Electoral reform stalls as top political parties prioritize power over change

Electoral reform will take a long time because is not a priority to the country’s top three political parties. After all, they benefit from the status quo.

This is the view of political analyst Sandile Swana, who said the ANC, Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) were not showing any interest in changing the current party proportional representation system because it gave them political mileage over members deployed in parliament.

The current Electoral Act and its latest amendments continued to give political leaders the upper hand over the parliamentarians, to whom they dictated terms.

Swana said the main reason there was a delay in implementing a new voting system was the vested interest political parties had in keeping the current system, where they had more power than the electorate – and party memberships – to determine who should be nominated for election to parliament, provincial legislatures and, to a certain extent, to municipal councils.

Parties fear constituency system proposed by Van Zyl Slabbert Commission

He said parties feared the constituency system proposed by the Van Zyl Slabbert Commission.

The commission recommended 300 seats be contested by party-sponsored and independent candidates and the remaining 100 be on the proportional representation (PR) basis. The 2003 Van Zyl Slabbert report was shelved.

Swana said due to the faulty PR system, many MPs and senior leaders of political parties had become MPs without the support of the constituencies they represented.

“If you study the situation, you may well discover there are no specific constituencies Gwede Mantashe, Cyril Ramaphosa and other party political leaders represent in parliament.

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“Van Zyl Slabbert proposed you must be elected directly and represent a specific constituency, and not be allocated by the party; they must win an election in a constituency.

“So the electoral reforms are not popular because people enjoy the economic rewards and political power that comes with the current system, the indirect representation approach in South Africa. That is why all the proposals dealing with electoral reforms are slow or not supported.”

Swana said parties like the ANC, DA and EFF, which should support reforms, were not interested. They feared losing their seats and power.

If the constituency system was implemented, some political parties would disappear from parliament and the bigger parties’ representation reduced drastically.

PR system favoured political parties

Swana said the PR system favoured political parties, especially their leaders, who tend to dictate terms at party caucuses.

Former public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane and others before her had become MPs overnight because the leader decided who should be deployed, not the electorate. The PR system had made party leaders more powerful than necessary.

As a result, the likes of ANC national chair Mantashe could instruct ANC MPs in a party caucus to toe the party line and not vote with the opposition during secret ballots, otherwise they would face disciplinary action.

Several opposition parties had fired members, especially in municipal councils, who voted against the party positions.

But the ANC recently spared Minister in the Presidency Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and other MPs who voted in favour of Ramaphosa to be impeached for the Phala Phala saga.

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