the country brings about new multi-member constituencies, taking into consideration population size and proportionality. This system would be accompanied by an enactment of a “recall clause” on constituency representatives.
The parties agreed that the conversation continued but vowed they would not allow the bill in its current form to become law as this would favour the governing ANC, which they view as uninterested in electoral reform.