South Africa: Constitutional Assembly Resources

15 September 1994

In response to your invitation to the public of South Africa, for submissions on how best the broader public could participate in drafting the final constitution.

I have a few suggestions.

Because the constitutional assembly consists of appointed rather than elected persons, they are not representative enough of common society, but rather of political parties, and many of them have no popular support base as a person. Therefore it is an absolute given that consultations and negotiations should be broadened to include elected representatives of interest groups, operating parallel, but separately, to the Constitutional Assembly.

Thus:

Any interest group who can prove they are representing 10 000 plus people should be allowed to nominate a negotiator per 10 000 people. These interest groups could be anything from professional bodies to residents associations. No group complying with these criteria may be refused.

Any citizen should be allowed to submit written suggestions and, if such suggestions seem beneficial or in the interest of South Africa, the person who made the suggestions should be invited as a negotiator.

These representatives should be given paid leave by their employers for the time they spend as negotiators. The employers could be subsidised or compensated by the state for the loss of productivity for the time the representative was in State service.

Finally,

Negotiations should take no more than 3 months of continuous meetings of the negotiators, spiralling ever downwards (upwards) to decrease the number of negotiators, to end with about 100 final negotiators to draft the final proposal from the non Constitutional assembly group.

The interim Constitution should be taken as a working document and as departure point.

For example, 1000 interests groups may indicate a need to participate, representing, say, 25 million people. This means approximately 2500 initial negotiators (25 000 000 I 10 000), spread into 250 working groups of 10 people each (easily

manageble size, can even meet in a residential house for negotiations. Give them one month of negotiations to present and adopt a consensus document (60% majority when voting) on constitutional proposals representing their interest groups, or let them risk losing the opportunity to contribute if a document is not available on time.

Let. the groups choose two representatives out of each group to negotiate its adopted proposals with the other 498 representatives in 50 groups of 10, for one month, in order to present and adopt a combined consensus document (60% majority when voting) representing the needs their previous group put forward as closely as possible, or let them risk losing the opportunity to contribute if a document is not available on time.

This leaves us with the last month of initial negotiations.

Let each group choose two representatives to argue their adopted proposals in an open forum of 100 representatives, in order to formulate a consensus document (80% majority when voting), or risk losing the opportunity to contribute if the document is not available on time.

The consensus document is then compared with the document negotiated in the constitutional assembly, and conflicting points are debated by select committees from both Forums to prepare a consensus document (50% majority when voting) for final approval by the Constitutional Assembly.

A lot quicker than CODESA, but then we now have an interim constitution to work from.

Yours Sincerely

Danie Bosman