It is said turkeys should not have a vote on Christmas. Yet the ANC, having hosted a public webinar now available on YouTube, is bravely leading a conversation on what kind of electoral system SA should have.
Deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo’s questions at the state capture commission penetrated the fog of the various presentations, highlighting how our current proportional representation (PR) and party-list system have eroded the link between the citizenry and the state, and possibly enabled the looting of state coffers.
Recent political conversations have also seen a dusting off of the cobwebs from the 2003 Van Zyl Slabbert commission report, which urged the adoption of a mixed system, incorporating elements of constituency-based elections with PR. The PR system had been adopted for the first election in 1994 to ensure a plurality of voices in parliament.
A coincidence of developments are signalling the need for a review. Among these are the ANC’s decision to have the miscreants in its ranks step aside when formally charged with misdemeanours; the passing of the Political Party Funding Act; the Constitutional Court finding that parliament should amend the Electoral Act to allow for independents to stand in national and provincial elections; the Zondo commission’s highlighting of the problems of politicising the upper echelons of the public service; and the Covid-induced call for aligning the national, provincial and local elections.
These questions have universal parallels at a time when established democratic systems are being challenged and even eroded. The 2020 Global Satisfaction With Democracy Report by Cambridge’s Centre for the Future of Democracy has shown that 2005 represents the beginning of the “global democratic recession”. In the mid-1990s global satisfaction with democracy was about 57.5%, but a decade later it had dropped to 47.9%.
SA has declined to almost 60% dissatisfaction. Compare this to the 28% dissatisfaction of 2005. In 2019 the number of under-20s who had registered for the general election had dropped to the lowest level since 1999.
The rise of political parties has been tied to the rise of democratic regimes. The 20th century saw the spread of political parties globally, initially as cadre/elite parties, then mass-based parties of specific constituencies. Currently the “catch-all party” with cross-class appeal and the “cartel party” system, where political parties collude in sharing the spoils of governance, feature.
The inability of marginalised social forces to find their voice in the party system or even civil society often leads to new social movements. Indian theorist Partha Chatterjee describes this as “political society”, where impoverished people articulate their concerns, “bringing into the hallways and corridors of power some of the squalor, ugliness and violence of popular life”.
In SA a number of factors will need to be looked at to implement a sorely needed RDP) (reconstruction and development programme) of our democracy. The current PR system, while enabling a variety of views to be represented in parliament, has entrenched alienation between citizenry and representatives. There is a crying need for reforms that promote accountability and facilitate access to the people’s representatives.
The mind-numbing that party loyalty requires in the party-list system has meant the quality of our MPs leaves much to be desired. This needs to be dealt with so that the oversight function of parliament and the drafting of legislation can improve. Also, any discussion on the future of the party system must look at how ICT can be used to enhance accountability and access.
The professionalisation of a public service that is representative of society and committed to service delivery should be part of this RDP.
These issues have been raised in the ANC document prepared for its national general council. However, it needs an even braver public discussion about the future of our democracy in which the young and the marginalised, and people from all walks of life, feel empowered to participate in governing our country.
• Abba Omar is director of operations at the Mapungubwe Institute.
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