DIKELEDI MOKOENA | Gender parity set to backslide in the National Assembly post elections

It’s become very clear that the ANC will no longer hold the status it occupied in the previous National Assembly.

On Friday, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) predicted fluctuations of seat allocations for various political parties and the ANC is predicted to lose 70 seats, mostly to new contenders in the game. See table below.

The predictions made by Prof Pravesh Debba have significant implications on SA’s gender parity in political leadership.

According to the Commission for Gender Equality, in 2019 the ANC had 51% of women in political leadership and this is largely attributed to the party’s voluntary gender quota system. Gender quotas are meant to guarantee a certain percentage of women in power and SA’s political environment remains largely male dominated and increasingly hostile to women’s participation in the public sphere.

In this election cycle, the only political parties that have a progressive gender quota approach is the EFF and Rise Mzansi. These two political parties submitted Zipper/Zebra candidate placement lists to the IEC. The Zipper/Zebra gender quota rule is simply exemplified by Rise Mzansi and EFF’s decisions to alternate its male and female candidates in their lists.

On the other hand, the leading opposition party DA, submitted seat allocations that exhibit patriarchal norms because the candidates who dominate their top 10 are male. The DA’s first female candidate is at number seven and she is the only woman in the top 10.  

Although the ANC’s first female candidate ranks 4th, the ANC’s top 10 candidates characterise gender parity rule. The smallest political parties namely Bosa, Rise Mzansi, Patriotic Alliance, ATM including the EFF are leading in terms of entrusting their number two positions to female candidates.

This means if any of the leaders of these parties were to die or become incapacitated, we would instantly have six political parties in parliament that are led by women. These same parties seemingly to have a 50% gender quota rule, based on the analysis of their top 10. The worst performing political party in terms of women’s representation is the PAC. The first female candidate on their parliamentary list is ranked 16th.

The ANC and the DA are leading other political parties in terms of the number of candidates below the age of 35. This means we shall have 39 young members of parliament representing South Africans if the CSIR predictions are accurate.

This figure should at least be higher if we aim for a relatively fair representation of youth in leadership. The political party that had the opportunity to bring a significant number of young people in parliament is the ANC, but it didn’t.

It’s conceptualisation of renewal should extend to commitment to changing leadership and having more young people in parliament as well as cabinet. Now, CSIR predictions and IEC candidate list inform us that the number of young candidates for parliament from the ANC’s 160 seats is 18, followed by the DA which has 11 young potential members of parliament.

The other political parties predicted to secure seats for young candidates in the national assembly are the EFF (6), MK (2), IFP (1) and the Patriotic Alliance (1). According to the IEC’s candidate list, the youngest member of the forthcoming National Assembly is 23 years of age, and they are a member of the DA which is not doing very well when it comes to gender representation.

The methodology I used to determine the number of women who will constitute the incoming National Assembly has flaws because it depended on one’s interpretation of the sex of the candidates based on names.

The accuracy of the following predictions can only be confirmed once a more rigorous process is followed. However, in the interim, we can predict that SA will be backsliding on gender parity in political leadership largely because we do not have a legislated gender quota system.

Based on the method I used to predict women’s representation in parliament, it seems that SA’s performance in terms of gender parity in parliament will drop from 47.70% of women in the 2019 cycle to around 33.3% in 2024.

The political parties that are sending a relatively higher number of women candidates to parliament are the ANC with roughly 66 candidates, the DA will probably send 29 candidates and the EFF will send 18 out of 39 seats.

If the DA had a 50% gender quota rule, we would be guaranteed 15 more women in parliament. The MK  Party’s candidate list indicates 14 women will be in parliament. The IFP and PA will each have 5 or 6 female MPs if the CSIR predictions are accurate.

The other parties will be sending only 1 female representative in parliament. These parties are VFP (1 out of 6 seats), Action SA (1 out of 5 seats), UDM (1 out of 3 seats), Bosa, Rise Mzansi and ATM will each send 1 female candidate out of the predicted 2 seat allocation for each party. This brings us to a saddening probability of 135 seats for women out of 400 thus the predicted 33% gender parity for women in parliament. Most of these political parties have capable and strong female candidates and a voluntary quota approach to achieving gender equality in political leadership is not sufficient to guarantee gender parity in the political sphere.

If we are committed to gender parity, as our constitution and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals declare, it is crucial for the next parliament to propose the legislation of gender quotas in the political sphere as well as a quota for other intersectional identities for purposes of fair representation in the context of our electoral system which is proportional representative.

Substantive representation may not be guaranteed by quantitative parity but that does not disqualify the importance of demanding equal representation of women, youth and other intersectional representation in political leadership.

We cannot solely rely on political parties to equalise gender representation through voluntary means, we need a legislated gender quota system with placement rules and sanctions by the IEC should future candidate lists not adhere to the proposed 50/50 law.

The incoming National Assembly must prioritise this debate about gender parity. I hope the ANC, Bosa, PA, Rise Mzansi, ATM, EFF and Al Jama Ah will advance the call for a legislated gender quota system because they have already exhibited commitment to women’s representation in their top 10s.

• Dr Mokoena is a lecturer of gender and political economy at the University of Johannesburg