Money in politics makes us poorer
It is a truism that, in today’s world, money plays a big role in politics. A key enabler. It is equally true that big business should have an interest in the country’s political life, which shapes the environment in which it operates.
The question is: when businesses and the uber-rich put money into our political system, it is to serve what agenda?
The launch last week of former banker Roger Jardine’s Change Starts Now movement, which seeks to alter South Africa’s political scene, again foregrounded the role of money, particularly big money, in our politics.
Ahead of the launch, rumours swirled that big business was behind Jardine’s initiative and had made large amounts of money available, some putting it at R1bn, to front the multiparty charter’s drive to end the ANC’s nearly 30-year rule. In the face of speculation, the former chair of FirstRand was moved to deny being the so-called “business candidate” in the run-up to the 2024 election.
He denied the R1bn figure but conceded his campaign’s hunger for substantial amounts of money. Political party funding, he said, is “a global issue. You cannot run a political party or project without financial resources.” Not only his movement but other parties too are raising funds, he added.
On the face of it, it would be foolish for those with business interests to ignore trends and developments in the political sphere. Which party or alliance of parties governs and makes laws is an eminently pertinent matter to business.
Also, those who wield political power can either build or ruin a country, as our experience with load-shedding and logistics failures, among other crises, has shown.
But what is business’s political agenda in South Africa? What should it be?
Publicly, many in business would frown upon the idea of business being involved in politics. They might want to claim that, by making financial donations to political parties, they are merely seeking to support our democracy, and would then withdraw to the sidelines as disinterested onlookers. And it’s true that there are businesspeople who are genuinely enamoured of the idea of democracy as we know it today, especially the protection of private ownership and the freedom to make as much money as they can.
Yet, by choosing which party to support financially, business does make active political choices. Deciding to spread the largesse across parties is a choice too, even if it is
Should business’s raison d’être be solely to make superprofits and to ignore the wretched lives
of the majority of citizens?
an unprincipled one merely to hedge one’s bets. Worse, the latter option might next year give us the political mayhem and administrative paralysis of which Johannesburg is such a sorry microcosm today. And if business lives by the dictum of investment and returns, what profit would it expect from its investment in parties or individual leaders?
Should business’s raison d’être be solely to make superprofits and to ignore the wretched lives of the majority of citizens, including its own employees? All in the belief that wealth in a flourishing economy will automatically trickle down to the needy, of which the country has far too many? Or should business (in line with the mantra of people, planet and profit) choose to support political programmes aimed at reducing wealth disparities and poverty, to make the country a fairer, more equitable and more humane society?
Alternatively, would business rather pump money into a political programme that wants to retain a status quo that enriches a few and keeps the rest of the population in grinding poverty? The issue here being the questionable sustainability of such a dispensation, which carries within it the seeds of continued social and political instability — including the risk of a repeat of the July 2021 unrest, which hurt so many businesses.
On the other hand, business could be more imaginative, electing to support a path that leads to long-term stability and a thriving economy, all good for doing business. That would require, more than just betting on political parties as if they were racehorses, becoming an active player in cultivating social partnerships with other key stakeholders, which include the government, labour and civil society.
Instead of the current divisive dispensation of rich and poor, of insiders and outsiders, the new paradigm would strive to be more inclusive, giving everyone a stake in the development and prosperity of the country.
Of course, an attendant concern is the part played by money in our party politics, and its desire for influence within and outside political parties. In parties it is reputed to extend to vote-buying and bribery.
The other point of worry is the possibility of big money watering down the power of a citizen’s vote, having more influence over matters of policy than electors — where the interests of those with deep pockets supersede those of ordinary South Africans, who happen to be in the majority.
Some will say that what we have is a problem of corrupt, self-serving politicians rather than of money itself. Perhaps. And perhaps also one of short-sighted opportunism by business and the superrich.
Given the quality of leadership we are getting, it seems the influx of money into our politics is leaving us poorer as a nation instead.