ANC trying to find way around electoral reform to cling to power, says analyst

An expert has lambasted the governing party for allegedly tinkering with the electoral reforms issue, saying it is trying to find a way around it so as to keep the little they can of the current electoral status for their own benefits.

Prof Lesiba Teffo said the ANC acted contrary to its own initiative when it identified the flaw in the Electoral Act and then commissioned Dr Frederick van Zyl Slabbert’s task team to probe what should be done to address the electoral reform issue.

They should simply implement the report instead of tinkering with electoral reforms, he said. In 2002, the Cabinet appointed the Electoral Task Team, which was chaired by Van Zyl Slabbert. Its task was to “draft the new electoral legislation required by the constitution”.

ALSO READ: Electoral reform: Time to dust off the Van Zyl Slabbert report?

The Thabo Mbeki administration appointed the Van Zyl Slabbert team which concluded its reporting early in 2003. But the report was left to gather dust and none of the ANC regimes implemented it.

“They are the initiators of this, but they lost the appetite to implement what is written in the Van Zyl Slabbert report. They pretend as if they are doing what the Constitutional Court wants to them to do when, in fact, they are reluctant to implement these reforms,” Teffo said.

Many ANC leaders accept that the party is dying but they want to cling to power because it’s about patronage. Teffo said if South Africa implemented the electoral reform as proposed by the report, the country wouldn’t be in the mess it was in currently.

“We wouldn’t be where we were with Zuma and state capture, because people would have been able to choose the president,” Teffo said.

He called for a referendum to ask voters if they were happy with the current electoral system, or if it should it be amended to allow for more direct elections of the president and other politicians instead of the party system.

“The referendum will leverage the initiatives that seek to amend the Electoral Act. It will be a point of reference because it’s the voice of the majority of the people about the envisaged electoral reform.

“The minimum you can do is to implement the Van Zyl Slabbert report. Anything else will not meet constitutional muster.”

ALSO READ: South Africans can’t wait for electoral reform any longer, MPs told

He said the ANC might have won the legitimacy to govern in the ballot box in 1994 and beyond, but it had lost the moral authority to run the country.

In June 2020, the Constitutional Court ruled that the Electoral Act was unconstitutional as it did not permit independent candidates to be elected to provincial legislatures or the National Assembly. This was a victory for the little-known civil society body, New Nation Movement.

Teffo said nothing short of the recommendations of the Van Zyl Slabbert report on electoral reforms would be accepted, or lawmakers risk being challenged in court.

“Let the people elect their leaders, electoral reform is not a panacea but a sine qua non. I am heartened that many patriots are critically debating the subject,” Teffo said.

– ericn@citizen.co.za