- In the national and local elections, which only became possible after the Constitutional Court ruling, independent candidates have not won a single seat.
- The legal reforms, which were meant to bring independents into power, have been heavily criticised and calls for electoral reform continue.
- Everything you need to know about the 2024 general election on News24 ElectionHub.
In the winter of 2020, the Constitutional Court ruled for the first time that independent candidates could take part in national and local elections.
At the time, it was hailed as groundbreaking.
But once the dust settled after the first election in which independents were allowed to run, it quickly became clear that it was anything but groundbreaking: Not a single independent was elected to Congress or a state legislature.
In reality, only 11 people contested seats, six of whom ran for parliament.
They contested the election in the Western Cape, Limpopo, Gauteng and Free State provinces, where 8,136,360 valid votes were cast in the local polls. Only 19,187 votes were cast for independent candidates.
Independent candidate Zackie Ahmat cast his vote in Cape Town on Wednesday. (Marvin Charles/News24)
More than half of these went to Zackie Ahmat, a veteran Cape Town activist who ran as an independent in the Western Cape provincial election.
Ahmat received 10,579 votes, or 0.54 percent.
In Limpopo, Blessings Ramona received 1,547 votes or 0.11% of the local vote; Lovemore Ndu received 533 votes or 0.04%; and Faith Fatela received 273 votes or 0.02%.
In Gauteng, Anele Muda won 3,726 votes, or 0.09%, while controversial diamond dealer and Jacob Zuma supporter Louis Liebenberg won 1,115 votes, or 0.03%, and Ramona won 1,107 votes, or 0.03%.
Read | Diamond dealer Louis Liebenberg loses election deposit after dismal tally
Liebenberg also ran in the Free State but received just 377 votes, or 0.04 percent.
As the results trickled in on Thursday, it became clear that independent candidates had not made the impression they had hoped for.
Louis Liebenberg. (Tebogo Letsie/Netwerk24)
Bongani Thibi, an independent candidate for a Gauteng provincial legislative seat, had received just 38 votes when about 15% of the votes – more than 400,000 – had been counted.
He said it was difficult to run a campaign on a general assistant's salary.
“It's tough. I am competing with the big boys. The ANC and DA are doing well. It's not easy to be an independent candidate and it's a first for me,” Sibi said.
He said he was inspired to run by former Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng.
Cibi added:
This is a first for me. I have to thank myself and the people who voted for me. It wasn't easy. We had no funding. I raised money from my salary, but we're going to bring this to Congress.
Chibi believed that political parties had an advantage.
“This is a national ballot, it is a regional ballot, it is a state ballot and giving an X to a political party three times is unacceptable. Also, it is for the political parties to decide this in parliament and it is unfair,” Chibi said.
But he said he wouldn't give up.
“We will be back in 2026. We will continue to work for the people on the ground. The people must govern. That's what Mr. Codesa said. I was disappointed, but I'm also encouraged. I'm excited because now we have to start working on the ground again.”
When the counting was finished, Chibi had received just 503 votes, or 0.01 percent.
Independent candidate Lovemore Ndu received 533 votes, or 0.04% of the vote, in Limpopo. (Lovemore Ndu/Facebook)
It was not surprising that Ahmat performed the best among the independent candidates, given his long record of community activism, most notably with the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in the early 2000s, which successfully campaigned for the Mbeki government to provide national antiretroviral drugs to people living with HIV.
Since then, he has been involved in founding various NGOs and has built a strong network of activists and organizers around him.
He also got off to a fast start, launching his election campaign in March 2023, one month before the proposed amendments to the Election Law to implement the Constitutional Court ruling came into force.
He knew what he was up against from the start.
“The government is trying to make it impossible for people like me to run for parliament,” he told a group of supporters gathered in Cape Town city centre, a stone's throw from Parliament, in November.
“What we found during our campaign is that under this system, virtually no independent candidate can make it into parliament,” Ahmat said at a press conference five days before the election.
He was not the only one to criticize the current electoral system.
Read | 'The numbers are not good': Zakky Ahmat says unlikely to head to parliament
The Election Law Amendment Act was finally enacted in 2023 after the Constitutional Court granted parliament two extensions to the deadline, and came into effect in June 2023.
The slight changes to the bill the ANC pushed through parliament have been described as bad faith compliance with a Constitutional Court order, and broad sections of civil society are clamoring for broader electoral reform, particularly a hybrid system of constituencies and proportional representation.
One person who quickly realized the unfavorable situation of the independent candidates and chose a different path from Ahmat was BOSA leader Mmusi Maimane.
In October 2021, two years after stepping down as DA leader, Maimane announced his intention to run as an independent candidate in the 2024 elections.
At the time, the Electoral Law Amendment Bill had not yet been introduced into Parliament.
With the bill now tabled and the ANC trying to push through minimal changes proposed by Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, it has become clear that it will not be easy for independent candidates to make it into parliament.
So in September 2022, Maimane formed a new party, BOSA, to bring aspiring independent candidates together under an umbrella group and contest the 2024 elections.
One disadvantage of independent candidates is that they can only compete in local elections, whereas by forming a political party, BOSA will be able to compete in both local and national elections.
In the end, BOSA received 65,912 votes, enough to win two seats in Parliament.
BOSA leader Mmusi Maimane appears at the National Results Operations Centre on Saturday morning. (Jan Gerber/News24)
Maimane visited the National Results Operations Centre (ROC) on Saturday morning, and while final results were still trickling in, it was clear that BOSA would win at least one seat, vindicating Maimane's decision to set up a political party.
“We made the right decision to form a political party because we realised that if we had independent candidates, we would not win enough seats and we would have problems.”
“The long-term goal is to amend the electoral law and create a constituency-based model,” Maimane said.
“Because that's where the responsibility is felt.”
At a press conference a few days before the election, Ahmat also called for electoral reform, which he believes should be based on the Van Zyl-Slavert report.
The long road to electoral reform
The proposal for a constituency-based proportional representation system has been debated in South African politics for more than 20 years.
In 2002, the Cabinet appointed an election task force, headed by the late Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, whose majority recommendation was that 300 members of the National Assembly should be elected by constituency and the remaining 100 should be allocated from proportional party lists, arguing that this would increase accountability.
Former president Kagalema Motlanthe headed a high-level committee that reviewed South Africa's laws, and in its 2017 report recommended that “Parliament should amend the Electoral Act to provide for an electoral system based on proportional representation and constituency systems for national elections, with members of Parliament accountable to defined constituencies.”
Both of these reports are gathering dust.
Read more | What you need to know about the final results and seat breakdown for the 2024 election
The Zondo Commission made similar recommendations, as did the majority recommendation of the Ministerial Advisory Committee appointed by Motsoaledi for the Electoral Laws Amendment Bill. Motsoaledi adopted the minority recommendation, and the current system was born.
After the then Electoral Laws Amendment Bill was passed by Parliament in October 2022, Motsoaledi suggested that state assemblies responsible for processing the bill include a clause providing for the establishment of an expert committee to consider electoral reforms that are more far-reaching than those in the current bill.
The commission was appointed in May, well past its deadline, raising questions about its independence.
The commission must report and make recommendations on possible electoral reforms and has one year to carry out the work.
Civil society, meanwhile, has also been pushing for electoral reform, with My Vote Counts launching a call in April for civil society to nominate candidates for the Electoral Reform Advisory Committee.
For now, Ahmat must campaign for electoral reform outside of parliament. On Saturday evening, he conceded defeat.
“The IEC has declared me the loser but I fully accept the result,” he said with a smile in a video message, calling on other parties to also accept the result.
