PROFESSOR DIRK KOTZE
SOUTH Africa is amending its electoral law to make it fairer by enabling citizens to contest provincial and national elections without being forced to join political parties.
The follows a 2020 Constitutional Court judgment that found that excluding citizens from being elected as independent individuals was unconstitutional. The court gave parliament 24 months to amend the 1998 Electoral Act accordingly.
South Africa’s constitution prescribes an electoral system “that results, in general, in proportional representation”. The country has used this system for national and provincial elections since 1994.
But, in 2020, the New Nation Movement, a civil society body, challenged the electoral system for unfairly excluding independent candidates. In their view, the act made it impossible for voters to have a direct link to national and provincial representatives who can be directly accountable to them.
A new Electoral Amendment Bill has been tabled before parliament. It allows for two categories of individual candidates: those who run purely as
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