Elaborate on what you have called “play-play democracy”.
We pretend you vote for us and then we pretend we look after your interests, that’s what I mean. We have a closed-list proportional representation system [in which] you vote for a party as a voter. You have no say in who gets on that list … But then you combine that with floor–crossing: you enable individuals from a particular party to exercise their own free right to move to another party. That contradicts what the voter voted for — the list of the party presented to them.
Are constituencies the only way to solve the current contradiction?
No. You can have an open proportional representation [PR] list system, in other words, parties determine who are their MPs on the list [like ward councillors in municipal elections]. You can have constituencies; you can have constituencies plus PR as in Germany.
Then you can have multiple -member constituencies … where the names of the contesting MPs must be made public before the poll. In principle it’s possible that I could decide: “Hell, I like the seven that come from the other party more than the seven from mine.”
Do you see a link between -popular disenchantment with public representatives and not knowing who they are?
If you take the question of voter response — on a scale from excellent to apathy — an activist voter is a good thing for democracy. But when voters become apathetic it does not mean they become necessarily inactive. They can then go for vigilantism; they can go stealing services such as electricity, water … They can go for all kinds of illegal behaviour because they simply say: “We can’t wait for the politicians come around to fulfil their promises.” And that’s a dangerous thing.
Is South Africa now ready for a constituency system? Nation-building and inclusivity were cited as key to the political decision to go for a PR system ahead of the 1994 poll.
Are we going to be into nation–building for the next three centuries? At some or other stage you have to get more involvement on the part of voters. Where they can call to account the people they think represent their interests. Now they can’t; [in a system] combined with floor-crossing, the voter can’t do anything.
Can the country afford a constituency system?
A Westminster-style system? I don’t think so because that would mean a massive delimitation process. The proposal we made of a multi–member constituency, closed PR closed list [300 constituency MPs, 100 from lists] is not expensive and you literally do it overnight. You take the existing boundaries of provinces and municipalities and divide them into 70 reasonable sized constituencies: a rural constituency with 70 000 voters may have three MPs, whereas an urban one may have more up to seven MPs.
The electoral review, which you chaired, did some scenario sketching and discovered political parties’ election performance would not necessarily decline. Why is there such a reluctance to go for constituencies?
It’s a practical headache. You have to start devoting more time to consult your own party, find out who people in a constituency would like to see as their representative. That gives people some kind of input … it means that the kind of centralised control that the party bosses have is undermined because you may get people in they can’t control.
Was it not naïve to believe an electoral system could change if it works for the ruling party?
If the governing party was completely satisfied [with that system] why would it have ordered the review by the electoral task team?
Why are you disillusioned with the electoral review?
What I am very, very concerned about is the nature of our democracy and how it can be sustained. There is a fundamental fiction about democracy and that is that about the celebration of majoritarianism. It’s not true.
Democracy is about the constraint of the abuse of power and terror. One of the ways to do that is through the Chapter 9 institutions [for example, the public protector, SA Human Rights Commission]. But another very important part is the broad, active involvement the voters … not undermined by floor-crossing.
The home affairs department is reviewing its competences, including the electoral law and the IEC, as part of an overall government review by December next year. Do you think the electoral review report will be taken off the shelf?
Cabinet [in 2003] did say it couldn’t act on the report now, but would revisit it later on. That is as wide open as the prairie, but I hope they will re-look at it.