ADDRESS BY MR BANTU HOLOMISA, MP - UDM PRESIDENT VENUE: IDASA OFFICES, SPIN STREET, CAPE TOWN IDASA DEBATE: POLITICAL PARTY FUNDING IN SOUTH AFRICA, February 21 2012
Chairperson, political colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,
We would like to thank IDASA for affording us an opportunity to participate in this political party funding debate. The UDM has been batting on this wicket for a while now.
South Africans opted for a multi-party democracy. Sadly, however, the current party funding formula is at variance with this objective. Elsewhere, parties represented in Parliament are provided with adequate support, thus improving the quality of their end-product, unlike the present situation where debates are dominated by praise singers.
Since our inception we have been unequivocal in our call to bring greater accountability and transparency to party funding. But it seems we must rule out the possibility of reforms in the party funding legislation when it so perfectly suits the governing parties.
The intransigent attitude of the two governing parties with respect to the current political party funding model stems from the fact that each year, and especially around election time, they receive millions of Rands in private funding from the same conglomerates, which later queue up for Government tenders. It is a new culture of "You grease my palm, I grease yours." This situation results in an insidious trend towards the seemingly intractable culture of human greed and corruption.
Our fear is less about how much money a political party receives, but rather about the disproportionate influence the private funders and conglomerates are likely to have on policy formulation. What compounds this problem is when some private funders happen to be fugitives.
The often talked about Arms Deal is a perfect example of this new corrupt culture of reciprocity in the greasing of palms and hefty backhanders. The sale of Iscor without a tangible policy on the sale of public enterprises seems to have been another sophisticated attempt to appropriate public funds for political party use.
We witnessed the negative effects of this policy when Anglo American was allowed to delist from our stock exchange in favour of foreign ones -through the stroke of a pen, ostensibly denying us the much needed tax revenue and other possible investments.
On many occasions, we have raised the institutionalised form of corruption found in the Eskom/Hitachi/Chancellor House deal in which South African consumers contribute to the ruling party's coffers every time they purchase electricity.
We urgently need to take brave steps to deal with the deafening silence of the pieces of legislation governing political party funding in South Africa on private funding - failing which, this new culture of corruption as it manifests itself in the aforementioned examples and many other examples not cited here, will continue to be an albatross around our neck.
We have always pushed for the drafting of a legislation that compels political parties to disclose their sources of private funding. We have also consistently proposed for the current political funding model to be reviewed. The current funding only benefits the ruling party in particular.
We need to move towards a 50%/50% model of public funds distribution, with the first 50% distributed equally among all parties represented in the National Assembly and Provincial legislatures, and the remaining 50% done on a proportional basis.
Our clarion calls are informed by, among other things, the important role opposition party politics play in strengthening our democracy. More importantly, governing parties are, more often than not, accused of using State resources to reward their clandestine funders.
Attending to these matters would go a long way towards building a better
South Africa for all.
I thank you.
Issued by the UDM, February 21 2012
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