Don’t start fiddling with the Constitution

For the past twenty years I have been forecasting that as soon as the ANC starts losing power it will want to change the Constitution in order to amend the electoral system.

The Independent Electoral Commission had barely announced the results of the local government elections before the secretary-general of the ANC, Mr Gwede Mantashe, started calling into question the electoral system.  According to him, it was strange that in Nelson Mandela Bay more recognition was given to the smaller parties while the ANC, although it won more wards than the DA, had been given less proportional representation seats.

Mr Mantashe is neither ignorant nor stupid (even though he is a Communist) and one must assume that he wanted to convey was that it was the fault of the system, not the ANC, that it had lost support and seats.  Therefore, at least the system had to be looked at afresh.

Mr Mantashe knows that we have an almost ideal local government election system.  It combines the wards with a party list system.  If a party wins 40 per cent of the vote, it ends up with 40 per cent of the seats, filled firstly from the wards it wins and then topped up from the list.  It is absolutely fair because each party gets what the voters decided.

The big advantage of this system is that gerrymandering of ward boundaries is minimal and all shades of opinion gain representation in our councils.  The so-called “winner –takes-all” politics of Westminster are excluded while at least giving voters a local ward councillor to call upon in time of need.

In case Mr Mantashe has not read the Constitution, one needs to point out to him that Chapter 7 provides for the election of municipal councils either in terms of a proportional representation system (no wards at all) or else a combined system of list and ward councillors.  Parliament opted for the latter, I am pleased to say, since otherwise we would have had a system the same as that for Parliament, where there are no constituency MPs, only party list MPs.

Instead of blaming the system for ANC failure at municipal level, Mr Mantashe would do South Africa a huge service if he would propose that we should look again at the system for electing parliamentarians and provincial MPs, without fiddling with the Constitution. 

The late Dr van Zyl Slabbert presided over a commission that recommended a mixed system, very similar to the local government system, where we would have both constituency elected MPs and party list MPs.  This could be the time to have another look at it.

Of course, I have always been in a minority of one on the subject of  constituency MPs being so much more accountable.  Many commentators have the romantic notion that South Africa is like the UK or the United States and that if MPs were directly elected they could act independently and at times could stand up and oppose measures taken by their party. 

This is Africa, and in our country, we have a responsible party system that demands loyalty and obedience by public representatives.  In a constituency system, it is still not the voters who will nominate the candidate.   The parties nominate and then present the candidates to the voters for approval.  In the old days, how many Nationalist MPs, elected by constituencies, were able to oppose government legislation and survive?

In municipal elections, it is exactly the same.  Councillors receive the nomination of the party and the voters then elect or reject them.  How many councillors are really known to all the voters in their wards?  How many ward councillors have opposed their own party’s actions and survived to be re-elected?

Having said that, I do like the idea of a combined system of constituencies and list MPs because at least it has the potential of giving us the best of both worlds.

Another aspect receives attention from time to time.  That is the question of the election of the president.  Some observers insist that the voters should directly elect the president instead of parliament doing that job after each election and that we ought to amend the Constitution to provide for this.  I completely disagree.

When we were drawing the Constitution there was a feeling among many of us that there were more than enough “Big Men” in Africa.  What we did not need was a president who was independent of parliament and could ignore the representatives of the people because he could always claim a direct mandate.  This was why we avoided a directly elected president. 

This is also the reason that President Mbeki could be recalled (wrongly in my view) when his party had had enough of him.  This is the reason now that there is so much talk of the ANC removing President Zuma before the end of his term. 

If he was directly elected, and as the ANC candidate of course he would have been, he would be virtually untouchable and only removable by impeachment.  Now, if he loses the confidence of his party, he can be quietly and politely moved out by the ANC, if it wants to, and be replaced by parliament. This is a valuable check and balance and we would be foolish indeed to change this.

Parties, and Mr Mantashe, should recognise that we have one of the best constitutions in the world.  It is our bulwark as we enter a new era where power passes from one party to others via the ballot box.

Instead of undermining it and wanting to change it for their own purposes, parties ought to support it and cherish it as something of great value to all South Africans.

Douglas Gibson is a former Opposition Chief Whip and the former ambassador to Thailand.

This article first appeared in The Star.