Money In Politics
The programme has a long-standing commitment to monitoring the private funding of political parties and promoting policy that regulates this practice through disclosure. The money in politics project has produced an Occasional Research paper entitled SA Democracy Incorporated: Corporate Fronts and Political Party Funding, which focuses is on a particular corporate front party funding source that has possible links to corrupt transactions and that is used by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to augment its income, that of Chancellor House. The project also manages a website dedicated to monitoring political party funding in South Africa, Who Funds Who?
Who Funds Who?
The Money in South African Politics website (www.whofundswho.org.za) is an
initiative of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), in partnership with the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa). It aims to provide the public with a web-based source of information with which to monitor the reported sources of private funding to political parties, as well as provide up-to-date analysis, international studies and relevant information on disclosure regulations.
It was set against the following objectives:
• To provide tools for political parties, policy makers and others to develop regulations for the private funding of political parties.
• To assist the media, civil society and the research community with background information on this issue.
• To produce a database that will help keep track of reported instances of private funding of political parties – the first online database of its kind on the African continent.
Southern African political party donations
The significance of foreign political donations to domestic political parties surprisingly remains a virtually neglected research subject. This is rather curious given the powerful role foreign donations can play in determining the shape and form of a political parties’ public policies. Sources of foreign funding to political parties in Africa include foreign governments, political parties, multinational corporations, political foundations and wealthy individuals. This project, will assist in identifying cross-border political donations to Africa’s political parties and tracing their effect on policy formation. The research focuses on selected country case studies and is aimed at engaging African policy-makers in the global debate on how to monitor the impact of money in African politics
Extending ‘NURU’ political finance methodology to Africa
The Corruption & Governance Programme, in partnership with TI-Zimbabwe, will conduct ‘NURU’, Transparency International’s latest political finance methodology in South Africa during 2009 and 2010. NURU is based on the original Crinis methodology that was carried out in eight Latin American countries by Transparency International to measure transparency in political finance and better understand the origins of political corruption. NURU (Swahili for ‘ray of light’) aims to identify strengths and weaknesses of a political financing system in a given country and establish a regional benchmark for political finance transparency for political parties and electoral institutions in sub-Saharan Africa. The project also aims to empower citizens to translate findings into active advocacy and monitoring of political processes, including the work of statutory oversight committees. By providing thorough diagnosis of the legal framework and the practice, it provides strong empirical evidence that allows all stakeholders to get a clear picture of areas, in which reforms are most needed.
