Allowing the wealthy to rule us
IF there is one thing South Africa’s politicians prefer to winning votes, it is raising money. Which is why even very limited efforts to ensure that they are not told what to do by donors is under threat.
A justified storm of protest is beginning to build around sections of the Electoral Matters Amendment Bill which could ensure that South Africans again have no control over one of the most important dangers to democracy here, the effect of money on politics. It would also give bigger parties an unfair advantage over smaller rivals.
For nearly a quarter century after democracy arrived here, there were no rules governing political party funding. Anyone could give as much money as they liked to political parties and neither they nor the party had to tell anyone about it. This made it very difficult to check whether government decisions – in all three spheres of government and regardless of which party was in charge – were taken because politicians felt they would help voters or because party donors wanted them.
After much pressure by lobby groups, parliament passed the 2018 Political Party Funding Act which, for the first time, imposed some control. This included measures forcing parties to tell the public of any donation above R100 000 and limiting to R15m the amount any one donor can give to a party.
Undoing Progress
The bill would allow the government to undo these measures – without even needing a parliamentary vote.
It is, ironically, a response to a constitutional court judgement ruling which was hailed by some as a democratic advance –that independent candidates must be allowed to contest national and provincial elections. Political parties are entitled to funding from public money and the change meant that a formula was needed to govern the money independents can claim.
But the bill reacts to the arrival of independent candidates by giving a boost to the biggest parties – the new rules would give the ANC and Democratic Alliance a larger share at the expense of smaller parties and independents. Unsurprisingly, smaller parties are unhappy and are warning the government not to pass it before the election. It does not take a seer to predict that a constitutional court challenge may be in the works.
But, important as this is, it is overshadowed by the Bill’s proposal that the President should have the power to decide the size of donations below which parties don’t have to tell us that they received the money as well as the upper limit for donations. The decision would not need a Parliamentary vote – the head of government would need only to consult parliament’s home affairs committee and the minister.
You don’t need to have studied law and politics to work out that this will enable a governing party to undo the controls on funding. It could, if it wanted, decide that all donations below one billon Rand need not be disclosed and that donors can give up to one hundred billion. To avoid the fuss of a Parliamentary debate, the President can ask the home affairs committee its view and rush the change through.
Anyone who questions the motives behind the bill will not be assured by Home Affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi’s defence. He said the change was warranted because the President has never abused his powers, the new arrangement would not be a conflict of interest and Parliament would be consulted through the portfolio committee. It is no surprise that an Independent Electoral Commission official was unimpressed and insisted that the present arrangement should stay.
It is not clear whether the minister maintained a straight face when he said there was no conflict of interest if the head of a party which may not want to disclose funding could decide whether it should. But, if he did, it must have been difficult. And there is surely no weaker argument for giving a President powers than the claim that the person in the post has never abused their authority – besides the obvious point that the President may not have abused his powers because there were clear rules limiting what he could do, what if this President is replaced by another with less respect for fairness?
The weak justification sounds like just the thing politicians come up with when they don’t want to discuss the real reason for the change – which is clearly what is happening here.
Feeling Pain
For some time, the governing party has been threatening to change the rules to increase the amount donors can give without telling anyone, and how much one donor can give.
Why it wants to do this tells us why controls on party funding are so important and why this bill threatens democracy. It also tells us that we need to do far more to control funding than we have been since 2018.
During discussions on whether to force donors to disclose party funding, the DA repeatedly opposed this. It claimed donors would not give to opposition parties because they would fear government reprisals. This was never a strong argument – a government determined to punish people for donating to its opponents would no doubt find out who was funding whom. And in reality, the opposite of what the DA feared happened – the change in the law shrunk the ANC’s funding, plunging it into crisis.
ANC leaders, in particular then treasurer-general Paul Mashatile, did little to hide their intentions – they were open both about blaming the law for the drop in funding and in insisting that the law needed to change so that donors could once again be shielded from the public.
It is hard to think of a stronger argument for the controls which the ANC wants lifted. If donors are so worried about being seen by the public to give to a governing party, it is hard to believe that they were giving because they deeply admire the party. Logic suggests that that they were giving for reasons they don’t want debated in public.
That is precisely why we need laws forcing parties to disclose funding. While many people might donate to a party because they support its policies, companies and rich individuals are at least as likely to be parting with money because they expect something in return. If the act was indeed driving away donors who expected politicians to ignore voters in exchange for money, it was doing its job and we need to insist that it stay.
To see how important the issue is, we need only look at politics in a country admired by many here, the United States. In theory its political rules are among the most democratic in the world – not only politicians but key officials, including some judges, are elected. Citizens can use referendums to express their view on policy and, in some cases, can recall people in office when they don’t like what they are doing.
In practice, democracy in the US, where it operates at all, is very poor at expressing what the people want – on a host of issues, the attitudes of voters measured in many polls are at odds with what the politicians do.
The reason is simple – money’s hold on politics. About half a century ago, the US made some attempt to control party funding but that went out of the window. And so, today, elected politicians are far more interested in what donors want than what voters want. They are in continual fund-raising mode and this gives huge power to the wealthy.
If this country wants to avoid that – as, of course, it should – the controls on funding in the 2018 law which are now in danger are the very least South Africa needs. This is a highly unequal society and so there are relatively few people who can give politicians and parties the money they want. This makes it even more important to ensure that inequality is not worsened as people with means use them to make sure the law favours them.
Since the danger is this great, the problem with the current law is not that it is too controlling but that it is not controlling enough. What the country should be aiming for are rules which make it very difficult to buy influence.
It could do this by, firstly, imposing very strict limits on what any donor can offer – at most, say, R5 000. It could then continue the arrangement in which parties receive public funds. How much they receive would be measured by how many citizens are willing to donate to them – regardless of what they donate. So, the department store worker who gives R5 and the donor who gives R5 000 would both entitle the party to the same degree of public funding.
This is only one suggestion and there could be many others. What is crucial is the principle – if the country wants a democracy that no money can buy, parties should depend for funding on how many people support them, not on how rich the people who fund them are.
Prof Steven Friedman is a research professor at the University of Johannesburg, faculty of humanities, politics department, and writes in his personal capacity.
