The ‘electoral reform’ debate in South Africa is not going away. It became a major focus on the political agenda in 2002 when the Mbeki government appointed an Electoral Task Team (ETT) with a mandate to review the South African electoral system. Some opposition political parties and citizens from different sectors of society suggested that the pure proportional representation (PR) system, in place since 1994, was weak, in the sense that elected representatives were not accountable directly to the electorate, but rather to their party superiors. The subject of accountability has thus dominated the discussions about reforming the existing electoral system. As a response, the ETT was established to identify and recommend what electoral systems would be appropriate for our country. The team, headed by the late Dr Frederick van Zyl Slabbert,² proposed that a mixed system (a combination of ‘single member constituency’ and ‘party list’ systems) should be adopted at national and provincial level.

This CPLO paper was written by Meshay Moses