ELECTION WATCH 10/2023

[15th April  2023]

No Transparency nor Accountability in Financing of Political Parties

The issue of money and politics in Eastern and Southern Africa was the subject of a webinar hosted last year by the Alliance for Finance Monitoring (ACFIM), a pan-African political finance watchdog based in Uganda.  The webinar addressed regional issues of political party finance, its opacity and the potential it gives for state capture by financial interests.

Zimbabwe was presented as a country that is coming under the control of a few wealthy members of the elite who fund the ruling party in anticipation of making inflated profits out of State contracts. 

There is also frequent misuse of government resources for political purposes.  Presidents and Ministers use government transport and other resources when campaigning for their parties.

These issues raise the question of how political parties in Zimbabwe should be financed.  In this bulletin we shall look at how they are financed under the current law.

How Parties are Funded in Zimbabwe

Political Parties (Finance) Act [link]

In Zimbabwe political parties are financed by the State through the Political Parties (Finance) Act.  Under the Act:

• Parties whose candidates get at least five per cent of all the votes cast in a general election are entitled to receive funding from the State [section 3(3) of the Act].
• At the beginning of each financial year the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs announces the total amount that will be paid to political parties for that year [section 3(2) of the Act].
• The share each party receives out of that total amount is proportional to the share of the votes cast for its candidates in the previous general election [section 3(3)] though the proportion they receive may change as a result of by-elections held in the years following a general election [section 3(4)].
• Parties that want to receive funding from the State must apply to the Minister for it.  If the Minister refuses their application they can appeal to the High Court [section 4 of the Act].

In 2023 Z$1 500 000 000 was allocated to political parties.  Of this amount Z$1 050 540 000 was paid to the ruling ZANU-PF party, which received 70 per cent of the votes cast in the 2018 general election, and the remaining Z$449 550 000 went to the MDC Alliance – not the same MDC Alliance that contested the election, but that is another rather long, sad story.

Foreign donations

The Political Parties (Finance) Act does not allow political parties or candidates to receive any foreign donations [money, gifts or other assistance] and those found to be in breach are liable to criminal penalties – a fine equal to the value of the donation or to US$2 000, whichever is the greater.  However, since the promulgation of the law over two decades ago, no political party has been prosecuted for breaching it despite frequent claims that political parties receive substantial funding for electioneering from Western countries [in the case of opposition parties] and from China and Russia. 

Local donations

The Political Parties (Finance) Act does not prohibit political parties from seeking and receiving donations from local individuals and companies, and does not require such local donations to be publicised or even recorded.  Many companies have in the past donated to political parties both ruling and opposition, and there has been no transparency or public declaration of donations received.

The Electoral Act [link]

Part XVI of the Electoral Act limits the expenses that candidates in an election may incur but has very little to say about the funding of political parties or the expenses that parties may incur.

Sections 93 and 100 of the Act impose limits on allowable expenses of candidates during election periods:  they may incur expenses only on such things as personal living expenses, advertising, hiring premises for meetings, and employing a limited number of election agents.  In terms of section 97, all election expenses incurred by a candidate must be paid by his or her chief election agent;  similarly all donations and other payments which well-wishers and other persons may make towards a candidate’s election expenses must be paid to his or her chief election agent.

As for political parties, section 93A of the Electoral Act permits them, during election periods, to appoint and pay roving election agents in all constituencies and wards in which the parties are fielding candidates.  Aside from that, the Act does not deal with election expenses that parties may incur.

Transparency and Accountability on Funding

There is currently no provision under the Political Parties (Finance) Act or the Electoral Act for candidates or political parties to keep proper accounts of their expenditure during elections, or to disclose the sources of their funding.

Section 8 of the Political Parties (Finance) Act permits the Minister of Justice to make regulations providing for:

• The form and manner in which political parties must keep records of donations, and
• The keeping of proper books of account by political parties, the audit of their accounts and the publication of their statements of accounts.

Successive Ministers have failed to make any such regulations, however, so political parties have never had to declare publicly how much they have raised in funds, or from whom, or what the funds were used for.

This silence on publicly declaring donations and revealing the donors can potentially increase the chances of state capture.  If party donors remain unknown outsiders cannot assess whether or to what extent they are influencing the party’s policies and, in the case of donations to the ruling party, outsiders cannot assess whether persons who get public contracts are being rewarded for their donations.

Other Problems with Funding of Political Parties

Lack of transparency is only one of the problems with our current system of funding political parties.  Others are:

• Inadequacy of State funding,
• The allocation of State funding, particularly when a party that contested a general election subsequently splits into two or more factions, each claiming to be the original party, and
• The anomaly that candidates are restricted in what they may spend in elections, whereas political parties are not.

All these problems need to be resolved if Zimbabwe is to become a true multi-party democracy.