Johannesburg — FRANK Martin is a prime example of why SA should be striving to make the electoral system at national and provincial level more like the ward-based structure that applies in municipalities. He is also a good part of the reason the African National Congress (ANC) has for years been resisting such change, even though this was one of the recommendations of the Slabbert commission on electoral reform.

Martin is the ward councillor for the Cape Town suburb of Delft, scene of last week's forced eviction of about 2000 homeless backyard dwellers, who had illegally occupied a partially developed low-cost housing development. He represents the Democratic Alliance (DA) and has been accused by the ANC of inciting the backyard dwellers to break the law by moving into houses allocated to others.

In addition to criminal charges, Martin faces the prospect of disciplinary action by the DA-led Cape Town City Council for allegedly breaking the council's code of conduct. All of which has made Martin the villain of the piece, and if the charges against him are supported by enough evidence to secure a conviction or justify disciplinary steps by his peers on the council, his vilification in the local media over the past week may have been justified.

But that would ignore the real issues behind last week's disturbing scenes, which were uncomfortably reminiscent of the apartheid forced removals that plagued the Cape not long ago. Once again, rubber bullets and tear gas are being used to evict destitute families with young children, and the government of the day is justifying its heavy-handed means by pointing out the desirability of the socially engineered end.

Martin, who denies inciting anybody to occupy the half-built Delft houses, has nevertheless been tireless in his support of the evictees, even spending his days and evenings with them in the open veld among the meagre possessions that escaped the state's removal trucks.

Martin is there, despite the prospect of losing his job and facing prison time for his trouble, because he feels responsible for the wellbeing of the people who elected him to the Delft ward. Nobody there has the faintest idea who their local MP might be, or even which party he or she represents. Right or wrong, Martin is accountable, and a constituency-based electoral system at provincial and national level might go a long way to introducing this entirely foreign concept to the provincial councils, and Parliament too.

Martin denies encouraging the people he represents to break the law, but sees no reason to apologise for telling them what he is convinced is true -- that the ANC has fiddled with housing waiting lists for political purposes, allowing more recent arrivals in the Cape to jump the queue.

There is no denying that members of the Delft group, almost all of whom are coloured, have been on the housing waiting list of one authority or another for at least a decade. But the houses that have now been built in the area were originally intended as temporary accommodation for the largely Xhosa-speaking residents of the Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa, site of the government's flagship Gateway housing development. Those units have proved unaffordable to anyone who is unemployed, so Delft has become home to many of those who were moved from Joe Slovo, with only 30% allocated to the Delft backyarders.

Martin says he can prove that some of the former Joe Slovo residents have never been on a waiting list, and there is a strong perception among the backyarders that many are relatively recent migrants to the city from Eastern Cape, who are either politically connected or happened to be squatting in the right place at the right time.

Add to this volatile racial mix the fact that the former Joe Slovo residents are largely ANC supporters, and you have the ingredients for a politically inspired Molotov cocktail. Indeed, one man was arrested during last week's clashes with police for being in possession of petrol bombs.

Marrs is Cape editor.