Nkosikhulule Nyembezi
Cape Town - The National Assembly’s “adoption” of the defective version of the Electoral Amendment Bill on October 20 would be astonishing at any other time in our multi-party democracy, given its spectacular divergence from the simplicity of the unqualified language of the constitutional right to stand for public office.
After not much more than green-washing, they demonstrated a dereliction of duty in this legislative process meant to ensure “the people shall govern”, according to the Freedom Charter, and finalise the proceeding steps of the Government of National Unity agreed to in the Constituent Assembly that negotiated our Constitution.
It oversaw the passage of a bill unfairly advantaging political parties in direct contrast to the Freedom Charter’s provision that “every man and woman shall have the right to vote for and to stand as a candidate for all bodies which make laws”.
Right now, though, it looks like mere par for the course in the ANC majority that seems utterly chaotic, unable to be a midwife to the legislative process to ensure that the people, not only political parties, shall govern.
If we needed it, it is further proof that Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration may be the ANC’s last chance at the helm of government.
Were talk and slogans to count for more than actions in politics, some conscientious members of the ANC-led tripartite alliance would contest the 2024 national and provincial elections as independent candidates to set (themselves) free from the trappings of the party.
After all, independent candidates and their supporters have historical associations with one or more political parties. But their rise to prominence for inserting artificial barriers to independent candidacy has been almost as fast as their ultimate vote in support of this version that undermines the basic tenets of our liberation Struggle.
Before the parliamentary vote on the bill, civil society organisations wrote to MPs to reject it over inadequate consultations, bizarre measures like pre-context support thresholds and failure to reform the electoral system comprehensively.
Instead, the ANC voted for second-rate legislation and happily romanticised its procrastination since 1996 to adopt an electoral system that results, in general, in a proportional representation of the citizens’ views in legislative bodies.
It made lame excuses for failing to demarcate constituency boundaries and graduate what we already practise when voting for ward candidates in local government elections, many of whom have no political party affiliation.
They then cast themselves as alpha all-action gatekeepers to our freedom to make political choices, such as campaigning for a political cause and directly electing our public representatives, not only political parties. Younger generations will mostly remember the ANC as the party that did not finish the historical mission to give power to the people through the franchise.
And now it has passed the bill –even though it is full of deficiencies –just like that. A constitutionally compliant electoral system should make it practical for citizens to elect public representatives to form a government based on the “will of the people” by ensuring that the one-person-one-vote principle applies in the formula used to convert cast votes into seats.
It must result in a proportional representation of the citizens’ political choices and causes they campaign for and not just glorify political parties, which are merely vehicles of convenience for citizens to enjoy political rights. It should include features in line with the preamble and foundation values in the Constitution, saying that “through our freely elected representatives”, we shall uphold “a multi-party system of democratic government, to ensure accountability, responsiveness and openness”.
It should result in a better life for all through implementing the five pillars of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) promise: meeting basic needs, developing human resources, building the economy, democratising the state and implementing the RDP.
It should implement the Van Zyl Slabbert commission recommendations on electoral reform, the Valli Moosa recommendations and the Constitutional Court decisions.
The National Assembly, an arm of government that is as ripe for reform as it was a generation ago after the second democratic elections, remains one of the unhappiest and least focused places in the list of institutions of our democracy. No wonder.
Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said those opposed to the bill should not “mislead” the public that it would have been possible within 24 months to have passed an act geared to demarcate constituencies for the National Assembly.
Some belligerent parliamentarians antagonised participating citizens, labelling them as “stooges of the domestic and international white capitalist establishment”.
But there is more to it than that.
Motsoaledi’s remarks are a not-so-coded assault on the trust the masses placed in the ANC, attempting to claim that the party is ready and willing to confess to getting things wrong over the years when, by implication, opposition parties are not.
Either way, it is a sign that the ANC is nowhere near to getting out of the jail into which it’s straying away from the Freedom Charter, the Constitution, and related election manifesto promises have landed it.
Within a short time since the Constitutional Court set a deadline for changing the law, it continues to lose electoral support and credibility in the eyes of citizens.
Our commitment to participatory and inclusive democracy was once a shining beacon. Now they are just batons that passed, dropped and exchanged in the endless preservation of a pure proportional party system and the party dominance of our electoral politics relay race and factionalism in most parties to which these parties have now been reduced by their own idiocy.
The ANC government still hangs by a thread. It will do anything to use its majority to also “adopt” the bill in the National Council of Provinces.
It will continue making hallowed claims to have complied with the Constitutional Court ruling instead of comprehensively finishing its historical mandate to ensure that the people shall govern, not political parties.
The party has lost its judgement, and it is an ungovernable party that is more than ever unable to govern the country.
Nyembezi is a human rights activist and policy analyst
Cape Times