‘Vigilant journos’ to continually seek out party finance secrets

“Where does the money come from?”

According to journalist and political analyst Richard Poplak, that is the greatest question South Africans can ask any political party.

Poplak was addressing a group of journalism students at the University of Stellenbosch yesterday during an ad hoc speech about his new book, Until Julius Comes.

In response to a question from the audience regarding the funding of political parties, Poplak assuredly answered that “since the dawn of democracy [in South Africa], every party has conspired to have no transparency of where the money comes from”.

Party funding has long been a thorny issue in South African politics, and pundits have repeatedly pointed out that secrecy allows corruption to flourish.

The issue became especially relevant in recent days when it became known that Economic Freedom Fighters’ party leader Julius Malema was suddenly able to settle his overdue tax bill of more than R16 million in an effort to avoid being sequestrated in the North Gauteng High Court.

The source of this money has been under scrutiny by the media, with Malema telling SAPA his overdue bill was being footed by “a trust established by fellow South Africans who saw this matter as a persecution”.

Poplak, who regularly uses Malema as a focal point for many of his articles, pointed out that this lack of transparency must lead to a more vigilant media, actively seeking to “crack those stories surrounding party funding”.

In a recent article for the Daily Maverick, the same publication Poplak regularly writes for, Rebecca Davis referred to Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille who said that by admitting where party contributions comes from, it might lead to retribution by opposition parties specifically aimed at those individuals or companies who made the donations to the DA.

“This can be done, for instance, by withholding government contracts,” Zille was quoted as saying.

However, the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC) retorted by assessing that “there is no evidence that donors to the DA will suffer reprisals, for example when AngloGold Ashanti decided to declare its donations to the DA it suffered no such reprisal.”

Regardless of the possible consequences of laying the truth bare, Poplak feels that it is still a journalist’s job to expose those things politicians do not want the rest of the country to know.

“Politics is like a bubble, it is our job to prick that bubble and allow the wider world in.”