emerging ones leaves the larger parties better off while the small or emerging ones will stagnate or even collapse. This view is echoed by Masunungure, who says that in a developing society that has only recently adopted a democratic system and where party financing is only available to parties actually represented in the legislature, the exclusion of non-represented parties may indefinitely paralyse such parties. He says further that this has ‘the effect of protecting represented parties from competition’59. South Africa tried to avoid such an unfair arrangement in the first democratic elections in 1994. While the larger parties had one way or another accumulated considerable financial and other resources during the apartheid years and could therefore finance their election campaigns, the smaller parties did not have such resources and clearly required public funding to run their election campaigns. An Electoral Fund was therefore established to finance the campaign activities of any party registered to contest the election which could either: • Demonstrate that it enjoyed at least 2% support in a credible opinion poll; or • Collect at least 10 000 supporting signatures (half of the signatures comprising at least 1 000 signatures from voters in five provinces) if contesting the national ballot. Half the fund was distributed among parties which met the above criteria and the other half among parties which actually won election to the national assembly or to a provincial assembly. Generally, the money was distributed equally, thus ensuring that both large and small parties had equal access to public funding60. Public funding in South Africa is now accessed by political parties currently represented in national and provincial legislatures and it is allocated according a formula that takes into account the proportion of members a party has in the National Assembly and the provincial legislatures and a minimum threshold amount to ensure equity61. In the other SADC countries where political parties benefit from public funding, it would appear that the trend is that funding is based on representation in the legislature, and that political parties receive State funding which is proportional to their share of votes or seats won. In Malawi, 59 Masunungure, op cit, pp.14-15. Friedman, op cit, p.3. Parties which could show support in an opinion poll were awarded double the money to that awarded to parties which relied on signatures. Parties which won seats in the assemblies were awarded a share of the post-election 50% while those who failed did not. The election results however showed that these criteria to measure party support could be misleading. For instance, the Democratic Party and the Pan Africanist Congress demonstrated 2% support but did not win 2% support while the Workers List Party gathered 10 000 signatures but won less than 5 000 votes. 61 “Funding of Political Parties”, http://www.eisa.org.za/WEP/comparties.htm, op cit. 60 23