[EL] Nelson Mandela and a different approach to racial inclusion than often seen in the United States

[Rob Richie]

Nelson Mandela died today, even as this list and many other Americans argue
over the fairness of electoral changes designed to promote racial inclusion.

Mandela and  the African National Congress embraced proportional
representation instead of the single-member district plurality system that
South African had used, just as most former British colonies used it. I
thought I'd share this excerpt from an analysis of the historic first
election

http://www.globaladvocacy.com/south_africa_electoral_system.html

"...The fact that the "Mandela liberation-movement juggernaut" would have
won the National Assembly elections under almost any electoral system
cannot deny the importance of South Africa's choice of a List PR system for
these first elections. Many observers claimed that a PR system, as an
integral part of other power-sharing mechanisms in the new constitution,
was crucial to creating the atmosphere of inclusiveness and reconciliation
which has so far encouraged the decline of the worst political violence,
and made post-apartheid South Africa a beacon of hope and stability to the
rest of troubled Africa.

"Nevertheless, in 1990, upon Nelson Mandela's release from prison, there
was no particular reason to believe that South Africa would adopt PR. The
"whites-only" parliament had always been elected by a First Past the Post
(FPTP) system, while the ANC, now in a powerful bargaining position,
expected to be clearly advantaged if FPTP were maintained. As only five
districts, out of over 700 in South Africa, had white majorities, due to
the vagaries of FPTP voting the ANC, with 50 percent to 60 percent of the
popular vote, expected they would easily win 70 percent or 80 percent of
the parliamentary seats. But the ANC did not opt for this course because
they realised that the disparities of a "winner-take-all" electoral system
would be fundamentally destabilizing in the long run for minority and
majority interests, see Negotiations . List PR also avoided the politically
charged controversy of having to draw constituency boundaries and,
furthermore, it fitted in with the executive power-sharing ethos which both
the ANC and Nationalists saw as a key tenet of the interim constitution.
Today, all major political parties support the use of PR, although there
are differences over which specific variant to use."


Meanwhile, the United States keeps using winner take all and goes to great
contortions to try to make this fundamentally unfair approach to elections
fair. And we wish away uncomfortable realities like only four African
Americans having been elected to the U.S. Senate in a century of such
election, only one (a Massachusetts Republican who lost this third try), as
if that fact doesn't have anything to do with no state having an African
American majority.

 Rob



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Rob Richie
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rr at fairvote.org  (301) 270-4616

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