Merging elections would hurt South Africa’s democracy — here’s why

Amid discussions on how South African society could, and should, change as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, there are important proposals about how the very structure of our politics may change.

It appears that there have already been important conversations about the difficulty of holding local elections in 2021. While it is true that holding elections as we currently do (voters going to polling stations and voting physically) would be difficult, there is still a long way to go until then: the final deadline for local elections is in November 2021.

Now, writing in the City Press, former IEC commissioner Terry Tselane says he believes we should have just one election, that the national, provincial and local elections should be merged. As he rightly says, this would save a huge amount of money, which the government could spend on other things. He points out, for example, how much money is spent by the IEC on “registration weekends” to ensure every voter is registered.

Tselane says this would benefit the political parties as well, because they would spend less time and money campaigning. He believes that being “permanently” in election mode means the ruling party spends less time governing.

All of these points are valid. However, Tselane fails to examine what the impact would be on our politics and on our democracy. It could weaken our democracy and some of our political parties (including the ANC). 

The first point to make is that if local elections are held along with the other elections, national issues are likely to completely subsume the local ones, exerting down-ballot pressure. People will not be voting about who they think is the best mayor for Joburg, but are more likely to simply tick the same party block on each ballot paper. 

While this has already occurred to an extent (the 2016 local elections are a good example), it is not necessarily a good outcome. Local issues and local democracy won’t get a proper airing and could be ignored, both in the voting process and in the run-up to the poll. Local elections could become almost meaningless. 

This is a problem, because local issues, such as water shortages, problems with roads and electricity, and the lack of service from municipalities often only get addressed during local elections. This would not happen if the elections were merged and the national issues dominate.

At the same time, it is likely that it would become harder to start a new party with a local base. Parties such as the Bushbuckridge Local Residents Association or the African Independence Congress were only able to get going because of strong support in their areas. At the moment, it is possible for a party to get a few councillors elected on a ward basis, to represent people based on their physical constituency. This allows them to take those issues into the municipality and the council. If the issues are important enough, they could eventually get into Parliament.

Local elections can give parties, both in government and opposition, important signals that allow them to change course or self-correct. If you are governing badly and you are punished in local polls, that allows you to change course and thus retain national power. The same holds true for opposition parties: if they lose support in local polls, they know not to use the same strategy in national elections.