ANC decides on minimal changes to Electoral Act

The ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) has decided against major electoral reform and in favour of minimal changes to the Electoral Act to allow independent candidates to stand for provincial and national elections. A Business Day report notes the Act was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in June last year because it did not give expression to the right of individual citizens to stand for election, as provided by the Bill of Rights, and catered only for political parties. Parliament was given two years to rectify the defect. Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi established a ministerial advisory committee, which handed its report to him in June. As the committee did not reach consensus it provided a majority report, which advocated for large-scale electoral reform, introducing both a proportional representation list and a constituency based system, from each of which 200 MPs would be elected. The minority report advocated minimal reform, proposing that the provinces in the present system be viewed as large constituencies in which either a party or an individual could stand for election. The head of the ANC’s NEC subcommittee on legislature and governance, Phumulo Masualle, said the committee had taken the matter to the ANC NEC, which had opted for the second option, which did not require large-scale change.

The view of the majority in the ministerial advisory report was considered by the ANC, but Masualle said it was not the favoured option. ‘That would involve a demarcation process and the time that would have required was not possible for the 2024 national elections. In the long run, we said that a review of the electoral system should be done in an ongoing way.’ The Business Day report says should the ANC’s preference for minimal reform be proposed and adopted by Parliament, this will be the second time that the ANC has considered electoral reform and rejected it.

Full Business Day report (part 2)

Full Business Day report (part 1)