At the very moment when it should be offering a different approach to politics, the SACP has got itself into a right pickle on the money front. With Thabo Mbeki doing his very best King Lear impression — minus the truculent daughters, but replete with one-eyed errors of judgement — SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande is no less on the back foot.
Mired in what can most generously be described as the “confusion” around the ultimate destination of various cash donations made to the party, Nzimande’s support for axed deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge appears hollow in the face of his own attitude to Phillip Dexter, the former treasurer who had the temerity to raise concerns about financial accountability.
It’s a classic response: support the whistleblower, provided he or she is not crapping on your front doorstep. And try to blow away the strong odour of hypocrisy.
Beyond the wider issues of political culture that deserve their own separate dissection, the latest turn of events is a new chapter in the sorry tale of private party political donations.
Money is the fault line of the new South African political dispensation. In the absence of a regulatory framework, political parties have still not resolved how to handle the relationship with their private donors. The ANC has faced scandal after scandal relating to its own dodgy donors. Most recently, its treasurer, Mendi Msimang, was put in the wholly unedifying position of having to argue that the ANC should not have to return R4-million of Brett Kebble’s money to the trustees of his estate because the ruling party gave the slain mining boss “value for money”. Yet to avoid contradicting his own secretary general’s affidavit evidence in the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) case, Msimang had to argue that the benefit was an “indirect one”.
Given this attitude, one is forced to conclude that the ANC no longer cares what the public thinks about its attitude to fund-raising, and is contemptuous of the high court to which it promised, in 2005, to table legislation in Parliament.
As the Idasa campaign put pressure on the ANC and the DA, the SACP’s hesitancy mirrored its own dilemmas. It raised the issue from time to time in the ANC, but otherwise did little to support the call for transparency.
Part of its dilemma is that some of the party’s own donors, including trade unions, are shy of public disclosure. And because it is not separately represented in Parliament, and cannot claim any of the public funding given to such parties, it remains heavily reliant on private donations.
About a third of the SACP’s annual R7-million budget comes from unions. Another third comes from business. Although dwarfed by the corporate donations the ANC receives — probably R60-million a year — this is not insignificant. The motives are no less varied or disingenuous. Someone like Patrice Motsepe donates to the party because it is tactically prudent: to soften the attitudes of the mineworkers’ unions when conducting negotiations with the bosses. Business does not give something for nothing.
But the cash-in-bin-liner approach to financial management is as unprincipled as it is inelegant, and quickly runs down any claims to integrity on the left. How can you demand fiscal probity and professionalism from government, when you are yourself doing a passable impression of a vaudeville gangster musical?
The natural question is to ask: where does the money go? There is a strong suspicion that some of the bin liners ended up with the Jacob Zuma campaign. Of course, that is only speculation. But money will often drive political culture. Certainly, that seems to be the path South African politics is choosing.
So if you want to know where South Africa is headed, follow the money.