Politics and money are, for better or worse, inseparable. It is a reality of modern politics that parties require significant funds to operate in any meaningful way.
The Constitution provides specifically for a “multiparty democracy”. It seeks to ensure that the widest plurality of political views are given expression.
This constitutional bedrock is expanded in the electoral laws. These provide for a proportional representation (PR) system wherein “one person, one vote” means exactly that; every vote counts. PR electoral processes also encourage the proliferation of a wide variety of political parties.
In practice every national parliamentary seat represents just less than 40 000 voters and they deserve proper representation. The moral implication of the constitutional and legal framework is obvious. Political parties must serve those who voted for them.
The scale of modern politics places many demands on political parties. Just the sheer scope of running a national election campaign is staggering: millions of voters, across nine provinces, 11 languages and highly diversified lifestyles. The cost of reaching these voters, physically or indirectly through advertising, runs into millions. And this is just the business of getting into office once every five years.
The real business of political parties, namely to represent and promote the interests of their voters, happens between elections. No political party that takes its mandate seriously can afford not to spend millions more on constituency offices, policy development and improved parliamentary work. Thus political parties require funding.
None of this is bad, as long as party funding is equitable and transparent.
The law provides that the taxpayer funds political parties represented in Parliament and the legislatures — parties with proven support receive funding. Equitable funding for political parties is easily achieved because every party has an equitable share of the parliamentary seats based on their proportional share of the national vote. Equitable funding divides taxpayer funding proportionally among the political parties.
This entire scheme goes awry when floor-crossing happens, because that entitles an individual public representative to take their seat with him or her to another party — and the funding that comes with that seat too.
This is a double blow to the original party and its voters. Firstly, they lose the seat: the skills and funding invested in that seat. Secondly, they lose the funding for constituency offices and to operate in Parliament and the legislatures.
Smaller parties are far more negatively affected by floor-crossing than the ruling party. For example, a party with three MPs will lose a third of its funding when one MP defects, while a party with 270 MPs loses only 0,37% of its funding when one MP defects. This is not even taking into account the fact that the 10% threshold for floor-crossing and the promise of patronage effectively protects the ruling party from ever suffering such a loss.
To add insult to injury, parties can be launched on the basis of floor-crossing without ever having taken part in an election. These parties get seats and funding from the taxpayer. One-person parties immediately increase their personal salaries because they become automatically entitled to the additional salary of a party leader. The system also allows for such a person to cross in the year after an election and then cross to another party in the year before the next election; thereby completely avoiding ever having to face the electorate. Voters could be forgiven their cynicism about politicians when this sort of political lottery occurs and they are still expected to fund it with their taxes.
This is a scenario that no doubt pleases the ruling party, and to an extent the Democratic Alliance because, even if they don’t gain seats, the overall effect will be to reduce the ability of their opponents to challenge them in Parliament or the elections. In a masterly exercise of moral gymnastics, even the DA is now realising that the system disadvantages it as well; so now it proclaims its opposition to floor-crossing! Meanwhile, the African National Congress will continue to portray floor-crossing as an expression of shifts in the political landscape, which is so far removed from reality that it is laughable.
The day will come when the ANC suffers from floor-crossing with the concomitant threat to the stability of the government. It will then have to enter elections with severely reduced funding. I would like to hear its response then when we trot out this drivel about it “reflecting a shift in the political landscape”.
The bottom line is that the equitable funding of political parties disappears once floor-crossing occurs.
Political party funding is especially problematic where secret donations and funding can unfairly advantage one party over another, and in the process give faceless donors a greater say in the party’s policies than its members and voters.
The need for transparency is nowhere more apparent than in the so-called Oilgate scandal. Here is a case of an individual who serves on the ruling party’s policy-making structures, secretly funding that party to the tune of millions. His largesse came at a time when the ANC was experiencing financial troubles and desperately needed funding to fight a national election campaign. What did this funding buy him? Or what favour was he repaying? Surely, if the entire matter was above board, there would be no need for secrecy?
It is even more unsavoury that the Oilgate funding originated from the taxpayer. Taxpayers paid R30-million for a product that was worth R15-million and the ANC received a handsome R11-million.
In the absence of transparency, it is likely that the ruling party will receive disproportionately more funding from people hoping to influence government policy.
The current funding of political parties in South Africa, and hence the proper functioning of a multi-party democracy, is not adequate or properly administered.
Equitable funding and transparent funding have not been achieved. In fact, the past few years have seen a decline in the adherence to these principles.
The warning bells have been going off for quite some time now: multi-party democracy is under threat. It is therefore no wonder that we see an increase in voter apathy as well as violent and spontaneous protests from sections of the electorate who feel marginalised even 11 years into democracy.
It is inconceivable that such apathy and protests would occur if these voters felt there were parties representing their views and concerns. With a dozen established political parties representing all conceivable ideologies, these people still shun democratic processes. The reasons are simple: firstly, they have lost faith in the ruling party, and no party with views they support has reached them; and secondly, they don’t see any value in voting for an opposition party that faces regular threats to its parliamentary representation and funding. The subliminal message from the ruling party to these voters seems to be: if you don’t vote for us we will ensure that your vote is worthless.
For smaller political parties, these factors constitute very large obstacles. Naturally, we will persevere despite these constraints, but one cannot help but wonder about the unnecessary harm being done to the depth and vitality of political debate in this country.
As it is, the ruling party taps into state resources during election campaigns, using Air Force helicopters to ferry ANC ministers to rallies and so on. Joel Netshitenzhe can use his government position to promote the ANC. Strategically timed imbizos are little more than glorified ANC election rallies and praise-singing events. The public broadcaster is plumbing to new depths in pro-ANC coverage.
The abuse of state resources for ruling-party electioneering further distorts the already inequitable state of political-party funding. We hope that sanity will prevail, and that the campaign of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, especially, on party funding, will result in a better funding framework.
Bantu Holomisa is the leader of the United Democratic Front