“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.”