Synchronised polls will kill small parties

For the first time, there’s discussion about synchronising all the elections, prompted by the governing ANC and the EFF, the third largest party. They want all elections to be held on the same day, presumably in 2024.

The DA, the main opposition party, does not support the idea. Most smaller parties have not yet taken a public position on it.

The debate raises two important questions: the first, why now? The second, who stands to benefit from the synchronisation?

Those in favour have presented several motivations. One is that doing so would result in cost saving for political parties and the Electoral Commission of SA.

Campaign fatigue, because of elections being held almost every 30 months, has also been mentioned. Both are perennial issues.

The next question, therefore, is: why now?

One can start with the negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on politics in SA. Most of the political parties’ preparations for the 2021 campaign have been delayed since the country went into lockdown in March.

Moreover, the ANC has had to postpone its national general council in June. The council meets midway between the party’s five-yearly elective conferences to evaluate progress in implementing their conference resolutions, among other things.

The same happened with the DA. Its federal congress and the party’s leadership elections have also been postponed.

The major parties are, therefore, not in a good position to wage election campaigns.

An election in 2021 would also pose a challenge for the parties as they could not yet successfully address the negative consequences of the 2016 municipal elections. These saw the ANC lose its absolute majorities in Johannesburg, Tshwane, Nelson Mandela Bay and Ekhurhuleni metros.

At the same time, the DA’s coalitions and cooperation with the EFF in most of these metros have failed. The EFF could not sustain its kingmaker role in these the metros, and also failed to secure executive positions.

Smaller, local parties would most probably be disadvantaged by the bigger parties merging their campaigns at the different levels into one “national” campaign. Municipal issues would then receive much less attention and local parties might be “swamped” by the national character of the campaigns.

Were this to happen, it would see the demise of smaller local parties. But it would also reduce the irritation of having fragmented and unstable coalition governments which often depend on these parties.

Dirk Kotze is political science professor at the University of SA