GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
17 April 2023
While the GOOD Party supports the latest amendments to the Electoral Amendment Bill, we believe the reform in our elective process is far from finished.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has now signed into law the Electoral Amendment Bill after the National Assembly voted in February to accept the changes to the Act.
South Africa’s democracy is moving into a new phase with a future that will undoubtably require us to fully and respectfully embrace a new electoral model.
This bill is just one of many steps along this road and does reflect progress towards a fairer and more inclusive democratic process for independent candidates and new political parties.
GOOD welcomes the decrease in signature support requirements as well as establishing the Electoral Reform Consultation Panel. This forms part of some of the positive changes that will be pivotal in safeguarding, and improving, the electoral process.
The Van Zyl-Slabbert report however still provides a more effective direction and two decades later, it should be reconsidered as a way to not only protect the independent candidates, but the voice of voters from being lost should their candidate not be successful.
Geographically speaking, the constituencies could be improved further by being made up of multi-membered public representatives who are elected based on the Municipal District model. We have seen internationally that a system similar to this can be extremely effective in ensuring democratic representation from various elected candidates.
With this in mind, GOOD notes with concern that independent candidates are effectively still being treated exactly the same as a political organisation.
This new system which would see each province becoming a multi-member constituency (MMC) would offer little protection to these candidates from being dominated by political organisations.
This only becomes more apparent when one considers that independents can only be elected from regional lists. This extra set of rules does not apply to political parties.
Ultimately, the Amendment Bill reflects an overall improvement, but we have some distance to go in order to achieve and capture the full spirit of the Constitutional Court judgment and a constituency based system.
In an attempt to improve voter participation, we should also consider the automatic registration as voter once a South African turns 18.
We hope this time the Reform Panel will make recommendations that will be seriously considered as part of our long term work to improve our democracy.
We therefore call for further, real reforms to be implemented for the 2029 election and beyond.
Media Enquiries:
Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
Cell: 0825183264
Email: bretth@forgood.org.za
Janke Tolmay, GOOD Media Manager
Cell: 0733671223
Email: janke@forgood.org.za