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The time for a directly elected President might have arrived

Indeed, South Africa will struggle to restore the practice of a governing party with an absolute majority to power like we had in the past 30 years. The era of coalitions and minority governments is with the democratic order.  The 2016 and 2021 local government elections outcomes ushered in an era where RSA voters demonstrated a belief in the danger of an absolute majority party context of democracy. In the years since, how to manage absolute majority rule has been a consistent theme of RSA's opposition complex.

The in-ANC factional fighting, which gradually defined itself into several rigidities such as ethnicity and economic doctrine, started to make real the possibilities of a split. The associated story presumed that coalition and minority government and the rise of independent candidates, who might in their own right be directly elected president, was now a long-term certainty. 


By-election data in municipalities, random polling results, political party funding trends, civil society and other nodes of influence started to point and work towards institutionalising an anti-absolute majority government. The voices of society got organised into different parties, and the concept of majority assumed a character of working when it is a conglomeration of minorities. Imposing one’s hegemony to the extent that it is constitutional and lawful would now require the consensus of others. 


The rise of coalition government and the challenges of getting perfect calibrations of voter preferences in a national interest-focused majority raises questions about the political party-based system of constituting the national executive. Whilst the executive authority of the Republic is vested in the President as Head of State, the authority to get a President is a de jure function of Parliament and a de facto prerogative power of political parties with a 50% majority, however, organised. This system will be tested for the first time if it works with no absolute majority party in Parliament. The rise of a directly elected President system can no longer be a subject of idle discussion in South Africa. Its concomitant benefits to public accountability and the foregrounding of the Republic's legislative authority as a distinct state arm might be unparalleled.


In the current circumstance where the battle of personalities, one of whom has expired as a potential President of the Republic because of the two consecutive terms clause, and tangentially another in the same condition, the constitution of the national executive is emerging as a casualty. Instead of the voter verdict declaring a ceasefire, the hung parliament outcome seems to have put personalities, factions within political parties, and status quo economic doctrine-defending complexes in a position of strength in the theatre of political contestation, and they are usurping the power to give a verdict. On the contrary, had the outcome been in a directly elected presidential system, voter preferences to the extent that it constituted the legislatures would be a determined given with only the machinations of using gained seats to influence the legislative authority of the Republic. 


To date, the project to fast-track the directly elected president has been frustrated by those in whom the economic authority of the Republic vests. A directly elected presidential system requires individuals with personal brand equity that could surpass that of political parties. In Kenya, the Kenyatta brand equity became the political capital Uhuru Kenyatta applied to recalibrate Kenyan politics. The 2024 elections have put a sharp edge on the analysis of the desirability or otherwise of introducing the presidential system.


The strategic risk of a directly elected president to the idea of a National Democratic Society is the capturability of individuals by interests. Given that multiple phenomena always compete to get through any person’s limited attentive bottlenecks, the power of ideology on an individual can plunge into crisis or resurrect to develop society.  Notwithstanding, South Africa is a society committed to improving the country without necessarily compromising the liberation gains that came with the democratic order. CUT!!

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