Criticisms of the government’s proposals for electoral reform mounted on Wednesday with critics saying that its Electoral Amendment Bill did not adequately address the concerns raised by the Constitutional Court.
That pertained to the meaningful participation of independent candidates in provincial and national elections. The court ruled that SA’s electoral system was unconstitutional and gave parliament 24 months to rectify this.
Parliament’s home affairs committee held the second day of public hearings on the bill on Wednesday. The bill does not provide for demarcated single representative constituencies but uses provinces as the constituencies that several independent candidates will represent.
The 400 member National Assembly would be divided into 200 constituency seats which can be contested by both independent candidates and political parties and 200 proportional seats contested by political parties alone.
Valli Moosa, the chair of the ministerial advisory committee appointed by home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi to advise on electoral reform to address the Constitutional Court judgment, said in a letter to the committee that the bill violated the principle of each person having a single vote of equal value.
The proposed bill will result in the discarding of votes for independent candidates over and above the threshold required by them to be elected which will mean that the discarded votes don't count.
The government did not accept the majority view of the committee — supported by Moosa — which proposed a hybrid multi-constituency and proportional representation system. Instead, it opted for the minority, minimalist option. Motsoaledi said this was because there might not be enough time to implement full-scale electoral reforms. National and provincial election are due to be held in 2024
Moosa urged the committee not to take lightly the fact that in all public consultations of the ministerial advisory committee in 2021 “not a single member of the public, academic expert, civil society organisation or political party had proposed the system that currently features in the bill.”
He also stressed that the big lesson of the process in drawing up SA’s constitution in which he played a key role is “that the process is almost as important as the final provisions. I urge the committee to develop a process that will ensure public ownership of the system that is finally adopted by parliament. The decision you will be taking will impact on our constitutional order for generations to come. Please avoid doing it with undue haste.”
Director and founder of the Independent Candidate Association of SA Michael Louis said government’s bill was unconstitutional. He supported the private member’s bill introduced by COPE leader Mosiuoa Lekota, which provided for demarcated constituencies. The committee has decided not to adopt this bill but Louis, along with other presenters, have urged that the Lekota bill be presented to the public during the consultation process.
Louis said government’s bill violated the principle of proportionality. It allows independent candidates to only run for half of the available seats in parliament (200 out of 400) and thus requires independents to win double the votes a political party candidate requires to be elected.
“We believe this bill is intended to discourage independents to stand and voters to elect them in favour of the current party dominated system. This flies in the face of the spirit of the judgment.”
The New Nation Movement which successfully brought the application to the Constitutional Court also opposed the bill.
The movement’s Bulelani Mkhohliswa proposed that the 52 district municipalities in the country become 52 multi-member constituencies and for there to be a 75%-25% split for the 400 seats in the National Assembly: 75% of the seats being elected directly and 25% by proportional representation. The 52 multi-member constituencies should be allocated seats based on the size of the population.
“Also extremely important is that constituencies should have the power to recall their representatives if not happy with the commitment shown by the said representative. This is the same power that political parties have currently to recall their representatives, without having to hold by-elections,” Mkhohliswa said. “Direct representatives must also be funded like political parties are.”
Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution (Casac) executive secretary Lawson Naidoo also expressed opposition to the “light touch” bill in a submission to the committee saying it does not adequately address the issues raised by the Constitutional Court. He said Casac supported a single-member constituency system to ensure direct accountability of political representatives combined with a separate national proportional ballot to ensure fairness.
Lawson said the multi-member constituency model proposed in the bill was skewed in favour of political parties and “does not adequately integrate independent candidates”. One way of addressing this was to allow independent candidates to have a second preferred candidate who would receive the excess votes to ensure they were not wasted.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.