India vs South Africa: Who Fared Better Under Proportional Representation?

Once dreaded as implacably fraught, the transition of power in post-apartheid South Africa was very democratic.

Like India in 1947, South Africa was threatened by volcanic instability in 1990.

(Photo: Vibhushita Singh/The Quint)

I was surprised by the reaction to my previous article questioning a big WHAT IF of history, ie What If India’s Democracy Was Built On Proportional Representation (PR)? Several knowledgeable people weighed in, saying the question is moot given the majoritarian evolution of our State. Some called for a fresh debate on the merits of PR vs FPTP (First Past The Post); others went beyond, suggesting that India should seriously consider remodelling how she elects governments, injecting various elements of PR to make parliament truly and scientifically representative.

But there were others, whose argument was “Sure, you’ve cited the success of PR in highly developed European and other evolved democracies. Most of these countries are rich, homogeneous societies. As opposed to this, India faced existential conflicts in 1947 — grinding poverty, illiteracy, and an emaciated people; an ignitable diversity of religions, languages, and regional disparities; a cauldron of communal strife; the threat of political Balkanisation among hundreds of princely states and semi-autonomous provinces. Show us one example of a country which faced similar challenges but used PR to neutralise them?”

South Africa in 1990 Was Comparable to India in 1947

It’s a challenging question, but one that can be credibly answered. Rewind to South Africa (SA) in 1990, on the verge of abolishing apartheid.

Like India in 1947, SA was threatened by volcanic instability. Over the previous half century, its native black population had endured cruel, minority white rule under the National Party (NP).

The barbarity of apartheid is a well-documented historical fact that need not be exerted here. An angry, triumphal outbreak of vengeance and violence by the black majority would have been catastrophic for the whites, comprising about 15 percent of the population (eerily similar to the demographic strength of Muslims in post-partition India at Independence.) The horrors of India’s partition could have found a dangerous echo in SA in the 1990s.

But there was another, equally inflammable ethnic crisis, within the majority black population. Over 3,000 people were killed in vicious clashes in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province between Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) and Chief Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).

Founded in 1975, IFP was a fiercely ethnic political party of Zulu-speaking blacks. While they opposed President De Klerk (NP), IFP was perhaps even more fearful of living under ANC’s domination in a post-apartheid SA. Its Inkatha Youth Brigades were a para-military force, capable of inflicting a fratricidal civil war. The prospect of KZN’s secession was fearsome. 

Mercifully, inspired by Nelson Mandela, SA’s constitutional bargaining process was largely consensual. As soon as apartheid ended in 1990, the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) was set up to draft the constitution, equivalent to India’s Constituent Assembly, with one vital difference. While India’s forum was dominated by the Indian National Congress, SA’s had strong representation from the whites and Zulus, who stiffly opposed ANC.

That explains how India’s Constituent Assembly adopted FPTP without as much as a cursory assessment of Proportional Representation, while CODESA and its successor entity, the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum (MPNF), spent considerable energy on the relative merits of a Westminster FPTP vs German MMP (mixed-member proportional representation) vs list-PR vs other hybrid models of democratic elections. 

How Mandela Accepted Proportional Representation

Like India’s Congress leaders, even Mandela initially flirted with the idea of FPTP, tempted by the prospect of a sweeping majority, and confident that his party would remain liberal and centrist. 

“Don’t expect me to negotiate myself out of power”, cried a defiant President de Clerk. But he wasn’t a spoiler. His principal negotiator, Roelf Meyer, said: “The aim of the NP government has always (been) that the system of representation that we had prior to the change would not work in the new constitutional system ... (but) a PR electoral system (will) act as vehicles for minorities."

Chief Buthelezi pushed back even harder against any majoritarian misadventure: “Inkatha warns the ANC that the pursuit of winner-takes-all politics is dangerous in the extreme.”

Mandela’s Gandhian instinct of peaceful accommodation kicked in quickly. “Majority rule and internal peace are like two sides of a single coin; white South Africa simply has to accept that there will never be peace and stability in this country until the principle of (democratic majority rule) is fully applied … (but) we (have) committed ourselves to one-person-one-vote elections on the basis of proportional representation to ensure that every political formation which has any degree of support would have a place in the Constituent Assembly.”  

Ultimately, SA conducted its first multi-racial election with a supremely low threshold of participation — every party that got 0.25 percent, yes, a mere 0.25 percent of the popular vote — would find its listed nominees in the National Assembly.      

Over 19.7 million votes were counted. ANC won overwhelmingly, with 62 percent of the vote and 252 seats in the 400-member Assembly. The heroic Nelson Mandela was elected president. The white NP won a creditable 20 percent of the vote, getting 82 seats and the vice-presidentship for FW de Clerk. Inkatha got over 10.5 percent of the vote and 43 seats in the house. Chief Buthelezi became Minister of Home Affairs in the Mandela cabinet. Inkatha also bulldozed to over 50 percent of the vote in the provincial legislature of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN); Buthelezi continued to perform his traditional role as the Prime Minister to the King of Zulus. All was well, and it ended well!

Once dreaded as implacably fraught, the transition of power in post-apartheid South Africa was incredibly democratic and balanced.

The lion’s share of the credit must go to Mandela’s statesmanship and the egalitarian impulse of the Proportional Representation (PR) method of electing the government.

And this just reinforces the question that I had left dangling at the end of Part 1 – what if India had built its democracy on the Proportional Representation (PR) system of elections?