The Constitution gives everyone who is a citizen and 18 years or older the right to vote in elections.

The electoral system for the national assembly and provincial legislatures is the proportional representation system and all citizens are entitled to vote if they are registered voters. Voters vote for a party.

The local government electoral system is a mixture between proportional representation and constituency system.

South Africa holds national, provincial and local elections every five years and the local government elections usually occur about two years after the national and provincial elections.

Having regular, free and fair elections is one of the cornerstones of democracy. This goes together with other important democratic principles such as the right to vote, to choose which party you want to belong to and to accept the results of an election.

There are different ways to elect representatives into government, including the system of proportional representation and the constituency-based system. The South African national and provincial elections are based on the system of proportional representation while the local government electoral system is partly based on proportional representation and partly constituency-based.