When it comes to electoral reform there has been some headway with the new electoral amendment act that will allow Individuals to contest elections.¹ South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has recently signed the amended bill into law to allow individual candidates to contest national and provincial elections independently of political parties.² However there is a need for more deeper and larger scale reform especially as regards the principle of proportionality.³ For example, it does not matter how many votes independent candidates get.⁴ Once they have reached the electoral threshold to secure a seat in the legislature,  any extra votes would not count.⁵  For political parties, extra votes count towards another seat.⁶

(A trend that has emerged over the years has been a party needs at least 40,000 to 45,000 votes to secure a seat in the National Assembly.)⁷

Thus various civil society formations have headed to court to challenge the inherent injustice in the changed law.⁸ The existing electoral system is, by design since 1994, inherently biased toward the party system.⁹ According to some experts and their research on electoral democracy in South Africa and on the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa much of the discussion about independent candidates misses the point.¹⁰ What’s needed is to completely overhaul the electoral system, lest it continues to churn out minute parties, resulting in intractable coalition politics.¹¹ This is already in evidence through governance impasses in the country’s metropolises (major cities).¹² The Constitutional Court’s ruling shows that electoral democracy is possible without parties.¹³  The challenge is to design an electoral system that makes it possible.¹⁴ The court cannot prescribe this.¹⁵ It is the responsibility of Parlaiment.¹⁶

The amendment of electoral amendment law is a step in the right direction and could be a starting point for political improvement in terms of holding politicians to account. Political parties may not disappear entirely from election campaigns but their scope of power could be limited by an overhaul of the electoral law. The complete removal or further limitation of proportional representation in the electoral law could lead to politicians who are elected being accountable directly to the voters who elected them. It will limit the scope of minority parties possibly causing them to band together to contest elections with the larger parties like the African National Congress, the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters. Political parties’ nominees will have to try harder to win the popular vote. The ultimate goal of these changes will have to be to elect the President of the Republic directly.

What the National Assembly should do is table a brand-new electoral law and amend the Constitution to allow the president to be elected directly. Once the new electoral reform bill is drafted it will be passed through National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces. It will completely alter the National parliamentary and presidential electoral structure, as well as those in the provinces. However, this could also be a threat to the ruling Party if they are unwilling to surrender their power to another party or leadership. The change in electoral system could see an end to the dominance of local politics by minor parties and see the formation of firmer coalitions. But would this be good for democratic conventions? No electoral system in the world is perfect and all are ever changing to meet the times and technology.

It will be interesting to see the current amended bill being challenged by civil society in the Constitutional Court.

 Sources

The Conversation

South Africa has changed its electoral law, but a much more serious overhaul is needed

South African president Cyril Ramaphosa recently signed into law a change to the country’s electoral act to allow individuals to contest… ^{1 23 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 14 15 16}