Deadline looms for electoral reform that will shape SA politics for decades to come

Legislation which will shape South Africa’s political landscape for decades to come is about to be finalised by Parliament.

The Electoral Amendment Bill (B1-2022), which is currently subject to a nationwide public consultation process by the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs, has received some mixed reactions. The bill proposes amendments to the Electoral Act 73 of 1998 after the Constitutional Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for not allowing independent candidates to contest elections to the National Assembly and provincial legislatures. The court gave Parliament 24 months to finalise and pass the bill. That deadline is fast approaching: 10 June 2022.

Home Affairs Minister Dr Pakishe Aaron Motsoaledi established the Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) to develop policy options to address the deficiency. After completing its task, MAC then tabled two options to Cabinet on 10 January 2022: the minimalist option and the mixed-member proportional system. Cabinet selected the minimalist option. In summary, the bill suggests electoral reform to allow independent candidates to contest in the national and provincial legislatures.

However, it falls short of proposing meaningful electoral reform which would take South Africa’s current proportional representation (PR) system to a mixed-member proportional representation (MMPR) electoral system that would include MPs directly elected by constituencies.

This has been the call from academics and independent research think tanks for well over two decades. This article examines what the possibilities of an MMPR system could mean for South Africa’s democracy.

There are many meanings, connotations and contestations attached to the word “democracy” which constitute it as one of the most slippery concepts to define, yet it has emerged as perhaps the only stable and enduring principle in the postmodern political landscape. Democracy, according to classical political theorist Robert Dahl, has meant different things to different people in different times and different places. In other words, it’s contextual.

There is universal agreement, however, that “free and fair” elections serve as the most basic precondition for democracy. In the field of comparative political science, there are four types of definitions of democracy: substantive, constitutional, procedural and process-orientated. However, constitutional and process-oriented definitions of democracy fall into the categories of substantive and procedural respectively.

Substantive approaches give attention to conditions of life, regarding aspects such as human welfare, social equity, public deliberation and individual freedom. Substantive approaches to defining democracy are fundamentally dependent upon the meta-ideology of liberalism.

Procedural approaches focus on a range of governmental practices that qualify a democracy. Democracy in this sense is defined by classical theorist Seymour Martin Lipset as “a political system which supplies regular constitutional opportunities for changing the governing officials”. The latter includes elections.  

Different kinds of electoral systems