We should demand open-list PR system

ON MARCH 26, 1999, President Nelson Mandela, making his farewell speech in the National Assembly, alerted the nation that we were required “to ask whether we need to re-examine our electoral system, so as to improve the nature of our relationship, as public representatives, with the voters”.

The Cabinet in 2002 appointed a team under Frederik van Zyl Slabbert to investigate electoral systems and report on what would best suit South Africa. That team’s main recommendation was for South Africa to have a mix of a proportional representation (PR) and a constituency-based system.

In 2017, the Motlanthe Report made a most telling point: “One of the major challenges with the current electoral system is the weakness of the proportional representation system in holding politicians to account to the electorate. Members of Parliament are appointed not directly by voters, but rather by their party, based on candidate lists submitted to the Electoral Commission ahead of the elections.”

Mercifully, on June 11 last year, Constitutional Court Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga ruled that the Electoral Act was deemed, in part, to be unconstitutional. Parliament was given two years to fix it. The trigger was finally pulled.

If we want a better government, the closed-list PR system has to be dumped without delay. For obvious reasons, an open-list PR system will work optimally in the interest of citizens, and that is what we should be demanding.

FAROUK CASSIM | Cape Town