PATRICK BULGER | People’s power: will constituencies save democracy in SA?

Boris Johnson’s stumble from office is rightly adjudged a vindication of the constituency form of representative government, with Tory MPs fearful of losing their seats by not ending his woeful premiership, whose passing few will mourn. By the time hard-living Bojo said he would vacate No 10, more than 50 MPs had said tally-ho to him as they do in those parts. The people had spoken. 

However, when his party had the chance a month earlier to eject him by a vote of no confidence, the same elected members closed ranks around him, a revealing reflection on the instincts of the party as opposed to its individual survivalist MPs. Just weeks later, however, they reckoned that while he had the thatch, he lacked the Thatcher for what he called “the best job in the world”, meaning lots of partying.

The smooth transition in London has generated envy here, with some pundits wondering whether a constituency system would work better in SA than the proportional representation racket we have courtesy of our constitutional negotiations pre and after 1994. Like Johnson, many feel President Cyril Ramaphosa has forfeited the trust put in him. If there is a sense that he should be replaced, there is equally a feeling this cannot be done unless the ANC decides he must go, in which case it will happen quicker than you can say asset forfeiture, or Phala Phala.

Anyone looking to our parliament to help shed light on the current president’s hidden heist will be disappointed, but surely not surprised, that the ANC has dutifully stymied any opposition attempt to have MPs scrutinise the matter.

With ANC MPs answerable only to the party under whose banner they “contested’’ elections, it is an irony of our teetering wedding-cake democracy that a few thousand very important people dressed in yellow T-shirts and leather jackets meeting in a tent in Limpopo have more say over who becomes president than you, the voter. But that’s how we got Jacob Zuma, washed up on us by a tsunami of populist subterfuge and hysteria.

Anyone looking to our parliament to help shed light on the current president’s hidden heist will be disappointed, but surely not surprised, that the ANC has dutifully stymied any opposition attempt to have MPs scrutinise the matter. In doing so, they have given a free pass (Zupta-style) to the person they had elected from among themselves in 2018 to be president of the republic for a five-year term. Clearly, the counsel from chief justice Raymond Zondo about accountability has already been forgotten. But would MPs elected by constituencies have made a different choice?

Consider the historical irony that it was the constituency system that greatly assisted the apartheid project, bringing the minority-vote National Party to power in 1948 largely by capturing vast rural constituencies where the populist promise of abundant and cheap black labour proved a winner. Tiny urban constituencies such as Hillbrow had many more people than, for example, Heilbron in the Orange Free State, but still just the one MP.

As if to emphasise their bond with voters, MPs would make a show of reading a constituent’s letter in the House of Assembly, but invariably it would have been carefully chosen and even solicited to back the party’s point of view. Generally, an MP would be seen to be catering to the interests of their constituency. Only white interests mattered, and to the extent that most of white SA, on a constituency basis at least, backed the apartheid government, there was seldom discord in our parliament.

That is, there wouldn’t have been had it not been for the honourable member for Houghton, Helen Suzman.

No leather armchair for Suzman, and although Houghton had its fair share of liberal voters, it’s obvious that even as the lone Progressive Party MP for 13 years, her effectiveness at exposing apartheid’s cruelty and irrationality derived from deep personal conviction, and not from constituents pestering her to do so. How many voters in Houghton would have insisted she visit Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, years before it became fashionable to make the pilgrimage to his cell, to grin foolishly through the metal bars?

One might argue that, generally speaking, MPs who fought under the banner of the Progressive Party and its successors in the white parliament would have been expected by constituents to have had enlightened views, at least for white South Africans in that era. But more importantly, it was what the party stood for that mattered, not the fact that “one of ours’’ was in parliament telling Hansard about a locust scourge in their constituency. 

Combining honest and sensible policies based on stability, justice and workability with people of high ethical standards and relentless drive provides two of the building blocks for effective and accountable government, at least in the legislature where accountability and oversight take place.

Yes, we want a government and a parliament that is responsive to the people. If the party bosses are in charge now, it’s because the big fear at the constitutional negotiations was that whites would be left politically powerless by a constituency system and that proportional representation had a better chance of reflecting our demographics. Now we’re all powerless, save for those with a ticket to the Big Top.

But what we don’t need is an entirely vote-driven, agnostic form of politics that overlooks and forgets who we are as a nation, and where we have come from. Politics fashioned solely to get votes. We have to avoid the situation in the US, for example, where politicians push ridiculous populist policies, like the absurd “three strikes and you’re jailed for life’’ idiocy that voters are said to want, but which are self-defeating and inhumane. Just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s good.

If the ANC had really wanted to stay in power indefinitely it would have introduced constituencies long ago, rigging them so rural strongholds neutralised the urban opposition confronting it. Instead we’ll have to see what proportional representation throws up in future elections, and if anything we may find it encourages co-operation among parties rather than the British winner-takes-all system.

Some may prefer the more personal and eccentric constituency style, but it’s the policies of the party and the integrity of those it entrusts to go to parliament that make the real difference. All the rest is an expensive popularity contest, where the loudest clown always wins.