On the South African electoral system: how much power do ordinary citizens actually have?
In the general election of 2014, South Africa had 33 parties competing for seats in the National Assembly. The National Assembly (NA) has a total of 400 seats and these are shared using an allocatory method of proportional representation through a closed list approach. What this essentially means is that we, as citizens, have little to no say over which individuals are elected to represent us in the NA. In this essay I will argue that the present electoral system urgently needs to be rethought and reformed. The system, as it is today, is open to a multitude of abuses by political parties and cannot be seen to be useful tool for representation and accountability. I will support my argument by considering cases that highlight its weakness. In an attempt to be fair, I will also highlight its strengths. The focus will be on the National Assembly.
If you head to the polls in 2019 you will be presented with two ballot papers — one will be for the national legislature and the other will be for the legislature of the province in which you reside. On these ballot papers you will see political party logos. It is not wholly unreasonable to think that a voter may make their decision solely on the preference for the colours of one party over those of another. This is where we encounter the first, and perhaps most considerable, flaw of our electoral system. Voters know what they are voting for but not who they are voting for.
Our country uses a system of proportional representation to share the 400 available seats in the NA amongst the parties who contest elections. This method of allocating seats allows even the smallest parties to stand a chance of forming a part of Parliament. The African People’s Convention, a party founded in 2007, received 30,676 votes which was 0.17% of the total. This very low figure translated into 1 seat in the National Assembly. On the other hand, the African National Congress received 11,436,921 votes — 62.15% of the total — which translated into 249 seats in the National Assembly.
The closed list approach used in our electoral system requires that parties, by a set date, submit a complete list of members who will stand for seats in the aforementioned legislatures. These party lists are often drafted without consultation of the public and are handled as party business and may be the result of internal discussions, or may be decided upon by virtue of seniority within a party.
As you may have gathered from what’s been written above, Members of Parliament (MPs) are not selected by the people they claim to represent but are chosen, as candidates, by whichever internal selection mechanisms their parties employ. The general public is almost solely responsible for determining how many people off a party list are rewarded with a seat in Parliament.
Parliamentary terms last for five years, yet it is not guaranteed that an MP will serve a full term. This lack of security of tenure may be viewed as a flaw or as a positive aspect of our political system.Performing MPs may serve multiple terms, however, underperforming MPs may do likewise. They may also be removed on a whim by their party. Traditionally, the first name on a party’s list will be that party’s nominee for presidential office. The ANC’s party lists in 2009 and 2014 were topped by one Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, who was elected president of the African National Congress in 2007 at the hotly contested Polokwane Elective Conference. The first member of parliament, barring any unexpected events, to lose their seat is the member who is entrusted with the position of President of the Republic by the National Assembly. The President, upon being elected by the House, resigns as an MP and is then tasked with forming their cabinet, the Executive. The party from which the President is elected is then allowed to deploy to the National Assembly a member to take up the seat vacated by the President.
The philosophy of Trias Politica and the doctrine of separation of powers, as espoused by Locke and Montesquieu, are what our system of government is based on. The Trias Politica advocates for a system of government in which there are three separate branches: the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. The separation of powers is implemented to decentralise power in order for the different branches to operate independently, to some extent, and to exercise oversight over one another’s functions. Although South Africa employs the doctrine of separation of powers, it does not follow it strictly. The legislature has some say over who forms the executive; the executive has some say over who forms the judiciary; and the judiciary has some interpretative powers over the work of the legislature. The false, or incomplete, separation of powers is supposed to work in the interests of accountability yet this opens the entire political system to interferences with one branch’s work by another.
The ability to hold people accountable usually rests in the power of recall. There is much debate over who, in the South African system of government, can recall who. It is intuitive that citizens may recall those who are supposed to represent them — Members of Parliament— yet we are granted the opportunity to exercise this power only once every five years through the general election. The President may be recalled by Parliament through the passing of a motion of no confidence in the President and the entire executive. The President must remove a sitting judge after a resolution to remove said judge has been adopted by two thirds of the National Assembly. Judges are granted security of tenure prescribed by Section 176 of the Constitution of the Republic. It cannot be ignored that Members of Parliament are seemingly immune to the possibility of being removed by those they represent.
The last sentence of the above paragraph may be looked at in two ways: Members of Parliament represent the people who voted for the party; or they represent the party which nominated them for a seat in Parliament according to the party list submitted to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC). The first interpretation seems to be the most common one amongst the MPs, and the second interpretation holds sway amongst the general population.
The past four or so years have brought the issue of political representation to the fore. Proportional representation is an effective and fair way of granting seats to parties in Parliament, yet the fairness it offers to citizens is questionable. Citizens may be the most disempowered cogs within the political machine which governs their lives at multiple levels. Citizens, through freedom of association, may choose to become card-carrying members of a political party of their choosing but even then are not trusted with much power.
In October 2017, the office of the Secretary General of the ANC released a document outlining the number of delegates that each province would be permitted at the Elective Conference which was held in December of that year. The total number of delegates was 4723. These 4723 delegates carried mandates from their branches and provincial bodies to vote in a particular way. These 4723 delegates were, at that conference, the most powerful citizens in the country bar those who held positions in any sphere of government. It must be noted, however, that among those delegates may have been members of the ANC who already held positions in government. What emerged from this conference was a new leadership of the ANC — the top 6 — and a new National Executive Committee, which is the highest decision making body of the ANC between conferences. These 4723 delegates comprise the entirety of those who have some say over who will represent “the people” as deployees of the African National Congress.
These deployees are, first and foremost, accountable to the party which has deployed them into any office of authority. This, it goes without saying, includes those deployed by their party to Parliament. Political parties reserve the right to remove any of their deployees to the National Assembly as they see fit. This then brings us back to the question of who MPs really represent.
MPs, under threat of recall, toe the party line more often than note when it comes to making decisions in Parliament. In an ideal scenario, Members of Parliament would vote on motions according to their conscience — assuming that their conscience aligns with the stance of the party they represent in the House. This, however, is not always the case. Elected officials, just like the ordinary citizen, often need to consider the full ramifications of whichever decision they wish to make. This is colloquially termed “politics of the stomach” because one needs to ensure that one will be able to eat in future. Thus, as history has proven multiple times, it is unlikely for a political party in South Africa to recall, through a motion of no confidence, an individual it has deployed to the position of President.
In an attempt to be fair to the ruling party, it must be noted that they are not the only ones who sometimes find themselves in tricky positions regarding the party line and the consciences of party officials in various spheres of governance. The Democratic Alliance has attempted to deal, albeit disastrously, with people voting with their consciences in support of motions against the party’s deployees.
In July 2017, six Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) councillors disobeyed instructions from the EFF’s Central Command Team and attended a budget vote for the Mogale City Municipality. The official instruction from the top was to be absent so as to not allow the ANC to pass the budget due to quorum not being reached. The six councillors, in defiance, attended the meeting and went as far as voting with the ANC to pass the budget. One can reach different conclusions about what drove the councillors to break ranks — their consciences may have played a major role.
When former President Thabo Mbeki resigned from his position in 2008, he did so of his own accord and was not removed as a result of a motion of no confidence being passed against him and his cabinet. He did, however, lose the confidence of the National Executive Committee of the ANC. This case brings into stark relief the issue of loyalty to the party versus loyalty to the people — the two are not always clearly divisible, however. The Mbeki resignation should have been a precursor to how the removal of former President Jacob Zuma would unfold.
Facing massive backlash from the public, which was arguably strongly influence by the media, the ANC eventually came to the decision to remove another sitting President. Zuma, prior to his resignation as President of the Republic, had been at pains to ensure that the Constitution was abided by to the letter. Put simply, he felt it unjust for a political party to attempt to remove him from Office because they had not put him in that position. Zuma was right. He was elected by Parliament to the highest office in the land and he was right to argue that only Parliament could remove him. A survivor of many attempts by opposition parties to remove him, Zuma had become accustomed to navigating motions of no confidence conducted openly or through secret ballots. One could spend days discussing the fall of Jacob Zuma but that is not our aim here.
The relationship between Members of Parliament and us, their constituents, is governed by a middleman — the party — and this creates an imbalance of power which is ignored to our disadvantage. Most South Africans who are fairly aware of political happenings in the country do not know who their Member of Parliament is. This is a failure on behalf of Parliament insofar as it has not made the information easily accessible. The failure is not Parliaments alone though. Much of the blame must be placed on the system of proportional representation chosen instead of a primarily constituency-based electoral system which would allow us, the people, to select our representatives. The present system leaves far too much power in the hands of political parties which, constitutionally, are extra-parliamentary bodies.
As things stand, we have little say, as citizens, over who is chosen to lead the country as President. This can quite easily, and justifiably, be characterised as an undemocratic feature of our political system. One may argue that this is simply not the case and that all have a chance to have their say over who a party chooses as its presidential candidate. This is a valid argument but elective conferences of parties are not known for their transparency as many agreements are made at the last minute behind closed doors. Figures such as the current Deputy President of the ANC and the Republic, DD Mabuza, may find themselves wielding power as a result of strategic decision-making and long-term planning.
Conclusion
In this piece I have attempted to show the minimal role played by the general population in electing public officials, whether they are Members of Parliament or the President. I have shown how the doctrine of separation of powers is imperfectly implemented in our political system in an attempt to create mechanisms of accountability. What is most striking about the aforementioned accountability is that it is assumed that it is accountability to citizens but, in practice, it is accountability to the party. South Africans are left at a disadvantage because they have no effective means of holding public officials accountable other than elections and even then they can only hold parties accountable. “Selected” officials owe their positions to their party and not strictly to those who gave the party power to deploy them. This is something that needs to be thought about and engaged with as a topic in our public discourse.
In a future piece, I will propose an alternative electoral system that will seek to empower citizens by implementing stronger methods of holding public officials accountable.
*Part 2*
