Standing back from the political
brouhaha surrounding coalitions, where the smaller alliance parties are
extolling the virtues of Proportional Representation, and expounding that this
is the way our democracy should work, there is something not quite right
lurking in the background. Having lived through a 2006 fickle marriage between
the DA and ID in George, Western Cape, I find it hard to be enthusiastic about
coalition politics. And George was only a bipartisan coalition, not the
multi-party entanglement that we face today. Call me cynical, but I have become
highly sceptical of a “working democracy” that gives seats at the high-table,
with all its trappings, to otherwise insignificant participants.
Do you think that’s a little
harsh? It really isn’t if you look at what the current alliance partners of the
DA bring to that high-table. At the very bottom is the ACDP who attracted 0.42%
of votes nationally, followed by Cope with 0.44%. The IFP come in with a
healthy 4.25% until you take out KZN, whereupon their contribution to the
results for the rest of the country drops to 0.25%. The UDM chips in with 0.56%
and the VF+ rounds everything off with 0.77% of the national vote.
Add it all up and they have a
combined total, excluding the regional anomaly of KZN, of around 2.36% of the
almost 30 million Ward & PR votes cast in these elections. For this they are now puffed up with their
own importance, and are no doubt being rewarded with Mayoral Committee
positions in DA-controlled municipalities across the country, whether they are
needed to resolve a hung council or not.
I do, however, wholeheartedly
support the stance of Bantu Holomisa of the UDM that local government needs to
be de-politicised. What became abundantly clear again in 2016, is that a
nanosecond after voting stations closed, politicians were already dividing up
the spoils of our votes. We, whether DA, ANC or EFF et al, were consigned to
looking on helplessly, crossing our fingers in the faint hope that our party
wouldn’t sell out solely for the sake of power.
Municipalities that had a clear
majority party were prevented from constituting themselves while “national
party leaders” negotiated how much of their supporter’s mandate they were going
to give away for the sake of grabbing power somewhere else. Party politics had
already kicked in, and constituency responsibility and accountability already
kicked out.
In my opinion, Gwede Mantashe is
correct when he says that there is something wrong with the Proportional
Representation system used for local government elections. He is incorrect, however, in attributing the
ANC’s failure at the polls to the system’s alleged inbuilt bias towards
“smaller parties”. In fact, the reverse is more likely to be true if you follow
the discourse below. What is really wrong with the system is that it puts too
much power in the hands of political party leadership, and not enough in the
hands of their constituents.
The ANC’s singular problem in 2016
was a fundamental numbers game that revolves around voter turnout, or in their
case the lack thereof. In this, they have no-one to blame but themselves for
their dismal performance.
Be that as it may, there remain
some issues with our PR electoral system that primarily lie in the IEC’s
interpretation of the constitutional intent of the system, as well as their
method of calculating seat allocations.
Starting with constitutional
intent, it is hard to believe that the authors of our constitution intended for
political parties to field a single candidate in a multitude of wards as a
means to cheat the system. A candidate
can only represent one ward, so to stand in more than one is effectively
turning Ward votes in the additional Wards into a second PR vote. We all know that we only get one Ward and one
PR ballot, so why are political parties allowed to subvert Ward votes in
additional Wards into what can only be described as illegitimate PR votes? It has been said by the IEC and one or two
political commentators that this is an acceptable political strategy, but for a
number of reasons I disagree:
1. It is a patently duplicitous
and unethical practice. To tolerate it because “that’s politics” is admitting
to accepting a much lower standard of behaviour from politicians than applied
to ordinary citizens. If we are ever going to achieve clean governance, then
politicians must be held to a much higher ethical standard than is currently
applied.
2. Accepting that a candidate can
only represent one ward, they become merely “phantom” candidates in all other
Wards in which they stand. Aside from each Ward vote being an undisguised
additional PR vote, every phantom Ward vote received is disadvantaging
legitimate candidates by taking “viable alternative” votes out of the Ward
voter pool. This is particularly true
for Independent candidates and non-list political parties, who rely solely on
the Ward votes they receive, and cannot afford to have phantom candidates
eating into the total votes available.
3. If a candidate standing in
multiple Wards happens to win more than one Ward, can you believe that they get
to choose which Ward they want to represent? (and I always thought we were
supposed to be choosing them!). The rejected Wards then have to hold
by-elections at additional expense to taxpayers. While this situation may not
yet have actually occurred, the principle itself is fatally flawed. Something
that is unquestionably wrong cannot be allowed to continue simply because it
has not yet happened.
4. It has also been said that the
large jump in the number of political parties contesting these elections (47%
higher than 2011) indicates a vibrant democracy, where more and more people who
are dissatisfied with the main parties are forming their own organisations. I
am more inclined to believe that this sharp rise is primarily due to more people
recognising that if they register a political party, they can exploit this
multiple Ward candidacy loophole, which significantly improves their chances of
taking a place at the public trough. Without a system change, I anticipate that
as others catch on, we will see a further sharp rise in the number of
registered political parties.
Moving on to the seat allocation
calculation, it is actually simpler than the IEC would have us believe yet it
is also, in my opinion, procedurally suspect:
- · The total number of valid Ward and PR votes cast in a municipality, excluding the Ward votes for Independent candidates, is added together. This number is divided by the total number of seats available, less any Ward seats won by Independent and non-list candidates. The result is a “quota” of votes needed for a party to be allocated a seat. The total number of Ward and PR votes obtained by each party is then divided by the “quota” to determine the total number of seats that each party is entitled to. The number of Wards that a party wins outright is subtracted from this determination, and the balance is awarded to the party as PR seats.
There are a number of issues
relating to this that need exploring:
1. Ward votes are used to
determine who the outright winner of a council seat on a first-past-the-post
basis is. Yet these votes are used again in the calculation of PR seats, which
significantly raises the winning party’s chances of obtaining additional seats.
The only explanation I have seen published for including these votes in the PR
calculation is that this ensures that Ward votes for losing candidates are not
“wasted” through omission. The problem with this confused logic is that the
Ward vote differential between winning and losing candidates remains constant, so
will have no real impact by being added to the PR vote. If anything, smaller
parties are disadvantaged by this method of calculation as their PR votes are
typically higher than their Ward votes. Theoretically, a small party could have
more PR votes than any of the larger parties, yet lose out on a PR seat because
the calculation has been loaded against them by the inclusion of bigger parties
Ward votes.
2. Then again, why use a separate
PR ballot at all? The numbers bear out
that a political party will generally receive both their candidate’s Ward vote,
and the party-based PR vote from their supporters. This holds true in around
99% of cases, so we could save a lot of expense by just totalling the number of
Ward votes received by a party across the whole municipality, and using this to
calculate their proportional support without the need for a separate PR ballot.
3. Another question that begs to
be asked is why Independent candidates are excluded from the PR seat allocation
process? It is true that they cannot earn PR votes, but if the IEC insists on
including Ward votes in the seat allocation calculation, why not include
Independent candidate’s votes as well?
There are a number of instances where Independent candidates, while
losing their Ward challenge, may have received enough votes to otherwise
qualify for a PR seat. This is particularly relevant if the single
candidate/multiple Ward loophole is eliminated from the political landscape.
Had this been the case in 2016, at least one Independent candidate in Johannesburg
would have qualified for a PR seat. And why should an Independent candidate not
serve in a PR capacity if they attract sufficient votes? After all, we are told
that local government should be about inclusivity and diversity, are we not?
Based on the above, our 2016 local
government elections were free, but whether they were completely fair is open
to debate. What is certain, though, is
that something has to change in the system. We need better control over
political party manipulation of electoral outcomes, and to push more firmly
towards constituency accountability. We cannot continue to have a party’s
national leadership involved in micro-managing local affairs by dictating who
local coalition partners will be, and who gets rewarded with an office-bearer
position. We need the best people
running our municipalities regardless of their political affiliation, not
disproportional representatives appointed for political expediency.
I don’t purport to have all the
answers, or any answers at all for that matter, but there are one or two simple
principles that might bring a better balance to the constituency/party
accountability debate.
First and foremost, electoral
legislation must mandate that a Ward candidate lives in the Ward they are
contesting. If they win the Ward and
subsequently move to another area, then a by-election must be held. This will
put pressure on the elected councillor to work in the best interests of
constituents, without the option of being “redeployed” elsewhere by the party. It
will also automatically deal with the single candidate/multiple Ward loophole
as a candidate cannot live in more than one place at a time, which itself
should encourage a reduction in the number of registered “parties” to
manageable levels.
Dispensing with a separate PR
ballot, and using the sum of Ward votes alone to determine overall proportional
support, will level the playing field for Independent candidates and non-list
political parties, who can then also participate in the proportional allocation
of council seats.
I am sure there are many ideas out
there that will contribute towards improving the system. These ideas must be
brought into the light of day before politicians, in particular ANC
politicians, concoct an electoral system change that will further erode our
requirement for more, not less, constituency accountability.
