by Jan Gerber
- Civil society organisations formed their own panel on electoral reform.
- This comes after civil society was snubbed for a panel appointed by Parliament in May.
- While several reports have recommended a hybrid constituency/proportional system for South Africa, the previously ANC-dominated Parliament failed to move on it.
A push to change how South Africa elects its members of Parliament gained further momentum after a group of civil society organisations launched their own panel on electoral reform.
This follows civil society being snubbed by Parliament and former home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi for a legislatively required electoral reform panel appointed in May.
The Civil Society Electoral Reform Panel (CERP) was launched by My Vote Counts at Constitutional Hill, Johannesburg, on Friday.
It consists of:
- Thapelo Mohapi (Abahlali baseMjondolo)
- Dan Mafora (The Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution)
- Noncedo Madubedube (Equal Education)
- Mazibuko Jara (Zabalaza Pathways Institute)
- Nontando Ngamlana (Afesis)
- Terry Tselane (The Institute of Elections Management Services in Africa)
- Boikanyo Moloto (My Vote Counts)
- Nicole Fritz (Defend our Democracy)
Electoral reform has received renewed attention after the Constitutional Court’s June 2020 ruling that the Electoral Act had to be amended to allow independent candidates to contest national and provincial elections.
Initially, activists and academia hoped that this would lead to substantial electoral reform to effect greater accountability for public representatives.
This evaporated as the amendment started to make its arduous way through Parliament.
Motsoaledi appointed a Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC), chaired by former environment minister Valli Moosa.
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The MAC’s majority recommendation envisaged a system that provides a mixed single-member constituency and proportional representation system.
The minority recommendation proposed a so-called minimal amendment to the Electoral Act, that didn’t include constituencies. This is the option Motsoaledi took in the drafting of the flawed Electoral Amendment Act, and which the ANC pushed through Parliament in what has since been described as malicious compliance with the Constitutional Court’s order.
In October 2022, the National Assembly passed the Electoral Amendment Act amid much opprobrium from civil society, which wanted more extensive electoral reforms.
Introducing the bill to the National Council of Provinces, Motsoaledi proposed including a clause that would provide for the establishment of a panel of experts to consider more expansive electoral reform.
This was included in the bill that President Cyril Ramaphosa assented to in April 2023 and that came into effect on 22 June. This meant the panel had to be appointed by 22 October.
This deadline came and went, and the panel was only appointed two weeks before the elections.
Motsoaledi recommended the nine-person panel from a list of nominees in consultation with the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), which the National Assembly approved.
The three members of the MAC that supported the minority recommendation for the Electoral Amendment Act, all got the nod from Motsoaledi, while several respected electoral reform proponents did not make the cut.
Despite then-opposition parties, the DA and IFP’s concerns about the panel, including the lack of representation from civil society, the ANC, which still had a parliamentary majority, pushed through Motsoaledi’s recommendations.
The panel also included several current and former IEC officials and is chaired by advocate Richard Sizani, a former PAC MP and civil servant.
READ | DA, IFP question Motsoaledi’s picks for ‘independent’ electoral reform panel
Subsequently, a group of civil society organisations issued a statement questioning the motivation for including the three former MAC members and expressed concern about civil society’s exclusion.
“As civil society, we place on record that we do not believe that this panel represents the spectrum of necessary skills, experience and independence needed to conduct the urgent quest for electoral reform. We recommend that the next Parliament reviews the composition of the panel to enable the electoral reform process to win the trust of the country. Without the necessary trust, it may well be another exercise in futility,” reads the statement.
Tselane – one of the nominated electoral experts snubbed for the parliamentary panel – and Moloto noted during Friday’s event that the MAC majority wasn’t the first body to propose a mixed proportional constituency-based system.
In 2002, Cabinet appointed an electoral task team chaired by the late Frederik van Zyl Slabbert. Its task was to “draft the new electoral legislation required by the Constitution”.
It published its report in January 2003, but Parliament did not implement its recommendations and drafted new legislation.
Tselane remarked that Parliament decided not to heed both the MAC and the Van Zyl Slabbert majority recommendations.
“And yet, the majority of South Africans are saying: there is something wrong with the electoral system,” he said.
He added that civil society therefore got together because “we are not convinced that Parliament will come up with something again, or we’ve got our own doubts about how far the panel appointed by Parliament is going to go given the experiences we’ve already gone through”.
“We are not competing with the panel that the minister has appointed, we will complement each other.”
My Vote Counts executive director Minhaj Jeenah also said that the civil society panel isn’t intended to be a “shadow panel” to the parliamentary panel.
Tselane said Parliament has always taken a technicist approach and was criticised for not having enough public consultation.
“We feel that with our participation as civil society organisations, we can benefit the country with our collective wisdom of the organisations that are participants in this process.”
Sizani and fellow parliamentary panel member Dr Albertus Schoeman were present at the event, which was welcomed by the civil society panellists.
Sizani said they had not been asked to rank or make a single proposal, but must instead provide Parliament with several options to consider.
He said they had issued a call for submissions from political parties, independents, civil society, and individuals to make submissions to the panel by the end of September.
Schoeman said they would publish a discussion paper in early December, which would elicit further submissions before they go to all provinces for public hearings.
The MAC and the Van Zyl Slabbert report aren’t the only bodies that recommended electoral reform. Former president Kgalema Motlanthe led a high-level panel which reviewed South Africa’s legislation.
Its 2017 report recommended that “Parliament should amend the Electoral Act to provide for an electoral system that makes members of Parliament accountable to defined constituencies on a proportional representation and constituency system for national elections”.
The Zondo Commission made a similar recommendation.
Originally published on News24.
