I come from a scientific research background, where researchers are becoming critically aware of the concept of conflict of interest when one conducts and publishes research. For example, if you do a study that shows that drug A is better than drug B, and you have any commercial interest (conflict of interest) in drug A, e.g. you have shares in the company, or the study/ laboratory/ Institute is funded by the manufacturers of drug A, you must state it on the publication, to make the readers aware that there is potential for the study design/ tone of writing/ selective content/wording to be engineered in a manner that favours drug A.

I decided for arguments sake, to look at the political party funding models around the world and in ZA, and see where we can make improvements. How does one fund a political party without introducing strong conflicts of interest?

Our current system is a disaster, because the bulk of party funding comes from a limited number of influential individuals/organisations who have strong conflicts of interest. For example, if Patrice Matsepe's Rainbow Minerals donates millions to the ANC, there is an expectation that he will be granted favorable mineral rights/waver of environmental impact restrictions/ immunity from labour disputes etc on their operations. Or if one of Putin's oligarch friends use their SA operations to fund the ANC in exchange for a lucrative nuclear deal. Or even Mary Oppenheimer who is fed up with the ruling party decides to pump money into opposition parties.

For me the main weakness of this system is that the parties focus is drawn away from the people they serve and are instead drawn towards serving the interests of a select few. It is easier to approve a mineral right or sign a nuclear deal than it is to effectively manage the services of 60 million people.

We need to recreate a system where party funding is reconnected to the needs of the people. If for example a system was set up so that political parties can only be funded by individual citizens and with limits on how much can be donated (a few thousand) per person per year, it means that no individual will be able to wield the kind of influence that the "super donors" currently do. Parties will have to do a lot more leg work to engage the needs of their citizens. Fulfillment of political promises becomes more real to politicians in order to please the needs of ordinary people that put them in power.

The only problem with getting such a change made to the constitution, is that "Turkeys don't vote for Christmas." I don't think there is a single political party that wants to give up easy donor money in exchange for having to do a lot of performance based leg work on their electorate to raise funds.

Where such failures of democracy occur, countries such as Italy developed a referendum system, where the citizens may vote on issues outside of party politics. There was a landmark referendum a few years back where they voted to reduce the number of politicians in parliament and won. Viva Italia!!!