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Key Text Party Finance and the Politics of Money in Southern Africa

Author: D Pottie
Date: 2003
Size: 26 pages (178 KB)

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Summary

How are political parties financed in southern Africa? What implications does political funding in the region have on the democratic process? This paper from the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa offers a comparative survey of the legal and institutional framework within which party funding takes place in southern Africa with more detailed assessment of Zimbabwe and South Africa. Its analysis of the structure of party resources in the region reveals a potentially volatile combination of regulated public support and a laissez faire approach to private donations.

The political transition to multiparty electoral democracy in southern Africa over the course of the 1990s has been widely recognised as long overdue. While there is a good deal to celebrate in terms of the constitutional framework and administrative conduct that has made these elections possible, there are other regional trends that demand more careful scrutiny. This paper examines party funding. There are three main sources of funds for political parties in southern Africa: 1. private domestic donations as party membership fees, corporate contributions, personal donations and voluntary effort on the part of members, 2. foreign donations and 3. public funding.

This mixture threatens to undermine the values that the advocates of public funding claim to advance. These values may be summarised as follows:

Public funding formulas seek to remove differences among parties through some combination of proportional and equitable distribution of public funds.
However, depending on the funding formula the result is often highly uneven and may be subject to political manipulation depending on whether payment is calculated on the basis of number of seats, proportion of voter support, or a combination of both.
When parliament is in session these considerations may be of less concern as MPs draw their salaries, but parties incur their largest expenses in election campaigns.
Parties cite radio and television advertising and the production of posters and other printed materials as their largest expenses, and even public funding is unlikely to meet all of these costs.
While electoral commissions administer nominal accountability for the distribution of public funds, parties earn the lion’s share of their finance through undisclosed means.

The emerging democracies in the region claim a commitment to the political values of transparency and accountability, but these values will hold little purchase in the public or private sector so long as political parties themselves operate outside the requirements of public disclosure.

As far as public funding is concerned, the only prevalent criticism in southern Africa is that levels of public funding are inadequate, and that non-represented parties lack access to even these resources.
Only broadly applied and widely publicised disclosure is likely to insulate parties from perceptions of influence-peddling and discourage private interests from attempts to purchase influence.
But owing to the centrality of access to state power in the underdeveloped economies of southern Africa, regulatory practices designed to achieve this goal will face an uphill battle, particularly insofar as they challenge or restrict the power of incumbency.
Legal and illegal use of state resources by ruling parties will not be easy to dislodge.

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Source: Pottie, D., 2003, ‘Party Finance and the Politics of Money in Southern Africa’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Vol. 21, Issue 1.
Author: Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, http://www.eisa.org.za/