2024 elections: How many seats a party needs to change SA’s Constitution

As the national and provincial elections draw near, political parties have emphasised the goal of securing a two-thirds majority to govern.

South Africa will head to the polls on 29 May, with more than 50 political parties set to contest the highly anticipated election in the country’s history.

Polls have already indicated that votes for the African National Congress (ANC) could dip below 50%, thus, losing a majority to rule.

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This could force the ANC into a coalition at national level for the first after 30 years of being in power.

Despite the conversation around a coalition government, some parties, such as former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party, want an “overwhelming majority” so they could to change the Constitution.

The Citizen takes a look at how political parties achieve this.

How national and provincial elections work

The number of votes needed to win a seat in an election depends on how many people vote.

It needs to be understood that South Africa’s electoral system is based on a closed-list proportional representation (PR) system for national and provincial elections. (Local government elections use a mixture of PR and constituency-based systems.)

This means that political parties are represented in direct proportion to the number of votes they got in the national election.

Since the Electoral Amendment Act became law, independent candidates have been accommodated within the electoral system.

In this year’s elections, those participating are contesting for seats in Parliament and the provincial legislatures.

The National Assembly, which is the decisive house in Parliament and consists of the executive, has 400 seats.

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The seats are distributed as 200 national PR seats. Only to be contested by political parties.

The 200 regional seats are divided between the regions. The regions are contested by parties and independent candidates.

It must be noted that regions are the same as provinces, but called regions to distinguish the election results from those for the provincial legislatures.

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) determines the allocation of the 200 regional list seats to each province by population.

So depending on the size of the province’s population, it receives a greater share of the 200 seats allocated to it.

According to the Electoral Amendment Act, an independent candidate can only obtain one seat in a provincial legislature regardless of votes since additional seats are forfeited.

Six independent candidates will contest for seats in the National Assembly and six will contest the provincial legislature elections.

How your votes translate into seats and for a party to get a majority

The IEC’s method in allocating seats for the elections is based on a quota formula.

The commission calculates the quota for a seat by dividing all valid votes by a number of seats (400), then adding one to the result and disregarding fractions.

For example, 37 687 500 (37.6 million) national and regional votes for political parties will be divided by 400 plus one in addition to disregarding fractions will equal to a 94 219 quota (94 218.75 + 1).

The total quota is used to divide the votes for each party before seats are allocated.

So ANC’s 10 309 000 (10.3 million) votes are divided by a 94 219 quota and this will equal 109 seats out of the total 400 for the governing party.

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Not all seats may be allocated initially.

The highest remainder method is used to allocate seats not allocated by awarding seats according to the sequence of highest surplus votes.

For example, if the Democratic Alliance (DA) get 658 000 votes divided by 94 219, the party will be allocated “6.984 seats”.

When the remaining “0.984 seats” is calculated, the final allocation will receive the DA get seven seats.

In conclusion, if a party wins half the votes it will hold half the seats in the National Assembly.

See the IEC’s graphic below:

Npe Seat Calculation Graphic by Molefe Seeletsa

How many seats are needed to change the Constitution?

To answer the main question, a two-thirds majority is needed to make any changes to South Africa’s Constitution.

The Constitution itself is protected, which means it is more difficult to change it than it is to change ordinary laws.

Section 74(2) states that any bill that seeks to amend the Constitution must be passed by a 75% majority in the National Assembly, or 267 members out of the total 400 to amend the country’s supreme law.

This is also in addition to a supporting vote of at least six of the nine provincial legislatures in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP).

The NCOP has 90 seats (10 members from each province). Members of the NCOP are delegates nominated by each provincial legislature.

A bill needs to be tabled to make any changes to the Constitution, which has already been amended several times since it came into force in 1996.

In 2021, Parliament voted against amending Section 25 of the Constitution to allow the state to expropriate land without compensation.

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