Former DA leader Mmusi Maimane will stand for president in 2024 he tells the FM — without the backing of a party.
Maimane is set to stand as an independent candidate after his much-publicised divorce from the DA in the aftermath of the 2019 election — a feat made possible by a 2020 Constitutional Court judgment.
However, this depends on parliament meeting the court’s tight deadline to bring the Electoral Act into line with the constitution by allowing independent candidates to contest national and provincial elections. The law as it stands permits independents to contest only local government elections.
While Maimane and his One SA Movement are looking forward to the amendments, the top court has presented the country with a chance to overhaul its party list-based electoral system.
Reforming the voting system should enhance democracy by bringing government closer to the people. Electoral systems are in the end aimed at benefiting voters, rather than political parties.
It is a rare opportunity for parliament to fundamentally strengthen SA’s democracy. But given the tight timelines, observers fear that should parliament simply pass a provision allowing independents to stand, it would have lost the opportunity for a wider revamp of the voting laws.
That might include revisiting the proposals of the electoral task team chaired by Frederik van Zyl Slabbert in 2003, which allow for independents and an astute blend of single-and multimember constituency-based voting.
The Constitutional Court last year ruled the Electoral Act unconstitutional because it did not allow independent candidates to contest provincial and national elections. Parliament was given until June 2022 to amend the act and bring it in line with the constitution.
A ministerial committee to advise the government on amending the act, chaired by former cabinet minister Valli Moosa, held its first consultative meeting at Constitution Hill this week.
The FM caught up with Moosa, who views his task as more than simply addressing the question of constitutionality raised in the 2020 judgment.
"This is not just about the Constitutional Court judgment, if we are going to be responsible. This is the first time since 1994 that the country has a real opportunity to improve its electoral system.
"In the life of a nation, these opportunities do not arise often … it is a wonderful opportunity to take a serious look at our electoral system," he says. "It is hugely important. It has the potential to change the face of our politics … it will enhance democratic representation and democracy."
A long-term solution is needed, he adds, to strengthen and sustain SA democracy — "a difficult task requiring sober thought".
Moosa says the current electoral system was designed for the 1994 election. "It was designed to work under very specific circumstances … one of these was that there was no voters roll."
Those circumstances have changed dramatically. "There wasn’t a single way back then to identify an SA citizen … a democratic election had never before been held in SA.
"It was not possible at that time to do demarcations of any kind. We had to hold those elections under pressure … The pure proportional representation system has served its purpose."
There was also a "conscious decision" that once the 1994 elections were held, a new, permanent electoral system would be determined and implemented.
It never happened.
Moosa says it is too early to say what type of system will emerge, except that time is tight.
Aside from the court’s deadline, the Electoral Commission of SA would need time to adapt its processes to a new voting system, says Lawson Naidoo, director of the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution.
Naidoo expresses frustration at the nine months wasted since last year, when work should have started on this "critical" issue. He, too, sees the project as more than tweaking the law to allow independents to fight national and provincial elections. It’s about "fundamentally overhauling" the electoral system.
There are various options: the current proportional representation; a plurality, majority or "first past the post" system; or a mixed system. Aside from the recommendations of the Slabbert commission, there is also the research of the panel commissioned by the Inclusive Society Institute, which was led by transition negotiator Roelf Meyer.
Ebrahim Fakir, who was part of Meyer’s panel and is programme director of the Auwal Socio-Economic Research Institute, cautions against wasting this opportunity, which political parties may be inclined to do. Merely legislating for independents, he adds, could result in a lengthy ballot paper containing perhaps hundreds of candidates.
So, it’s over to parliament. With excellent groundwork to draw on, MPs have 14 months to craft a more judicious electoral system, one that will set the tone of SA’s democracy for decades to come.
The real question is whether a riven ANC has the guts or the inclination to give up control of the party list system in the interest of greater democracy.
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