How to double fix South Africa’s democracy

ON MAY 29, South Africa will be faced with its seventh general election since 1994.

While the 1994 election saw this country escape the dark clutches of minority rule and apartheid, subsequent elections have seen the ANC's dominance erode South Africa's rights, prosperity and safety.

It is clear that ANC rule has not benefited South Africa and that change is needed.

Hopefully, the result of the 2024 elections will be positive and lead to better governance and much-needed policy reform. But even if new, better leaders are elected, it will not change the fact that South Africa's political structures could be far better.

While there is plenty to laud in our Constitution, South Africa's democracy is far from perfect. All it takes for one party to dominate the country is for it to win more seats in Parliament than the rest.

The winner in Parliament appoints the President, who appoints the ministers, who appoint everyone else. Even our judiciary faces attempts at interference. This might sound normal to many South Africans, but it really should not be. Separation of powers is essential in a modern democracy to ensure that no party becomes dominant and exploits its power as the ANC has done repeatedly since it came to power.

While a proportional representation system is meant to ensure the presence of many minority voices, in South Africa it has led to a noisy but ultimately toothless Parliament that just exists to rubber-stamp the ANC's policy diktats.

But there are vital and basic reforms that can fix our flagging democracy, any one of which would go far to improve our political system and the entire society as a result. On paper, South Africa is a federal country.

That means that provinces are meant to run their own affairs, pass their own policies and act autonomously from the central government, which only exists to manage the armed forces and constitutional laws.

But this unitary state is inefficient, allows corruption and incompetence to spread like a plague, and ensures that South Africans are unable to run their own affairs as would be best for them.

The result of any of these systems would be a government that does not equate to anyone's favourite government, but rather one that best reflects all South Africans; not overly radical, not hateful, and committed to the policies that all South Africans can agree on − not just an arbitrary majority.

The solution to this is for the office of the president to be held by two people concurrently: an ingoing president and an outgoing president. Each election, a new ingoing president would be elected as the president is now. The previous ingoing president would then become the outgoing president and serve as an empowered adviser and co-ruler to the ingoing president until the next election.

This cycle of concurrent presidents would ensure that there is negotiation, compromise and good relations, even between opposing parties.

Too often, the successes and failures of previous regimes are forgotten. An outgoing president's job is to guide the ingoing president, ensuring that these lessons are not forgotten. NICHOLAS WOODE-SMITH | Free Market Foundation