South Africa’s electoral system is set for a major overhaul. This is according to Aaron Motsoaledi, the minister of home affairs, who was speaking in Parliament on Tuesday.
Motsoaledi said that the country needed a new electoral system, which would go further than a Constitutional Court ruling last year, which compelled Parliament to amend the Electoral Act to allow independents to stand in national and provincial elections. Currently people have to be members of political party to stand as candidates for Parliament or any of the nine provincial legislatures. The Constitutional Court gave Parliament until next year to amend the Act to amend this.
Speaking to the parliamentary committee on home affairs, Motsoaledi said that his department had studied a number of electoral systems from around the world, as well as those that are used in five African countries (he did not mention which countries were studied). It had also studied various pieces of legislation which affected elections, such as laws regarding the funding of political parties. The department had drawn up a policy document which was due to be presented to Cabinet shortly and then to Parliament, likely in the first half of March.
The Institute of Race Relations has long called for South Africa’s electoral system to be reformed, so as to allow representatives to be directly elected to the various legislatures by voters as well as to break the power of party bosses.
Said Marius Roodt, a senior researcher at the Institute: ‘This move by the Minister is to be welcomed, but it remains to be seen whether any proposed amendments will actually strengthen representative democracy. Judgement should be reserved until the Home Affairs policy document is made public.’