South Africa has a golden opportunity to reform its electoral system and enhance accountability and responsiveness.
The Electoral Reform Consultation Panel (ERCP) is due to give its recommendations to Parliament at the end of this month, and there are reportedly three options under consideration.
The first is to keep the electoral system as is, while two other options would introduce a constituency element complemented by a parallel party-list to ensure proportionality.
The first of these options is a “multi-member” constituency system, where more than one MP would represent a constituency. The second is a single-member constituency system where only one MP would be elected from a constituency.
In both these proposals there would be a parallel top-up list of MPs elected on party lists to ensure proportionality. Proportionality is an imperative, as it is a constitutional requirement for the South African electoral system.
The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) recommends that a single-member constituency system be adopted, with a parallel top-up list to ensure proportionality. We believe that this will enhance accountability, with a single MP being elected to represent constituencies. In addition, having some form of constituency system could go some way to changing incentives – political parties will need to ensure that they are putting forward high-calibre candidates, especially in constituencies where there is no party which dominates.
In addition, MPs could play a powerful role in ensuring that issues which affect the forgotten corners of South Africa are brought to the forefront. Everyone knows about the water issues that have affected large cities such as Cape Town and Johannesburg, yet there are towns in South Africa where Day Zero came and went years ago, but their plight is often forgotten. Constituency MPs could act as important representatives for the communities which elect them by raising these types of issues in Parliament.
Beaten to death
Furthermore, imagine an MP taking up the cause of one of their constituents when all other avenues seem to have been exhausted. For example, consider the case of Collins Khosa, who was beaten to death by the army during Covid for the crime of having a beer in his front garden in Alexandra, Johannesburg. To this day, nobody has been brought to justice for this travesty of justice. An MP representing the area where Khosa was from could continually raise the fact that his killers were never brought to justice in Parliament. This is but one example of people mistreated by the state, who have been forgotten, often because they are poor and black.
Some will argue that it is possible to do this in the current system, or if South Africa adopted a multi-member system. We believe that this is not true. While MPs are often assigned constituencies in our current system, these are, in truth, only theoretical. If MPs were directly elected from defined geographical constituencies, we believe incentives for proper representation by MPs would exist. Constituents could also pressure their MP to take up issues. There could be real electoral consequences for MPs who ignored their constituents’ concerns.
In addition, in a multi-member constituency system it is likely that responsibility for issues could be ducked. With which MP does the buck stop in a multi-member system? In addition, many of the problems in the current party-list system would likely be replicated in each constituency in a multi-member system.
A system with single-member constituencies is not a silver bullet, but we believe it would go some way to ensuring that MPs are more responsive and accountable to voters.
There are a number of other issues to consider too, primarily that of thresholds.
Thresholds – where a party must secure a certain minimum level of support to secure seats in a legislature – must be considered carefully. Countries around the world use thresholds; for example, in New Zealand and Germany parties must get at least 5% of the vote to secure a seat in the national legislature.
Very low shares
There has been some push for that in South Africa, especially at municipal level, with small parties which have often very low shares of the vote holding disproportionate influence. Supporters of thresholds point to how people from very small parties have been elected to the mayoralty in some of our biggest cities. The most notable examples are Thapelo Amad and Kabelo Gwamanda, two of Al Jama-Ah’s three Johannesburg councillors, who each served as mayor of South Africa’s biggest city.
But we must not forget, Al Jama-Ah has only three votes out of Johannesburg’s 270 council seats. These people were elected as mayor by the ANC and EFF and others. We cannot lay the blame for instability at the door of small parties like Al Jama-Ah – it is our large parties which have been complicit.
Perhaps a solution would be to have a “governance” threshold – parties can only be elected to the mayoralty or hold executive seats such as mayoral committee posts if they have a proven level of support, perhaps 10%.
In addition, an argument against thresholds is that they are inherently undemocratic and exclusionary. Given South Africa’s history of exclusion, we must think carefully about the issue of thresholds, and whether they would result in stabilising government or simply act as a tool of exclusion.
In the final analysis, no amount of electoral reform will result in a system which results in responsive and attentive MPs. An electoral system can only guide us in getting to this destination, it cannot take us there. It is up to both voters and political parties to ensure that South African democracy works. Voters must take their choice seriously and realise the vote is a powerful tool in punishing and rewarding politicians. No party is entitled to a vote. And political parties must also put South Africa and its people first. Too many of our political parties do not do this.
The future, as always, is in the hands of ordinary South Africans.
[Image: By Holly Wasserfall – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55550491]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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