Independent candidates contesting the 2024 national and provincial elections will have to garner at least 12,000 signatures for them to qualify, parliament’s home affairs committee decided Thursday.
They will also be prevented from standing as a candidate if they were a member of a political party within three months of the election.
Both decisions on amendments to the Electoral Amendment Bill were carried by the ANC majority on the committee with the DA and IFP holding opposing views. Independent candidates will also have to pay a deposit to contest elections. The amount will be decided by the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) in its regulations.
The major outstanding issue which is expected to be resolved at next Wednesday’s committee meeting is whether independent candidates will be allowed to contest more than one region for a seat in the National Assembly.
Erring on the side of caution
The original decision of the committee was that they could contest multiple regions, but this is being reconsidered. Law advisers have guided the committee that both options are constitutional, but parliamentary-law adviser Siviwe Njikela pointed out that the one option might be more restrictive on the participation of independent candidates in elections than the other.
Any decision taken by the committee would have to be fair and equitable, he said, and create the space for political parties and independent candidates to compete fairly. This is something that IFP MP Liezl van der Merwe said the committee had to take seriously to avoid any constitutional challenge to the bill, which could jeopardise the 2024 elections. It should err on the side of caution by being more inclusive, she said.
DA MP Adrian Roos supports independent candidates only being allowed to contest one region, saying this would ensure direct accountability and mean that they contested elections on the same basis as political-party candidates.
The bar to entry can’t be so low that too many independent candidates put themselves forward, rendering the ballot papers unwieldy.
The Constitutional Court ruled two years ago that the Electoral Act was unconstitutional, as it did not allow independent candidates to stand for national and municipal elections, and instructed parliament to remedy the defect.
The original decision of the committee was that independent candidates would have to at least gather the number of signatures equal to 50% of the quota required to win a seat in the previous election, which translated into about 20,000 signatures. But legal counsel for home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi and his department warned that a 20,000-signature requirement would be unconstitutional, as it would restrict the ability of independent candidates to contest elections.
After party consultations, the ANC decided to reduce the 50% to 30% (about 12,000 signatures) while the DA and the IFP were in favour of a lower 20% threshold (about 8,000 signatures).
Justifying the ANC stance, ANC MP Brandon Pillay stressed that independent candidates had to demonstrate that they were serious contestants by having strong support. The point has also been made during committee meetings that the bar to entry can’t be so low that too many independent candidates put themselves forward, rendering the ballot papers unwieldy.
The ANC also supported a three-month cooling-off period in which independent candidates could not be members of political parties, but Van der Merwe disagreed and Roos said this was not really necessary, as there would be timeframes set by the IEC with which contestants in the elections would have to comply so that the IEC could prepare for them.
The IEC has said that it will not be able to monitor the cooling-off period.
Civil society organisations such as the Independent Candidates Association (ICA) continue to maintain that the bill is unconstitutional, as it does not provide for demarcated constituencies. ICA founder Michael Louis also believes the onerous signature requirement and the cooling-off period decided on by the committee are both unconstitutional, as they will unfairly restrict the ability of independent candidates to contest elections.
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