All eyes on parliament — and not a moment too soon!
After decades of neglect, this critical institution — the foundation stone of the South African democratic project — will finally take its place at the centre of governance and accountability.
This is one of the many welcome benefits of our precipitous transition this week from a dominant party system of government to the multiparty democracy envisaged by our constitution.
The ANC’s electoral dominance over the last 30 years has almost completely obscured the fact that South Africa is, in fact, a parliamentary democracy. Every major appointment, decision, law, and national budget must first survive a vote in the National Assembly before it can be implemented by the executive. With a majority vote that was a foregone conclusion, the governing party — often called the “ruling party” — was free to treat parliamentary approval like a rubber stamp, only occasionally requiring party whips to enforce discipline within its ranks.
The ANC’s internal pecking order was also replicated in parliament, with devastating effects on the institution’s accountability mechanism. Senior party leaders and office-bearers occupied cabinet posts, while their party juniors were the committee chairs and MPs responsible for holding them accountable on behalf of the public. On the basis of this hierarchy, cabinet ministers would routinely ignore parliamentary questions and summonses to appear before parliament’s committees. And there could be dire consequences behind the scenes for ANC MPs who simply wanted to perform their oversight roles and responsibilities effectively.
Cynics might be tempted to point out how many of the parties that will soon occupy the National Assembly’s benches are offshoots and factional breakaways of the former governing party. It has even been suggested that the ANC, in some form or another, will still occupy over 60% of the seats in parliament after this election.
Nevertheless, decisions about who will lead the executive and the legislature and votes on legislation, budgets and critical public sector appointments will no longer arrive at parliament as faits accomplis, taken behind closed doors at the ANC’s Johannesburg headquarters. For the first time, the government’s programme of action will have to be laid bare on the floor of the assembly for scrutiny, negotiation, debate and majority decision-making by a truly multiparty parliament.
South Africa’s seventh parliament will, however, be forged out of the indifferent and neglectful leadership of the sixth, which is largely responsible for the myriad challenges that plagued the IEC’s management of the elections this week. The most consequential of these challenges were the funding constraints, half-baked electoral legislation and unrealistic time frames imposed on the electoral commission as it endeavoured to deliver the most important election in our democratic history.
Despite these difficulties, the IEC once again delivered a free and fair election whose outcome is, without question, legitimate and credible.
Despite these difficulties, the IEC once again delivered a free and fair election whose outcome is, without question, legitimate and credible
Some of the political parties that presided over parliament’s defunding of the IEC over the last three years are this week attempting to reassign blame for the operational and capacity constraints that led to long queues abandoned by legions of frustrated voters and suppressed turnout as a result of the many new hoops voters had to jump through simply to cast their ballot.
Witness the impact of the confusing new requirement in Section 24(A) of the Electoral Amendment Act that, for the first time, voters had to apply in advance for permission to vote at a different voting station from where they were registered. The IEC had absolutely no time and insufficient budget to mount a public information campaign to inform voters about this substantial change. Only 300,000 voters successfully submitted applications compared to the 1.6-million — or 10% — who voted out of their registered voting district and cast only national ballots in 2019. The impact of this nonsensical legislative amendment on electoral turnout was undoubtedly devastating.
On the issue of funding constraints, the National Treasury is already engaged in damage control, suggesting that the IEC is responsible for parliament’s neglect and high-handedly claiming that the media and members of the public do not properly understand the intricacies of the annual budget process.
We have no difficulty understanding how the constant uncertainty around the IEC’s election funding impacted its ability to plan and execute a smooth and effective election operation for the most registered voters in South Africa’s history. Forcing the commission to reckon with R281m in budget cuts and then reversing those cuts at the last minute does not support the IEC's operational planning. The IEC was also only granted permission to retain its accumulated surplus four months ago. Meanwhile, the Represented Political Parties Fund (RPPF), one of the many public funding streams available to political parties with seats in parliament, has enjoyed timely, upward budget adjustments amounting to R350m in 2023/24, R366m in 2024/25 and R383m for the 2025/26 financial year.
We may never be able to quantify exactly how the irresponsible handling of the budget and the structure of this week’s elections effectively resulted in vote suppression and voter disenfranchisement. It is, however, clear that MPs’ sloppy drafting of the electoral law and underfunding of the Electoral Commission ended up devastating their own outcomes at the ballot. Now they must work together and find a way to make these compromised outcomes work. The only question that remains is how.
Change — however foreseeable or desirable it may be — is never easy. The clarion calls for “stability” in the midst of South Africa’s most seismic political shift reflects the unrealistic expectation that we can have both change and continuity when the party of government loses power for the first time in 30 years of democratic government. Unfortunately, we cannot.
Nothing better describes South Africa’s current political interregnum than the dictum by the 20th-century Marxist philosopher and Italian politician Antonio Gramsci, who famously said, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” In this instance, Gramsci’s political “monster” is not the long-threatened bogeyman of an ANC-EFF governing alliance but rather the strange animal that would result from an electoral pact between the majority and official opposition parties.
The much-vaunted “stability option” of an ANC-DA grand coalition in parliament will almost certainly sound the death knell for both political parties. However enthusiastically we may punt this as our country’s least bad option, you may be certain that, in the long run, both parties’ voters will never forgive them for putting each other in power. If they can hold their respective noses long enough to throw each other a political lifeline even as their vote margins decline, parliament will also be left with no functional official opposition. I can’t yet tell whether this is actually worse than a remarriage of the ANC with uMkhonto we Sizwe, and I don’t envy those who have to make this grim calculation.
As parliament’s largest political party, the ANC could simply go it alone with its 40-something percent of the vote and form a minority government that lobbies for parliamentary support on an issue-by-issue basis
A confidence and supply relationship between the two biggest parties has been billed as a sensible middle ground, with the DA staying in the opposition benches and taking up the leadership of the legislature, instead of accepting an invitation to join the national cabinet. This suggestion belies a persistent misunderstanding in our political discourse of how much power parliament actually wields.
It would be nigh on impossible for a party of only about 80 MPs to both lead the entire legislature and execute its constitutional responsibilities as the official opposition. It would also be surprising if the ANC elected to hand the DA so much unfettered oversight power when its competitive advantage has always been a compliant parliament which lacked the wherewithal to use its powers productively.
President Ramaphosa might be better off enticing the DA’s leadership with the prestigious offering of cabinet positions that lock the two parties into a mutually dependent — and collectively responsible — relationship, for which neither could meaningfully deny ownership and responsibility.
There is, however, an option to which nobody seems to be giving much consideration. As parliament’s largest political party, the ANC could simply go it alone with its 40-something percent of the vote and form a minority government that lobbies for parliamentary support on an issue-by-issue basis. Securing the election of an ANC presidential candidate, and to a lesser extent, the speaker of the National Assembly, is all that is necessary for the largest parliamentary party to govern. This is one of the perverse outcomes of our hybrid system, which confers extraordinary executive authority on a president who only has to be elected into office by 201 MPs.
A combination of outsize presidential power and some nifty negotiation skills could be all the ANC needs to form a national government and pass priority legislation on an issue basis. It might secure support from one party caucus to pass the budget and still be able to work with another to implement policy through the legislative process. Parliament would be a vibrant centre of debate and contestation, and a combined opposition commanding more than 50% of the parliamentary seats could act as a bulwark against the excesses of a party which has, until now, enjoyed too much legislative power.
However this political game of thrones plays out, it is clear that our responsibility as citizens to be vigilant, engaged and demand accountability from parliament has never been more urgent. No government action should see the light of day without first undergoing committee deliberations packed to the rafters with citizens and stakeholders demanding a programme of action that serves the people of South Africa rather than its political class.
From the media and civil society to higher education, organised labour, business, unemployed youth and experts in public policy, every sector of the South African body politic must now put its shoulder to the wheel and participate actively in this important next phase of our democratic evolution.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.