ZANU PF will continue to form Government from now until time immemorial. If this money was put up to viable/economic projects in our constituencies, this would be the most important thing that would help every Tom, Dick and Harry. This way of spending money is not good when we are beggars and when we have no money – I do not think that is a reasonable thing to do at all. … We need to pay for food, we need to do a lot of things - and then we budget for supporting political parties, what for? We do not have the money. … It is my contention and my submission that if that money – if it was considered how best we should use it in our constituencies, almost of all which are ZANU PF, I tell you, for the next five years we are in power, if we had a viable project in each of these constituencies it would be more profitable to our people, to the party, and to ourselves than actually dishing that money into the dust bin. This is money we do not have, money we have to borrow. When will we learn to do things economically? (Parliamentary Debates 27 August, 1992, 1306). The counter-argument, equally valid, is that democracy does not come cheaply and therefore that in fact, state funding is needed for all political parties in counties with fragile democracies where the governing party has inexhaustible access to state resources that it routinely abuses bolster its party activities and to campaign in elections against enfeebled opposition parties. The gross inequality of resources between ruling and opposition parties has been noted to a point of outspending all opposition parties put together. For instance, Fall (2000, 313-331) calculated that, in Ghana, the ruling party outspent all opposition parties combined by 15:1, probably by a bigger margin in Kenya, and by as much as 30:1 in Senegal. Clearly, such a situation affects that democratic content and quality of elections. To Fall, fairness of electoral processes and outcomes is, in turn, a major factor in the chances of successful consolidation of a fledgling democracy. “It is for the sake of consolidating the fragile democracy that has re-emerged in Africa that public funding of political parties should be considered seriously and may need to be adopted widely”, he writes. There are strong arguments, therefore, for state funding of political parties. Political parties need funds in order to play their roles effectively in the democratic process, especially the opposition parties’ role of balancing the incumbent regime. Moreover, the argument goes, if parties received public funds, the incentives for resorting to illicit avenues for funding might diminish. Public funding can also level the playing field somewhat for all players and, equally important, act as the “sweetener”, the quid pro quo, for a stringent regulation of election expenditure. Parties that accept public funding can be made to agree thereby to disclose their other sources of income, publish audited accounts and observe spending limits. A legal provision entitling any registered political party to seek judicial enforcement of the regulations will give all participants in the democratic process the tools to insist on transparency, and thereby protect and advance democracy. According to Currie (1994, 211), the Germany state-funding of political parties dilemma was resolved, at least tentatively, by noting that there was no basis for distinguishing between elections and other party activities; what mattered was the total amount of the subsidy, its relation to resources raised from other sources, and their distribution among the various parties. The bottom-line was that the total subsidy for all parties was not to exceed the mean sum that had been granted during the preceding three years; that no party was to receive more from the state than it raised on its own; and that each party’s share must be based in part upon its relative success in attracting private contributions. It may equally be noted that one of the arguments in favour of public financing of political parties in Germany, as in the US and other countries, was that it would limit the influence of large private corporations. Nonetheless, legislative measures appear necessary to combat excessive private influence by limiting private contributions directly. 12