It gives me great pleasure to welcome all
the participants to this roundtable and the many people who, through their
efforts and dedication, have made it possible. A special word of
appreciation goes to the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung which once again has
played a pivotal role in the development and consolidation of democracy in
our country. I also wish to acknowledge and thank all the other sponsors who
have made the work of the Electoral Task Team possible; namely the Danish
Government, the Swedish Government, the Norwegian Government and the
Government of the United Kingdom.
I wish to express particular appreciation to Dr van Zyl
Slabbert, who has been leading the Electoral Task Team. He accepted to carry
out this difficult and delicate responsibility, even though he knew well
that he had to storm in where angels fear to tread. I also appreciate the
fact that he was willing to put up with almost one year of delays which took
place from when he first gave me his availability to preside over this
delicate process of policy formulation, to when Cabinet finally approved the
establishment of the Electoral Task Team under his chairmanship. I know that
this delay has caused him great inconvenience, as he kept himself available
for almost one year when I was unable to give him a clear commencement date.
He is a real patriot, who waited for the right time to be called and set
aside other more lucrative and rewarding commitments for love of country.
South Africa remains indebted to him.
This review roundtable is a moment in which I hope the
Electoral Task Team will be able to begin consolidating its thoughts and
proposals in respect of the formulation of the new electoral system for
South Africa. The Electoral Task Team has now worked for several months and
I have received interim reports of its activities. I sincerely hope that
during this important event we can all find together a clear direction on
the way forward, so that a draft Electoral Bill may be finalised before the
end of the year.
This process of policy formulation is of historical
importance and I feel very privileged to be the Minister under whose
responsibility it is now taking place. It is the last act of an epic
institutional transformation which began 12 years ago when, on February 2
1990, the then State President FW de Klerk announced the beginning of the
dismantling of apartheid. The adoption of a new Electoral Act for South
Africa will complete the constitutional transformation from apartheid to
democracy, as it will be the last major piece of legislation required to
replace the interim arrangements set forth in the 1993 interim Constitution
and carried over into our present Constitution. Therefore, I feel that today
we can rightly celebrate the end of the beginning.
An Electoral Act is a special piece of sub-constitutional
legislation. More than any other piece of legislation required to implement
the Constitution, it defines the nature of democracy. Our Constitution has
given the Legislature a substantial degree of latitude in defining the type
of parliamentary democracy South Africa shall enjoy. Barring the fact that
an electoral system must yield a generally proportional outcome, the
Legislature has the latitude to adopt any of the known systems which produce
such an outcome, and to devise any other new one which may better suit our
needs. This is an important creative time in which we must not only look at
South Africa’s present day conditions, but also at the impact the
electoral system will have in developing the conditions of our future
democracy.
The electoral system defines the terms of the fundamental
compact between the voters and their elected representatives. It is that
which defines the very notion of representation and therefore the very
matrix of democracy. The terms of the contract between the voters, political
parties and elected representatives define how political parties and members
of legislatures are expected to conduct themselves, carry out their
electoral mandate and act as agents of democracy. For this reason, the
formulation of an electoral law cannot be the exclusive prerogative of
political parties or elected representatives. Political parties and elected
representatives in Parliament are surely qualified to pass any other piece
of legislation, acting in the name and on behalf of the voters. However,
when drafting the electoral law, we, members of Parliament, somehow find
ourselves in a sort of conflict of interests as we would be writing the
terms of our own contract.
For this reason, since the outset of this process of
policy formulation it was realised and accepted that the new electoral law
could not stem exclusively out of an agreement amongst political parties and
should not be formulated from within the bosom of government. The electoral
law should belong as much to civil society as it belongs to political
parties. For this reason, Cabinet accepted that this process of policy
formulation be conducted in a somehow different fashion than many others. We
appointed the Electoral Task Team as an institution of civil society which
could liaise with other organs of civil society, but we gave it a stringent
mandate to liaise with political parties and take their views into account.
The pivotal element of this operation was that of identifying a point of
fusion between the realm of politics and that of civil society.
We needed somebody whose integrity would be beyond
question, with vast knowledge of the political system, with no specific
party allegiances, and devoted to the preservation of the prerogatives of
civil society. I feel confident that no better man could have fitted this
description than Dr van Zyl Slabbert. I also feel that the commissioners he
has gathered around him represent one of the most powerful brain trusts and
collections of expertise and wisdom ever gathered together during the many
processes of policy formulation which our country has undergone during the
past 8 years. I say this because I want to make it clear that out of this
extraordinary group of people I expect nothing trivial nor mediocre.
In fact, South Africa as a whole has a great deal of
expectation. Now more than ever public debate is focusing on the features of
an electoral system which can produce genuine accountability of the elected
representatives to their voters. There is general recognition that it is
incumbent on us to strengthen the bond of accountability. We must do so in a
system which also meets the other criteria of fairness, inclusiveness and
simplicity. The criteria of fairness is entrenched in the Constitution as
part of the requirement that the electoral system yields a generally
proportional outcome. The requirement of inclusiveness has somehow been
accepted within our political debate since the opening of CODESA, as we
realise that ours is a country characterised by extensive demographic,
ethnic, cultural, religious and social diversity. Such a plural society
needs to be represented by a system which gives value and provides a voice
to all the segments of our society. Therefore, it must make provision for
the representation, or perhaps even the over-representation, of minorities,
however such minorities may aggregate in the future, whether they are
political, ethnic or cultural minorities.
The element of simplicity has also been acquired in our
political debate as a given. It is what led us to adopt simple ballot papers
which allow even people who cannot read and write to confidently express
their political choice. However, we need to ensure that the quest for
simplicity does not create setbacks for democracy. In fact, I remember how
at the World Trade Center the notion of simplicity was utilised by those who
were opposing the notion of a double ballot paper, arguing that our
electorate was not sophisticated enough to deal with two ballot papers for
national and provincial elections respectively. Our electorate proved them
wrong as there were no reported difficulties in understanding the function
of the two ballots.
There has been a substantial process of democratic
consolidation which has increased the electorate’s sophistication. We
witnessed this clearly in our last local government elections which were
held on a much more complex electoral system. Most of the constituencies
understood the difference between proportional representation lists and
constituency representatives. They might not have understood the intricacies
of the system, but by and large they understood how people would be chosen
to represent them.
It is a proven fact throughout the world that the vast
majority of voters do not understand, or for that matter care to know, the
mathematical intricacies of the various formulae adopted in the design of an
electoral system. They know how to use the system and they understand what
the system will yield depending on their inputs. After all, this is what we
all experience everyday whenever we use many of the technological gadgets
which surround our daily lives. We understand how they work, even though
their internal functioning is far beyond common comprehension. For this
reason, I believe that in designing an electoral system for South Africa we
must not allow a subliminally condescending quest for simplicity to hold us
back from adopting an electoral system based on features which promote and
consolidate democracy. These should be features which require voters to
become increasingly proactive in the electoral process and empower them to
participate in the electoral process with greater electoral awareness. In
itself the electoral system should promote individual and collective
political growth, paving the way to a day in which the majority of our
voters may be rightly regarded as empowered and well-informed
opinion-makers.
To this extent, it is necessary that the electoral system
assists shifting the emphasis away from leaders, ideologies and rhetorical
political imagery, to focus it on the hard bread-and-butter issues which
voters are really concerned about. In this fashion, the electoral system
will provide its contribution to ensuring that the will of the people is
what fuels the functioning of democracy.
I hope that this roundtable can tease out how an electoral
system can help to promote accountability through the political process.
Strengthening accountability requires the development of mechanisms which
enable the electorate to be informed on the relevant issues, to voice their
opinion on such issues, to know what their political representative does
about them and to hold the individual representative accountable if his or
her conduct or stand is not consonant with the electorate’s wishes. We
need to ensure that political representatives perform in terms of producing
political activities which are relevant to the will of the people. Within
this context, this roundtable should also interrogate questions relating to
the role of political parties in promoting or deflecting accountability.
Undoubtedly, political parties have an important role to play to extract
this internal discipline from their members. However, they may also become
the only channel and target of political accountability, which leads back to
focusing the electoral discourse only on political parties, ideological
divides and abstract perceptions of a political party’s image, rather than
the actual bread-and-butter issues which concern the electorate.
I am stressing these issues to highlight how the decisions
which will emerge through this process may shape what type of democracy,
politics, political discourse and interaction between politics and civil
society we may have for decades to come as a consequence of the electoral
law to be drafted. As the Minister technically in charge of this line
function, I do not wish to give any direction or in any way influence the
course of your deliberation. However, I must disclose that I am a genuine
democrat. I will sacrifice my privileges and prerogatives of a party leader
on the altar of democracy. I have been involved in South African politics
for half a century. I have been involved in electoral processes for decades.
I witnessed the electoral processes in the erstwhile White areas first and
then in Indian and Coloured areas. We held elections in the erstwhile
KwaZulu Government, and I witnessed them taking place with a greater or
lesser degree of democracy in many of the other self-governing territories
and TBVC states. I have seen elections taking place within my own political
party and within many others. Throughout this process I have witnessed
enormous changes taking place.
We have moved forward in leaps and bounds. Democracy has
grown at a rate and pace which many of us believed to be impossible. We are
far from having implemented the full measure of democracy of which our
country is today capable of, and which our people expect of us. Moreover,
what we are here to provide should respond not only to the needs of the
present. We must anticipate future changes and demands and bring forward
that which can accommodate them. For this reason, I wish to plead with you
all that whatever direction you may wish to take, have the courage, the
integrity and the vision to be bold in promoting democracy, not only to meet
the full extent of today’s democratic demands but also tomorrow’s.
Do not be timid, parsimonious or insecure in dispersing
democracy, because democracy is dispersed only at the most precious and rare
junctures of history, after which the purse strings of democracy often tend
to be tied. Therefore, I urge you to enable the Electoral Act to create
mechanisms which can empower voters to become citizens and opinion-makers,
and political representatives to be accountable to them.
We need to maintain a delicate balance between the powers
and prerogatives of political parties and the fundamental functions, duties
and responsibilities of elected political representatives. In this context,
we must also ensure that the accountability to which elected political
representatives are subjected forces their own political, professional and
personal growth. Too often when political accountability is concentrated
only on political parties, political representatives have no incentive to
become more competent, effective and efficient, and they tend to only try to
please party leaders rather than the electorate. I make this point with many
decades of personal experience during which I witnessed many elected
representatives being more concerned about pleasing me than getting the job
done to please the electorate. I have also witnessed people being more
concerned about their parliamentary records showing their punctual
attendance at meetings and sessions than their having made any significant
contribution while they were there.
Therefore, we must accept that the electoral system we
design will have a bearing also on the type of elected representatives who
will be serving in our various legislatures in the future, how they will
perform their work and how their performance will be audited.
The Constitution also requires that this process determine
the number of members in the National Assembly, which can be between 350 and
400. In order to make this determination, one would need to have a clear
notion of the type of work which elected representatives will be required to
perform under the political accountability established by the new electoral
system.
Within this context, you must also consider whether the
electoral system should provide for techniques aimed at controlling the
internal democracy of political parties, as happens in other countries. This
latter issue will be closely tied to the thorny and vexed question of
whether we should maintain an imperative mandate as the foundation of our
democracy, or whether our electoral system should espouse the free mandate
as the basis on which political representatives operate. My concern is that
in your deliberations you promote techniques which may make political
representatives more visible, outspoken and independently minded, and that
they be penalised in one way or the other if they become ineffective,
invisible and indolent.
Moreover our electoral system must reflect the nature of
our form of State, which comprises three distinct spheres of government.
Within the constitutional schema, when a province passes a provincial
constitution, it may provide for legislative structures different from those
set out in the national Constitution, for instance establishing a bicameral
system. A provincial constitution itself could determine how members of such
reshaped legislative structures are elected which, in essence, would be the
cornerstone of an electoral system. Such a new provincial electoral system
would need to be implemented by either the national or by provincial
legislation. This aspect needs to be taken into account by the new Electoral
Act which should decide whether a province which has adopted a constitution
which provides for electoral structures different from those contemplated in
the national Constitution should receive the assignment of passing an
electoral law for that province consistent with that provincial
constitution. These are complexities which emerge out of our own
Constitution which must be addressed to ensure that the end product of our
work meets the future demands of a constitutional system which is
undoubtedly at the very beginning of its evolution and which, in my opinion,
will rely to a much greater extent on the contribution that provinces can
make towards its proper and effective functioning.
There are many other complexities at work within our
fledgling constitutional structure. In respect of the third sphere of
government, we have already moved from a proportional representation party
list system to a mixed system relying on constituencies. In so doing, we
have introduced an element of increased complexity. I do not wish to give
directions amongst the many options which I know have been considered by the
Electoral Task Team. I know a great deal of attention has been given to a
multi-member constituency system limited to a small number of members to be
elected in each constituency, which would ensure inclusiveness by allowing
small political parties to be represented while ensuring a generally
proportional outcome by virtue of its combination with the PR system. I also
know that consideration has been given to an electoral system which
resembled that adopted at local government level.
I have also read proposals for multi-member constituencies
based on a large number of representatives to be elected, which is similar
to the present system of national and regional lists. This latter approach
would effectively multiply the number of regional lists and shrink the
national list. There are obviously many more known options that this
roundtable may consider, and many more which it can formulate to consider
our needs. I would urge you to accept that even in the present case we do
not have a straight PR system as, effectively, we are operating on the basis
of 9 multi-member constituencies and one national list.
The difficulty that I have, which perhaps many members of
this roundtable may also encounter, is that while many of such options are
well-known to the experts in the field who are capable of assessing their
pros and cons for our democracy, public debate on them has indeed been
lacking. Personally, I have not read much in our newspapers engaging public
debate on these issues. One would have expected our media to run articles
describing the various options for an electoral system and soliciting
different viewpoints to assess their respective pros and cons. The lack of
attention by our media to important debates relating to our democratic
institution is most lamentable.
I remember when, in the early 90s, I tried to promote a
public debate on the issue of our form of State to elicit public response to
whether South Africa should be a unitary, a provincial or a federal State.
At the time the information provided in the media was inadequate. On this
occasion, it is almost nonexistent. Therefore, I feel that this roundtable
should also consider whether it should not formulate two or three options on
which we can seek greater public participation and public inputs. I would
like our universities, our university students, our trade unions, our
churches and all the other building blocks of our society to be able to
focus on the way forward. It is regrettable that they have not done so
sufficiently in spite of having been given plenty of time and opportunity to
participate. I just do not wish us to find ourselves in an unfortunately too
often typical situation in which, once government finalizes the product, all
those who had plenty of opportunities to make inputs in its formulation come
out to point out defects in such product, or complain that they did not make
an input.
I also wish to urge political parties to come together on
issues relating to the electoral law and overcome any sectoral political
division. It is most remarkable that thus far great progress has been made
in this direction. Thus far, this process of policy formulation has not been
characterised by political divisions, political point scoring and factional
arguments. I would pray that during this roundtable this may be maintained.
The electoral law should not be a matter on which political parties ought to
have different views. It should serve all equally, for those who are today
the majority, may become tomorrow’s minority and vice versa, through the
normal cyclical turns of the wheel of democracy.
I hope that this process of policy formulation also offers
the opportunity to consolidate democracy, by all political parties rising to
the challenge of exercising true leadership and promoting democracy, rather
than self-interests, and serving the interests of our people, both in
respect of the present as well as our future generations, rather than
assessing how the electoral system can procure advantages to themselves.
This is the time where we all must show the greatest measure of love for our
country and love for democracy, and the greatest measure of statesmanship of
which we are capable.
In conclusion, in welcoming all the participants, I wish
to merely impress the type of spirit which I hope can inspire your
deliberations, leaving to you the difficult and delicate task of finding the
content and substance of the future electoral law of South Africa.