LETTER: Electoral system broken

Marianne Merten’s excellent debut column calling for electoral reform to be taken seriously is as timely as it is important (“Last chance saloon for electoral reform”, September 4).

Nothing demonstrates more clearly that our current system is broken than that the MK party can change its party lists after the election date, when voters have made their choices but before MPs are sworn in, so that individuals who did not appear on party election lists now get sworn in as MPs.

Thus we have the shameful scenes of disgraced individuals such as fraud-implicated Brian Molefe (he of the R30m bonus fame), impeached former public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane (she of litigating for a further R10m bonus fame), and a depressing list of similarly fraud-implicated people being sworn in as MPs and taking “their” seats having been “elected” to parliament.

It is more than just a farce, it is a national disgrace. It beggars belief. Worse, impeached former Western Cape judge president John Hlophe is now similarly “elected” an MP, and then raised to the position of “chief whip of the opposition” with all the perks, payments, parking bays and petty deference due the position.

Let me say that again: the chief whip of the official opposition in SA is an impeached former judge president! More disgusting is that this impeached judge, a morally compromised and deeply tainted man, is now also “elected” to sit on the Judicial Services Commission.

This cannot stand. Our system is not just tainted, but broken into pieces. It is simply not fit for purpose.

Mark Lowe
Durban

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