South Africa uses multi-member districts in that its PR system uses one multi-member district ("at-large" district) in each of the provinces for the provincial part of the national election, and the provinces use MM districts (at-large) for the provincial elections as well (so no single-member districts). Then in the national election top-up seats are added to achieve overall party proportionality. You could say that South Africa uses Mixed-Member Proportionality except that "classic" MMP usually means some members are elected in single-member districts with top-up seats added to that where necessary.
South Africa is contemplating changing its electoral system with many calling for classic MMP while the minority of the panel investigating the issue are calling for retention of the present MMP/multi-member districts system.
The present use of provincial MM districts means there is representation of members for separate provinces. This is not local representation but its equivalent in Canada is something that is safeguarded under the Canadian constitution, if we compare our countries. We cannot combine votes from different provinces in our elections.
"2019 South African general election" (wikipedia):
South Africa has a parliamentary system of government; the National Assembly consists of 400 members elected by closed list proportional representation. Two hundred members are elected from national party lists; the other 200 are elected from provincial party lists in each of the nine provinces. The 200 provincial seats are divided among the provinces based on population, ranging from 5 seats in the Northern Cape to 48 seats in Gauteng, as of this election. The largest remainder method and the Droop quota are used to allocate seats at both the provincial and national level. All 400 seats are first allocated to parties at the national level, then the 200 provincial seats are allocated to parties in each of the nine provinces. Finally, the national list seats are allocated to the parties by subtracting seats won at the provincial level for each party from that party's national allocation, generating a maximally proportional result. A provision in the electoral law limits the number of seats allocated in the highest remainder stage of the national allocation to 5, with any remaining unallocated seats distributed according to the highest average of votes per seat.[1][2] The President of South Africa is elected by the National Assembly after the election.[3] The provincial legislatures, which vary in size from 30 to 80 members, are also elected by proportional representation with closed lists, using the same method as the provincial allocation in the national election. The premiers of each province are elected by the respective provincial legislatures.[2]" It seems seats are won and allocated under party-list PR in provinces, in province-wide MM districts, and then top-up seats are added to make the overall result conform to the overall party tallies.
And that there is no local district representation at all.
the country has 22,000 voting districts and the votes from all of these are combined together first by province then by country-wide. As there is no district representation, there is no districting or periodic re-districting nor is there any gerrymandering. Provinces have different population and that is reflected by each province having different number of seats in the provincial part of national elections, making use of the flexibility that MM districts allow.
Seems perfectly democratic system to me. In Canada we could not have country-wide top-up but using 13 MM districts to cover whole country means the result would be very P. especially with Rep by Pop., with each province having about the number of members its population gives it - with slight variation for Quebec and PEI.
Even with no single-member districts and that, likely candidates pick a city or portion of a province to campaign in and when elected serve to represent the interests of their supporters in that place and elsewhere as well - as members do in Canada as well. He or she might be the "member for Sudbury" but they vote on everything from Customs operations in Arctic ports to price of milk in Newfoundland and highway construction projects in BC, or the like. Same likely applies to South Africa as well.
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