Restarting the Elections Game

National elections were the ANC instrument for obtaining majoritarian endorsements and asserting dominance over other political parties, irrespective of its own organisational fragilities. As the ANC kept on sliding in the national electoral stakes, then made a tentative but precarious recovery in 2019 and started viewing the next round of its own internal and then national and provincial elections, a major set of new uncertainties entered. Covid-19 brought the possibility of delays in electoral schedules and affected political parties in their internal electoral and campaign processes, and in their viability. This indicated the need for a longer lead and recovery time.

A Constitutional Court judgment of mid-2020 added complications. It declared the Electoral Act No. 73 of 1998 unconstitutional in its requirement for a citizen to be a member of a political party in order to hold national or provincial office. The court ordered that the electoral system be amended to accommodate participation of independent candidates in national and provincial elections. The Electoral Commission (IEC) was given two years to effect the arrangements, which may entail minor tweaking rather than a major overhaul.

The political and economic uncertainties that came with Covid-19 meant that political parties developed a new appetite for consolidating and possibly postponing elections. The ANC NEC ‘considered the desirability’ of synchronising national– provincial elections with local elections, weighing in at one stage with possible postponement of local elections. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) joined the call. In times of financial austerity, the parties argued, it made sense to cut costs and focus energy on recovering from Covid. The complexities of the required constitutional change to effect a possible rescheduling were immense.

The ANC’s desire to align its internal elections better with the national elections also clouded specificities of future elections. The ANC wanted to eliminate the interval between its internal and the national elections – the time lapse of roughly 18 months had become a toxic gap. A culture had taken hold, through the cases of former presidents Thabo Mbeki in 2008 and Jacob Zuma in 2018, to recall the ousted, possibly discredited ANC president from national office. Closing this gap was on the cards for the ANC, and Covid-19 assisted.