state assets. He refers to a GHC 3 million (Int’l $ 4.189) donation to the governing party in Ghana by Construction Pioneers, a road-building company that had a huge contract with the government. In most developing countries, these are sometimes referred to as “10% commissions”. In Africa and other developing countries, privatisation programmes provide another lucrative source of party (and indeed, personal) funding. These “political privatizations” are proving to be even more lucrative channels for party and personal funding than the old “10 per cent commission” levied on the value of government contracts awarded. Africa Confidential dissects the interconnections between the leadership of the ruling party in Côte d’Ivoire, the Parti Démocratique du Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI), and the business class in the context of privatization. Needless to say, these opportunities for political funding through the control of the state become available to new parties as well once they are voted into office, as in Zambia (1991), Malawi (1994) and Nigeria (1999) (Africa Confidential 39, 13 June 1998). In short, healthy political parties are often well-resourced political machines and the more resourced they are, the more they are likely to be in electoral contests. This is also the conclusion arrived at by Lloyd Sachikonye in his study of political parties in Zimbabwe: In sum, the fortunes of parties are, by and large, determined by the amount of resources at their disposal. Their capacity to sponsor election candidates and organise effective campaigns is largely determined by access to such resources. The same relates to their capacity to run a party secretariat and to pay party workers regular salaries. Similarly, the capability to advertise in the press depends on whether they have the requisite financial resources. The smaller parties clearly lack such resources (Sachikonye 2006, 34). One mechanism for endowing parties with the necessary resources is through public funding, a matter that we address below. Public Funding Public funding is increasingly the most popular form of party finance, at least with regard to election expenses. This is also the most controversial model of party finance. The principle of state funding of political parties applies in various countries6, but, Rautenbach and Malhembe argue, 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. It also has the effect of protecting represented parties from competition (success breeds success!) It appears, therefore, as if this arrangement is unfair under such circumstances and places an unreasonable limitation on the free political participation of non-represented parties and their members. Issues of campaign funding have posed difficult problems of policy and law in many countries, including in Germany and the USA. In Germany, animated debates have raged over the question of public funds being used to fund the quest for power by political parties. Should the quest for power be treated in the same way as state funding for private schools? It has been argued that the doctrine of equal electoral opportunity forbids the state to take sides in election campaigns. Currie notes that this understandable principle has obvious immplicaitons for state support of political parties (1994, 208). He notes that in Germany, the government may not distribute political propaganda for the parties to which its members belong and this means the disfavoured parties are excluded from the free use of public broadcast media that other parties enjoy. 6 Examples include: Germany, France, Sri Lanka, Canada, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, Sweden, Austria, Italy, Spain and Zimbabwe. 10