POINT OF ORDER
TIM COHEN: SA’s voting system could be an EFF-up
A new and crucially important political question has arisen following the departure of former president Jacob Zuma and the emergence of the land question on centre stage: how does the ANC keep itself from becoming the plaything of the EFF? In this particular battle, the truth is that the EFF holds all the trump cards; because it has no immediate prospect of actually having to put its policies into practice, it has the freedom to make any claim, however outrageous and outlandish, without the danger that it will have to keep its promises. It will never be tested in the fire of actual outcomes. The larger problem is constitutional. The makers of the South African constitution wrote the rules guided largely by the political dynamics of the day. Of course, they included general notions of democratic best practice, such as one person, one vote, and so on. But in several crucial respects, the Constitution was drawn up with the dynamics of that particular political moment in 1993 in mind. T...
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