Howard Barrell
OVER A BARREL
Opposition, as I have argued before, is too important to be left to the opposition parties alone. We also need to encourage a culture of intelligent criticism within the ruling party – the African National Congress.
This is particularly so in the case of its parliamentary caucus – if we are to be governed as well as we need to be in this fiercely competitive world.
I may not be alone in this view. President Thabo Mbeki, I am told, regularly, between conferences, bemoans an absence of intelligent debate and counter-proposals within his parliamentary caucus and the ANC’s two top bodies – its national executive committee and working committee.
Let us assume the sincerity of his disappointment – that he is not one to call 100 flowers into bloom only to cut them down as buds shortly thereafter.
There may be any number of reasons for a lack of debate in the ANC. No doubt, old habits developed in the difficult conditions of exile and underground linger. Among the more damaging of these may be the notion that unity requires conformity of thought.
No doubt, too, a party as dominant as the ANC has attracted to its ranks more than its fair share of yes-men and -women only too willing to place a plug in their mouths and a moral soporific in their brains as they keep their eyes out for the main chance.
Whatever the case, it should not take much prompting to have ANC leaders agree that our existing electoral and parliamentary rules actively discourage independence of thought and voice in Parliament.
At the root of this weakness is the particular form of proportional representation and electoral lists we have chosen to use until now. It has served us well in ensuring minorities are well-represented in Parliament, but it tends to make MPs, of whatever party, more answerable to their party bosses and less to us voters than is healthy.
In correcting the latter failing, we need to ensure we do not deprive ourselves of the superior representivity the system has given us.
How does our current system give too much power to party bosses? It does so primarily by placing MPs’ seats almost entirely within the gift of party leaders.
Parties have different methods of choosing the candidates to be placed on their election lists, and in what order. But, in general, it is party leaders who have the major say in this part of the process. Moreover, once elected to Parliament, a person remains an MP for as much or as little of the five-year electoral cycle as his or her party bosses see fit.
If an MP leaves a party or is expelled from it, that MP automatically loses his or her seat; he or she may not cross the floor of the House of Assembly to sit as an independent or as an MP with another party.
The potential for controlling MPs from the centre is particularly acute in the case of the ANC. There seem to be two major reasons for this.
The first is the ANC’s sense of its place in history. As a liberation movement the ANC is not receptive to the view that it may be only another party of careerists and inadequates trying to pull a fast one on the voters.
No, as a liberation movement, the ANC tends to believe – or to want the rest of us to believe – that it is a bearer of history’s greater purposes. And the greater the purpose, the greater the obeisance to leadership – usually called “discipline” – it feels it can demand.
The second is the ANC’s “deployment committee”. An instrument of the party’s executive, this committee may despatch any ANC member to any position – inside or outside Parliament, or in Siberia – which the party controls by virtue of the fact that it is in power. It is a simple, but wickedly clever device, to which ANC members meekly, and dutifully, accede – thus far.
The committee’s existence suggests that, whereas the ANC may have accepted that a commandist approach may not be the best way to run an economy, it is still best in matters of politics.
It would be foolish to suggest that an electoral system based on constituencies – in which MPs are elected by geographically defined groups of voters – would be immune to similar manipulation or control from the centre. But our electoral and parliamentary system makes MPs particularly prone to coercion or manipulation from the party centre. We need to restructure it – and soon – along lines that encourage those MPs who have brains to use them and to be less afraid of being seen to use them. The injection of a constituency element into our system of proportional representation may help achieve this.
It might give MPs better grounds to tell their party bosses, ever so gently, to get stuffed. For a constituency element would enable an MP, among other things, to say to his whips: “Look chaps, this new Bill is all very well – I agree with it, man – but, you see, the people in my constituency simply won’t buy it, and the constituency is marginal, and we don’t want to lose it at the next election, now do we, so …”
Not only has the time come for us to look at change along these lines, but we have just the opportunity to do it.
Our old electoral law has expired. We must draw up a new one within the next two years – in good time for the 2004 election. This means we must get the debate under way on our options.
How can we combine the proportionality of representation which our Constitution says we must have in Parliament with greater accountability of MPs to you and me?
Leading speakers from the main South African political parties and the United Kingdom will be exploring these issues at a debate hosted by the Mail & Guardian and the Institute for Democracy in South Africa at the institute’s offices in Cape Town at 7pm on October 21. Call (021) 462-4688 for more information