Citizens must be educated about their Constitutional rights says New Nation Movement in submission on Electoral Amendment Bill

South Africans need to know that the Constitution of SA protects justice and freedom and that they are not held ransom by the current electoral system which serves the interests of political parties and not the people, says the Citizen’s Parliament of the New Nation Movement (NNM) in a written submission to the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) regarding the controversial Electoral Amendment Bill.

The NNM whose application to the Constitutional Court led to the court’s historic June 2020 ruling in which it ordered Parliament to reform the Electoral Act to accommodate independent candidates, says in its submission that it aims “to fully inform and empower South Africans to understand and uphold our God-given right to just governance. To do this, we need to know our own Constitution and how to lobby for it to be enforced”.

One of its recommendations to the NCOP is that the bill must compel the IEC and other groupings to embark on a major campaign to educate citizens about the Constitution, the bill, and how to secure public representatives who are directly accountable to citizens.

The submission, which is signed by Mkangeli Matomela national convenor of the Citizen’s Parliament, says its main objective is to reclaim and restore “the deferred dream of the  people of South Africa for a totally liberated prosperous New Nation of self-governing people of South Africa in covenant with God.”

It says: “The people of God in South Africa have cried out together with one loud voice as one person — ‘All power to the people! The people shall govern!”

The submission advises the NCOP it is legally required to consider the Bill in line with the Constitution and not to bow to politically partisan positions of the ANC or other parties,

If the NCOP ignores its key recommendations, the Citizens Parliament says that, together with civil society organisations opposed to the bill, it will approach the Constitutional Court to declare the unconstitutional clauses of the bill invalid and to read in clauses consistent with the Constitution.

The Citizens Parliament’s key recommendations to the NCOP include:

• The Van Zyl Slabbert recommendation for a mixed constituency (75%) and proportional (25%) representation respectively must replace the 50-50 representation in the current Electoral Amendment Bill.
• A mechanism to avoid individual citizens contesting elections shedding their votes, should be devised, so that the value of each vote counts.
• Current demarcated districts and metros should be provisionally adopted as constituency districts to facilitate direct nomination, election and deployment of ethical constituency and proportional representation candidates, who are directly accountable to the people.
• Two ballots — one for constituency independents and the  other for proportional representation candidates to provincial legislatures and Parliament respectively.
• Do away with deposits which enable “corruption from the private sector”, and require independent candidates to get one thousand signatures to contest elections as is the case with political parties.
• Facilitate configuration of fully-recognised and empowered constituency districts and recognise Section 18 non-partisan citizens community associations, forums, organisations, movements, izimbizo, assemblies, councils and Citizens Parliament.
• Mandate citizen education about the Constitution, electoral reform and how to directly nominate, elect, commission public representatives who are accountable to them.
• Adopt a resolution for a referendum so that the people have a final say on the bill, failing which “the 2024 general election is declared a referendum election for the people to choose between the dictatorship of political parties or their own New Nation vision, House of Constituency-Proportional Independents and Citizens direct representation Government, directly accountable to the people, New Nation, Constitution and Republic of South Africa”. 

The submission says that if the NCOP supports the unconstitutional bill and “whatever happens in the Constitutional Court in this regard”, the people of SA should treat the 2024 elections “as a referendum to choose between the pre and post 1994 unconstitutional dictatorship of political parties or the New Nation and Citizens direct representation Government.

The Citizens Parliament’s full submission to the NCOP can be downloaded here.

Today is the deadline for public comment on the bill before it is considered by the NCOP. Parliament missed the Constitutional Court’s original June deadline to reform the Electoral Act and was given an extension until December 10.

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