It's not as if we were all in the ANC very enthusiastic about agreeing to floor-crossing in 2002. In fact, as a whole there was quite some ambivalence within the ANC on this. Those who processed the Bills within the Justice and Provincial and Local Government Study Groups of the ANC will remember the endless debates and even tensions finally on what the terms of the floor-crossing should be. Those who opposed floor-crossing tried to restrict the possibilities as much as possible, but lost out. But that's democracy within a party - you win your arguments at times, and you lose at others, but finally you respect the views of the majority.

Of course, the ANC ensured that there were provisions in both the interim and final Constitutions barring floor-crossing. In 1997, following pressure from the opposition parties to allow floor-crossing, Parliament set up the Ad Hoc Committee on Membership of Legislatures. Again the ANC majority in the Committee decided that there should not at that stage be floor-crossing within a proportional list electoral system. The ANC also constantly opposed Private Members Bills allowing for floor-crossing.

In 2002 the ANC, with a certain ambivalence, finally agreed to floor-crossing because of the change in the political terrain. There were various considerations. There was, of course, a significant political re-alignment taking place at the time, and there were shifts in political identity and orientation, especially within the opposition parties, and the ANC agreed to floor-crossing to facilitate the expression of this. Mainly this revolved around a major component of the former NNP public representatives who were trapped within the DA - and wanted out! Floor-crossing was the only answer at the time.

Of course, we may also have been unduly influenced in our support for floor-crossing at the time with the need to contain the DA and win the Western Cape provincial government. And to the extent this is true, we were, I suppose, behaving like any other political party in a democracy. And it's interesting, but not just the DA, but 86% of this House voted for floor-crossing in 2002.

But we were clear that there were many other reasons why floor-crossing would be appropriate in the context. And for what it is worth, serving in the Provincial and Local Government Portfolio Committee at the time, I said in this House: "The underlying value is that councillors should cross the floor primarily because of ideological or policy reasons or because there is a significant shift of opinion within a party or the public, and not on the basis of individual whim or personal gain." Hence the thresholds of numbers set for councillors and other public representatives to meet to qualify for floor-crossing.

The ANC was also concerned about the racialised patterns of voting and believed that floor-crossing would help to erode this. I said "It is rather simplistic to believe that the ANC just wants to gobble up every councillor available. Part of the longer term aim is to deracialise the voting patterns. What sort of non-racial future do we have if Africans vote overwhelmingly for one major party and non-Africans almost wholly for group of small marginalised parties? If managed appropriately, floor-crossing could, over time, contribute to less racialised voting patterns. And don't we all need that?"

Again in this House at the time, I said: "In some cases, there is limited value to public representatives crossing over to the ANC while leaving their constituencies behind. In short, different circumstances might dictate different options - and it is far from the case that the ANC wants to devour all. In any case, rare in democracies today, we already have the support of two-thirds of the people of this country. We are far from desperate for support.....Besides, can you imagine how boring it would be if we had 100% of the public representatives in this country?"

Well, we now want floor-crossing abolished, not because it's boring, but because it has become unseemly, unacceptable. There have been unintended consequences of the floor-crossing legislation that serve to undermine our democracy. While some people have crossed the floor for ideological and policy reasons, many have done so for very individualistic reasons, including in search of monetary gain and personal promotion and to escape from disciplinary action against them by their parties or personal feuds within their parties.

This has been especially the case at local government level. Floor-crossing has become a circus in some municipalities, not least a major metro like Cape Town. It has led to instability and undermined service delivery, with unnecessary changes in administration with major re-shuffles of councilors through floor-crossing. And in this august House, no less, there is the curious phenomenon of one-person parties with no obvious electoral base or known policies at all. Obviously, it was never intended that floor-crossing would be reduced to this farce and it had to be ended.

While floor-crossing advanced a degree of non-racialism at the level of public representatives, it has not done much to deracialise voting patterns, as non-African public representatives crossing the floor have not been able to carry a significant section of their supporters over to parties which have their base mainly in the African community.

Of course, the challenge to deracialise the voting pattern remains. For the ANC, floor-crossing was merely one aspect of a multi-thronged strategy to achieve this. We obviously need now to intensify other aspects of the strategy and develop new and more creative elements of our strategy to erode racial voting patterns. But while this is a responsibility mainly of the ANC, all parties have a duty to contribute to this to entrench and advance non-racialism and democracy in our country.

Invariably, issues about the electoral systems were raised in consideration of these bills. The majority in the Committee feels that the current PR system is appropriate for now, but as conditions change, there would be a need to review the electoral system to ensure increasing public participation in the legislatures. The Committee feels that within the first two years of the new five-year term of parliament, parliament should consider a review of the electoral system and examine the appropriateness of some form of an inclusive system that could provide for both PR and constituency public representatives.

We have no particular views on whether the system should be changed or not, and these are issues that are more appropriately dealt with by the Home Affairs Ministry and parliamentary committee, but we feel that a review of the electoral system should be considered periodically. Just as we have changed our position on floor-crossing it might well be that in future we may want to change the electoral system, in whatever way, to ensure greater inclusiveness, representivity and accountability.

The Committee feels that within the current PR system the Speakers Office could consider developing guidelines to ensure that MPs do not account only to our respective political parties for our constituency work but also to parliament as a whole. There might also be a need to ensure that parties co-operate to ensure that parliamentary constituency offices are spread better across the country.

In conclusion I express the Committees appreciation to Imam Solomon and Mr John Jeffreys for their assistance in the finalisation of the Bill.

And, of course, our Alliance partners, the SACP and COSATU, consistently opposed floor-crossing and have constantly called for its abolition.

I thank you!

This is the prepared text of the speech by Yunus Carrim, Chairperson of the Justice & Constitutional Development Parliamentary Committee, during the debate on the General laws (Loss of membership of National Assembly Provincial Legislature or Municipal Council) Amendment Bill, August 20 2008