After a year of consultations, the Civil Society Electoral Reform Panel (CSERP) has released its Let the People Govern! position paper calling for comprehensive reform of South Africa’s electoral system. The paper proposes a hybrid electoral model and the Right to Recall public representatives – key measures that will inform the foundation of our campaigning.
CSERP was launched on 11 August 2024, shortly after Parliament established yet another panel to advise it on electoral reform. Recognising the limitations of Parliament’s top-down processes, CSERP was created as a people-led initiative to demonstrate civil society’s continued commitment to deepening democracy and to enable meaningful public engagement in shaping South Africa’s electoral future.
The position paper argues that South Africa urgently needs an electoral system that enables a more direct and participatory democracy. It notes that the current system, designed for the transition to democracy in the 1990s, no longer serves the needs of our maturing political landscape. We propose a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system that combines Single Member Constituencies (SMCs) with proportional representation – enhancing accountability while preserving fairness and inclusivity.
Crucially, the paper also introduces a Right to Recall mechanism that will empower voters to remove underperforming or unaccountable representatives between elections.
This hybrid model fulfills the constitutional requirement of proportionality while ensuring that political representatives are directly accountable to citizens. It would narrow the distance between the electorate and elected officials and shift democratic authority away from political elites and back to the people. It would strengthen our right to decide who represents us, instead of this being dictated by political party leaders under the closed-list proportional representation system.
We further recognise that electoral reform alone cannot resolve South Africa’s accountability crisis. Therefore, alongside the campaign for electoral reform, we will continue to advocate for broad democratic reforms, mobilise society to re-engage in political life, and use democratic tools – including the vote – to deepen people’s power.
In the coming months, we will convene civil society organisations, movements, and communities to strategise on building a broad-based campaign to advance the position paper’s recommendations and strengthen participatory democracy.
To download the position paper, click [here].
CSERP is made up of: My Vote Counts, Abahlali baseMjondolo, Afesis, the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC), Defend Our Democracy (DoD), Equal Education (EE), the Institute of Election Management Services in Africa (IEMSA), Zabalaza Pathways Institute, and Dr Klaus Kotzé who led the research that informed the drafting of the paper.
For any enquiries, please contact boikanyo@myvotecounts.org.za
