🔒 Political governance – the new rules, with Teresa Conradie, Herman Mashaba – Webinar Part 2

by

Political governance in South Africa has changed dramatically, following a Constitutional Court ruling that means Parliament is no longer the preserve of individuals who are in the main political parties. In part two of this webinar recording, BizNews founder Alec Hogg explores this critically important development with the lawyer behind the case, Teresa Conradie, and South African entrepreneur and politician Herman Mashaba, who is launching a new political party. Catch up with part one of this important discussion here: A seismic shift in SA political governance, with Teresa Conradie, Herman Mashaba – Webinar Part 1. – Editor.

You’ve got your work cut out – you (Teresa) and Herman – in answering questions, because they have flooded through. First one that came through was from Adrian Funky, who says Pierre de Vos tweeted an article which essentially says the judgment won’t change much. What are your thoughts on that? Not sure if you saw the article. Teresa, you want to have a go? 
___STEADY_PAYWALL___

I indeed saw the article, but I think it would very much depend on whether this is just going to pass by ordinary citizens of the country or whether they’re going to take a real interest. And I can’t agree with Pierre de Vos. I think, over the last few years, perhaps starting with the various motions of no confidence in former President Zuma, that ordinary citizens are now looking at individuals. They are measuring individuals; as far as their compassion, their integrity, their decisiveness is concerned, and this was, in a way (for me) one of the highlights of this Covid period, where across the world leaders are now being assessed in a personal capacity. So, it would really depend on the citizens of this country whether it’s going to change the political landscape or not. 

Herman?

Can I just really expand on this, and Teresa – congratulations. Really exceptional work. We are really proud of you as fellow South Africans because of what you’ve conquered. Whatever people are saying – I can tell you; what you’ve achieved is going to have an impact and fortunately enough, you can really study history. Let me share something that we’ve done and I’ve already made announcements to that effect; that as part of the people’s dialogue, I’ll be launching a new political party in August this year – so, in just over a month’s time – with five core values. One of the core values is electoral reform.

I’ve committed to South Africans, I’m working, really spending a lot of money with technology. I want public representatives who are going to represent us in local government elections in National in 2024. I’m not going to be lectured by us as a political party. We are going to run primaries like they’re doing in the United States. So we don’t even need, Teresa, to really wait for the amendments. What we are going to do; once we launch the political party – I hope that our technology will be ready by then – that we can register people in municipalities where we’re going to contest, because we are not going to this time next year contest all local 278 municipalities -it is humanly impossible. 

We’ve identified the ones which are winnable. What we are going to do is; we’re going to register people in that ward and anyone interested in becoming a ward councillor – whether it’s two or three or four people – we are going to subject them to the community of that ward. They are the ones who are going to decide who is going to be the one who’s going to go into the ballot box.

Not someone decided by us as a political party behind closed doors. And we are going to do this in 2024 when we go to national elections. Everyone who’s going to be representing us in Parliament will be elected by the community from where they come – they’re not going to be elected by us behind closed doors. This court judgment really gives meat to what we are going to do, and we don’t really have to wait for politicians who are there to serve themselves. We are going to start actually practicing to really make sure that public representatives are actually directly elected by the people. It is possible – we don’t really have to wait for constitutional amendments. 

There’s many questions here. Many statements, people supporting you, Herman, saying, well done. There’s one here for you,Teresa, which says thanks for all you’re doing for empowerment and women’s rights. I’m going to start, though, with another question here from Dr. Claudius van Wyk, who I know very well and often contributes to Biznews. He says; this is some vindication of Van Zyl Slabbert’s work, which was ignored by Mbeki. It broke his heart. Is that so, Teresa? 

Yes, I absolutely agree. It was a phenomenal piece of work that Dr Van Zyl Slabbert and his team did. If one thinks about it, it’s nearly 20 years ago and it gave us all the necessary direction that we needed and it also gave us a sense that this is not new. This is something that had already actually not only been accepted by Parliament, but Dr. Van Zyl Slabbert had been mandated to do it. So, the only reason that I could think of why the recommendations of the report were not accepted is because it didn’t suit the ruling party at the time and it would have impacted hugely on the outright majority that the ruling party had been. But I completely agree, and I was always a fan of Dr. Van Zyl Slabbert and I hope he’s smiling down upon us and being happy with what we’ve achieved. 

I’m sure he is. Fascinating, and a real hero of South Africa. We’ll get his acknowledgment, not just in this judgment, but I’m sure as we look back in history. Time to come. Phillip Nkomowitz asks; what is the future for the role of citizens in a South African political environment that you envisage? Do you want to give that a go, Herman? 

One huge responsibility we have is to get South Africans to wake up to our democratic dispensation, that the success of this country is not dependent on politicians, on parliament – it’s dependent on active citizenship. You know, once people can actually begin the process of holding politicians accountable instead of staying away from voting… I’m sure you’re aware – the last elections we had just under 19 million South Africans who did not bother to vote.

Only just over 17 million. So we had more South Africans staying away, because for some reason they claim not to have any political party that they can align to, but the danger of a civil society taking such an approach – we end up with a political party that is in government today that is in every election losing plus minus two million voters. But unfortunately, they’re still in power.

Who put them in power? They were put into power by the 19 million South Africans who did not go out and vote, because if you can imagine; if 25 percent of them had just gone out to vote, this country today would be having a different government. So I think the responsibility is to actually make conscious and educate our people. And what I find really fascinating, because during the people’s dialogue, we did a lot of research on this – that the majority of the people who stayed away from voting are educated, well informed citizens – not the ones that you can buy with a t-shirt or a food parcel.

So I think we have a responsibility to really educate them. But I think through our platform, we’ve been extremely successful. You know, when I launched this project, my family put in money as a gift to South Africa – to get South Africans to engage. And for me with my team, I said, if we can get half a million people actually giving us the mandate -it would really be a good sample. We ended up with two point four million submissions. It blew my mind. Totally, totally blew my mind.

Two point four million submissions. Just two days ago on June 16, we had a Webinar session with the youth of this country from various universities all over the country. I was really very inspired. I remember – twp, three weeks ago when I was invited by the students that we host through The People’s Dialogue; I was nervous, because of the experience of the militancy that we see on our television screens and so forth. I’m telling you, that session – it’s on our website – you look at the quality of our youth in this country – of all colors, all genders – you’ll really be pleased that our country is safe.

But we need to really get the 19 million South Africans to go out and vote come the next elections. Then, one day when this country’s economy is under five percent, I’m happy for you to stay away – not hold government accountable. But right now, with a country where there’s a chance that by the end of this year we’re going to sit with almost 60 percent unemployment – honestly, to sit back and expect someone else to do it for you… Unfortunately, you are failing the future of your children and grandchildren.

Herman, thanks for that. Dina Chetty has a question, which I think many others are asking. She asks; is it correct that the judgment now compels Parliament to develop a constituency based electoral system in which individual candidates can only stand in a single district? 

Perhaps, just before I reply to that, if I could just add on to what Herman was saying. The New Nation Movement identified a number of groups that they feel have been marginalised by our current electoral system. And the first one was the youth. The youth don’t have the same historical loyalties that people of our age group have, also – because of social media and being part of the global community – they have other requirements for leaders.

So I completely agree with Herman. I am so excited to see which young people are going to make themselves available as independent candidates, and that would bring back a large portion of the electorate. The second one is women. You know, women – generally, they just put their heads down and they work. And they look after their children and they serve in their communities, and they have nobody representing them with their hardships. So, if they at least have a closer connection to the people representing them; they can really ask for assistance, they can really hold their leaders accountable.

The third one was the faith community. I’ve been working in the faith communities for the last 25 years of my life, and there’s been great disillusionment and there’s been great unhappiness with faith communities feeling that there’s no representation for their concern over moral decline etc, etc. But to get back to the question: no, the Constitutional Court simply declared the Electoral Act unconstitutional for as far as it does not make provision for independent candidates.

And the unconstitutionality has been suspended for 24 months. So if they hadn’t suspended, it would have just been unconstitutional and we would have sat with a big dilemma. But now, it’s up to Parliament to design a new electoral system that gives effect to the Constitutional Court’s judgment. So it could be a ward constituency type of system – that’s what seems most obvious and that seems most practical.

But they could come up with some magic formula, which we haven’t thought about. But again, I just want to remind South African citizens that their participation is always important and they are allowed to participate. The small civil society group that took the government to task in the Pretoria High Court around the constitutionality of the regulations – that’s the beauty of this. The New Nation Movement does not consist of high profile people. They had absolutely no funding. So, it’s now time for us to involve ourselves and decide whether the constituency mechanism and framework is the best for our system. 

Visited 1,062 times, 1 visit(s) today

BizNews