Funding Democracy
Between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton and all associated institutions, the recent US elections cost several billion dollars. Democracy is not cheap and yet this basic tenet does not seem to register with many who are the direct beneficiaries of democratic activities.
I have seen a document emanating from the Joint Operations Command in 2013 which states that the total budget for their activities in the 2013 elections was US$800 million. The MDC budget for the same election was US$5 million. As any political consultant will tell you, you get what you are prepared to pay for – politics is in many ways all about money.
When the MDC was formed in 1999, we were the sole Party with any grass roots organisation and presence capable of taking on the Zanu PF monolith. We caused a lot of excitement and volunteers and to some extent, money, poured in. Because of this we were able to mount a very substantial challenge to the Zanu PF and established ourselves as a real option to take power. In the early days many international organisations came to our assistance with training and expertise. They helped us develop policies and then to publish them and make their content known.
We remain the only Party in Zimbabwe that has any realistic chance of taking power and yet we face perhaps the worst financial crisis in our history. There are many reasons for this – we are not the new boys on the block anymore – we have been here for 16 years, we have not covered ourselves with glory in the way we have handled funds in the past – there has been abuse. But we have taken the heat, we have been beaten and many have died in this struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe and MDC with its many thousands of supporters – mainly the poor and disadvantaged, have borne the brunt of State sponsored brutality and worse.
Today almost all foreign Governments have specific policies which forbid the funding of political parties in other countries. In Zimbabwe we have a law which makes it a criminal offence for a political party to accept foreign funding from any source. In this country, any business person who makes a donation to the MDC will face State pressure and worse. Early in the life of the MDC we had a local businessman who made a donation of about US$5000 to the Party and was filmed by CNN handing the donation to the President, Morgan Tsvangirai. Two weeks later he was gunned down outside the gate to his home and died in the arms of his son.