Electoral reform panel to be hauled before parliament: John Matisonn

Key topics:Panel factions clash, producing two conflicting electoral reform reports.Legal opinion: only a single, unified report can be debated in Parliament.Reforms delayed; final report must address accountability and constituency MPs..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By John Matisonn.The breakdown in relations between two factions on the electoral reform panel over its recommendations has now brought them into conflict with parliament’s home affairs committee.At a meeting attended by Home Affairs Minister Dr Leon Schreiber this week the committee decided the panel must be instructed to reconstitute so they can produce a single report instead of two separate reports because this violated their legal mandate. A parliamentary legal opinion advised that the two separate reports submitted by different panel factions violate legislation and cannot be debated. The full panel must agree on a report even if it includes a majority report with a minority dissent..Read more:.John Matisonn: Panellists block electoral reform .The conflict arose when five of the nine panellists wrote a different report from the one being drafted by the panel’s researcher without disclosing it to the panel chairperson, Advocate Richard Sizani, a former head of the public service commission who has been in government since 1994.“I can’t believe that a panel could violate its legal mandate,” said Adrian Roos, MP and DA spokesperson on Home Affairs. “Next time we’ll have to introduce penalties or sanctions to prevent this.”The underlying dispute is over whether some form of constituency-based election system is necessary to enhance the accountability of parliamentarians. Sizani signed the report calling for constituency MPs, providing two options – either single member constituencies or multi-member constituencies – to be debated by parliament.In a scathing letter to the committee, Sizani wrote that panellists violated the panel’s agreed process four days ahead of the meeting to discuss the Panel’s final recommendations on 13 August 2025.“The changes introduced by the Alternative Report were procedurally flawed, removed representations made by other panel members, distorted public inputs and were contrary to the mandate,” Sizani wrote. “The effect has been both exclusion and distortion of information necessary for Parliament to consider in its decision-making on electoral reform.”The deleted sections and research indicated electoral reform would help make MPs and the executive more accountable.“Most disturbingly, the Alternative Report reframed the section on political party preferences to state that most favoured a PR system – suggesting that most parties do not favour electoral reform… “…The Alternative Report mischaracterises the findings of the Electoral Task Team led by Van Zyl Slabbert, deleting crucial parts of the majority’s reasoning behind their recommendation for reform.”Sizani described this as “a factual mischaracterisation of the report’s findings and its conclusions.”The majority recommendation of the Van Zyl Slabbert report said that the electoral system could improve accountability by introducing smaller multi-member constituencies. This forms the core of their justification for reform. This misrepresentation was “done to cast doubt on an established relationship between electoral systems and accountability,” Sizani wrote. “Detailed reasoning behind recommendations for electoral reform are likewise deleted from the report of the Independent Panel Assessment of Parliament as well as the Zondo Commission.”These included important considerations about executive oversight and electoral reform. “Removing aspects behind the reasoning of prior commissions, undermines the evidence base for Parliament to consider,” Sizani wrote. .Read more:.Education Minister Nkabane faces legal heat over alleged misleading of Parliament on SETA appointments.The committee’s decision has been referred to the National Assembly Speaker to instruct Home Affairs Minister Dr Leon Schreiber to recall the panel to provide a single report. This will empower the minister to instruct them to turn it into a single document as the legislation required of them.This means that electoral reform will not come before the committee before February next year, at the earliest.

Electoral reform panel to be hauled before parliament: John Matisonn

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