There has been a ”wall of silence” from political parties in response to a request for them to disclose their private donors, researcher Richard Calland said on Thursday.
Private companies had mostly been equally reluctant to reveal which parties had received money from them, he told a seminar in Centurion. Gencor was the first, and only big, listed company to come clean, disclosing that it had given about R1,3-million to the National Party and the Democratic Party over a four-year period.
The two-day seminar, which had the theme ”Where money meets politics”, was organised by the Institute for Security Studies, the Institute for Democracy in SA (Idasa), the Black Sash and the SA Council of Churches.
Calland is spearheading an initiative by Idasa to obtain details of private funding for political parties by using the Promotion of Access to Information Act. Idasa requested the information under the Act from all 13 political parties represented in Parliament, as well as from the top 13 companies listed on the JSE Securities Exchange.
Calland, head of political monitoring at Idasa, said: ”From the political parties there has — perhaps unsurprisingly – been a wall of silence.”
The United Democratic Party wrote a ”rather polite” letter in response, saying the party was not a recipient of big donations.
”There was (also) a polite one-liner from the Federal Alliance, acknowledging the request. From the others, nothing,” Calland said. Gencor told Idasa that it gave R500 000 to the NP in September 1994, R150 000 to the DP in October 1995, another R150 000 to the DP in September 1997, R125 000 to the NP in January 1998, and R250 000 to the DP in July 1998.
Calland said Johann Rupert, chairman of Richemont, sent him an e-mail within 24 hours of receiving the request. Rupert explained his company’s policy since 1988 was not to make any private donations to political parties.
Calland said the respondents had, under the Act, 60 days to heed Idasa’s request. Failure to do so would amount to a contravention of the Act and the high court could then be approached to deal with the matter. ”If necessary, that is obviously the step we will take,” Calland said.
”We are in this for the long haul and we are ready to litigate the matter.”
Lauding Gencor for its rapid response, he said: ”One can surmise they think that openness is better than secrecy, and that they will not be punished for revealing that they have made donations to … opposition parties.”
SA Human Rights Commission chairman Jody Kollapen told the seminar that private funding for political parties should be accepted as a reality.
”For a democracy to work you need money, and it is unrealistic to expect all the resources to be provided by the state.”
But private funding for political parties carried risks as the practice could give the wealthy undue influence in the political system. This would militate against the notion that every vote carried an equal weight.
It was, therefore, vital that private donations to parties be restricted in some way, Kollapen said.
University of the Witwatersrand political scientist Tom Lodge called for incentives to encourage private companies to channel their donations to the Independent Electoral Commission for proportional distribution among all political parties. Calland said the government had postponed moves to regulate the matter several times.
”There has been paralysis on this. The larger political parties see no interest and have no interest in tackling this issue. It simply is not in their immediate interest to do so,” Calland said. – Sapa