Voting in South Africa will fundamentally change in 2024. Parliament is tasked with amending the Electoral Act of 1998, but is proposing changes that risk making our elections unfair. The proposed Electoral Amendment Bill before parliament is so complex, irrational and flawed that many members of parliament cannot explain the changes.
It is shocking that not even the ANC has properly read or engaged a bill so consequential. The home affairs portfolio committee with a majority ANC vote, approved the bill at the national assembly last week Wednesday.
At the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation’s public lecture on Saturday, Snuki Zikalala, the president of the ANC Veterans League and ANC national executive member, admitted that he knew nothing of the bill but conveyed a message from the minister of home affairs, the author of the bill, that the ANC does not support the current bill and remains open to engagement on fixing it.
In June 2020, the Constitutional Court ruled in favour of the New Nation Movement, declaring the current Electoral Act in South Africa unconstitutional because it does not allow contestation in national and provincial elections by independent candidates.
The ConCourt argued that the right to associate freely also includes the right to not associate at all. Thus, a law that forces people seeking election into parliament or provincial legislatures that force people to join political parties to contest is inherently unfair.
Our current voting system is an accident of history. We have a sysem that only allows political parties to contest in general elections owing to a negotiated settlement between the liberation movement and the apartheid government. It happened in a time of national crisis, in the wake of the assisination of Chris Hani in 1993, to fast-track calling for democratic elections.
In line with the court’s judgement, parliament has until December 10 2022 to pass an Electoral Amendment Bill that will allow independent candidates to contest in the 2024 elections. Parliamentarians have through a combination of procrastination, and a sheer lack of political will, produced a proposed bill that complies to the judgment by making it possible for independent candidates to contest in national and provincial elections in a way that would potentially make the contest unfair.
For almost a year and a half after the judgment, parliament did nothing to research or debate any amendments. They instead waited for the minister of home affairs, Aaron Motswaledi, to present an executive bill, the product of a Ministerial Advisory Committee.
The committee proposed two options. The first was one supported by most members of the committee, to follow the recommendations of the 2003 Van Zyl Slabbert report, which suggests a mixed representation system at national and provincial level, similar to the tried and tested voting system at local government elections. A system that still allows parties to contest for proportional representation on one ballot while allowing direct constituency. In the case of local government elections, it is ward-based whereby individuals can contest as party members or independent candidates for the position of ward councillor. Parliamentarians have not explained why they have decided to ignore this recommendation in favour of a proposed bill that would:
1. Force independent candidates head-to-head with the entire list of a political party on the same ballot;
2. Require independent candidates to get 8,000 signatures to register to vote, compared to 1,000 signatures needed by parties; and
3. Use a quota system to discard the votes given to an independent once they have gained one seat, but allow parties on the same ballot to get the full value of all the votes cast for them.
In his address at the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation’s public lecture on Saturday, former member of Parliament Valli Moosa argued that the reason parties and MPs are choosing this path is because they fear a system that would make them directly accountable to the people of South Africa.
In 2022, we should not allow the fears of accountability by the new political elite to deliver a voting system in 2024 that will diminish the most basic gains of democracy, the power of the vote, to serve their own interests.
The public should demand that MPs, parties representing us in parliament, and the president read the Electoral Amendment Bill, explain the bill and motivate why they plan to vote for the bill. If they cannot, they should be mandated to #REJECTTHEBILL.
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