Why Focus on Who Funds Who?
The private funding of political parties is a necessary prerequisite to ensure that all parties can reach the electorate during the polling process. However a lack of transparency and regulation over the private funding of political parties may allow the wealthy to ‘buy' influence and access through secret donations, drowning out the citizens' voice and undermining the equal value of each person's vote.
Triggered by the glaring absence of a provision for the regulation of private funding of political parties in South African law, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) initiated this web-based resource, the first of its kind on the African continent. This is envisaged to inform the policy debate into the private funding of political parties in South Africa.
What is the Overall Objective?
This project serves to inform and support the debate surrounding the need for regulation of party funding and the need for disclosure as well as enhance the capacity of researchers, journalists and civil society to track the link between money and its effect on the political process. It is hoped that this will contribute to limiting the opportunity for corruption and abuse of public office. We have also aimed to create a broad resource for researchers, academics and policy-makers on the policy options available to govern the funding of political parties. It is hoped that the Party Funding Monitor will eventually also serve as an effective monitoring tool once disclosure regulation have been put in place. The project also hopes to inform the debate elsewhere in the Southern African region – and where possible inform similar applied policy research initiatives on the subject.
Who Are the Project Partners?
The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) is an applied policy research. The vision of the ISS is a stable and peaceful Africa, characterised by human rights, the rule of law, democracy and collaborative security. This is supported by the ISS mission to conceptualise, inform and enhance the human security debate in Africa. The ISS Organised Crime and Corruption Programme, based in Cape Town is active in applied policy research projects across the African continent and is recognised as a pre-eminent regional research organisation doing work in this field.
The Institute for Democracy in Southern Africa (idasa) has its mission the promotion of sustainable democracy by building democratic institutions, educating citizens and advocating social justice in South Africa and elsewhere. The Political Information and Monitoring Service (PIMS) is a flagship national programme of Idasa. PIMS' mission is to challenge political and socio-economic inequality by strengthening people's power to participate in accountable democratic institutions. Idasa, through the work of PIMS, has done extensive work in the area of good governance in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa.
The Team
Hennie Van Vuuren is Head of the Corruption and Governance Programme at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Cape Town.
Andile Sokomani, is a Researcher (Anti-Corruption Strategies) in the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Organised Crime and Corruption Programme.
Judith February is the Head of the Political Information Monitoring Service (PIMS) at the Institute for Democracy in Southern Africa (Idasa).
Donors
This project is funded by the Open Society Foundation - South Africa (OSF). The OSF is a non-governmental non-profit organisation established and financed by the philanthropist George Soros. Its mission is the transformation of closed societies to open ones, as well as the protection and dissemination of the values of existing open societies.