Civil society organisations and labour federations have called for the electoral system to be reformed — in line with a court ruling — to give more voice to the marginalised and allow them to hold elected public representatives to account.
They told a meeting of the ministerial advisory committee on SA’s electoral system that the proportional representation (PR) system was “completely unsustainable” and had given rise to patronage within political parties.
The committee was formed by home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi in February. This followed a ruling by the Constitutional Court in June 2020 that the Electoral Act is unconstitutional insofar as it does not allow independent candidates to run for office in national and provincial polls.
The apex court said the act was unconstitutional as it states that a person can only be elected to the National Assembly and provincial legislatures as part of a political party in the PR system.
The ministerial advisory committee will advise Motsoaledi and parliament’s portfolio committee on home affairs on how to amend the electoral legislation to comply with the judgment.
The labour sector and civil society want the law amended before SA goes to the national and provincial elections in 2024.
SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi told the committee there was a need for the country to embrace a “mixed electoral system”.
“Mixing proportional representation with a constituency-based system will [allow] citizens to be in control and in charge of their own representatives,” said Vavi.
“There is a need to reform the architecture that we put together as a country in 1994, which is based on the PR system. We pointed out that the PR system, while it has huge advantages, does contain very serious limitations in terms of getting across-the-board spectrum of views into the system that will make our people feel represented.”
Vavi said the voices of ordinary people are “muted in all spheres of influence in SA: economically, socially and even politically”.
A mixed PR and constituency-based representation, said Vavi, “has become even more important than any other time in the history of SA”.
“Bringing in some degree of constituency-based system within PR system will eliminate the dangers of what we have come to experience in the 26 years of democracy, which include party bosses become more important, democratic processes become abused, and the patronage system gets to be key feature of PR system,” said Vavi.
“The current PR system is completely unsustainable. The voice of the party is the one that is given much bigger space to dominate the discourse, and to dominate the politics, including the socioeconomic policy direction of the country, in a manner that is completely unfair, and exposes the limitations of PR system.”
Cosatu parliamentary co-ordinator Matthew Parks said that while the constituency-based system was a not a “magic wand” the dangers of this system were that few residents knew who their ward councillors are; most are men; and councillor seats are held by the ANC, DA, IFP because “very few independents win wards”.
Parks said a constituency-based system encouraged “gerrymandering for example lumping voters of certain parties in a constituency or drawing illogical boundaries to favour a party. This is notorious in the US, but [it is] also happening in SA, Cape Town”.
He said the PR system ensured that any party with 0.25% of the vote can win a seat in parliament, and that it was simple and easy for public and parties to understand. The electoral legislation needed to be amended, as per the Constitutional Court ruling, before the 2024 election.
One SA Movement leader Mmusi Maimane said the electoral legislation needed to be amended because democracy in SA was facing “great difficulties”, with the majority of citizens no longer finding the voting process “appealing”.
The former DA leader has argued that the current electoral system in SA gives political parties too much authority, and that independent candidates should be part of the electoral system, in line with the apex court ruling.
Maimane said switching to the electronic voting system could limit election costs for the government and increase voter participation, especially in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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