RAMAKWE PULE | Intra-party democracy and the money-in-politics problem

The DA claims to be organised internally on a democratic basis and committed to governing democratically. Yet the federal congress it held on April 11-12 revealed a pattern of weak internal democracy, suggesting that intra-party democracy (IPD) is practically impossible to fulfil.

IPD refers to the extent to which party members meaningfully participate in, influence and control internal decision-making processes. These include leadership selection, candidate selection, systems of accountability and transparency, and policy development.

The congress was characterised by a managed form of IPD where participation existed, but leadership selection appeared staged, candidate selection was centralised, and meaningful deliberation was constrained. Accountability and transparency were weak, fair disciplinary procedures raised concerns, and even dissent seemed discouraged.

One of the delegates, Pogiso Mthimunye, appeared disenchanted as he urged party members to “apply your minds rather than follow instructions”, a telling reflection of the congress. I now turn to each of these indicators of a managed form of IPD.

Leadership selection

In theory, leadership selection should be a “bottom-up” process, whereby procedures for selecting who leads the party are inclusive and provide party members with an opportunity to voice their preferences.

In practice, party elites go to significant lengths to leverage their political expertise and advantages to have an outsized influence on leadership selection outcomes, lock in the status quo and create an uneven playing field within the party. This ultimately limits IPD.

As the formal de jure powers of Helen Zille and John Steenhuisen faded, their need to still exert disproportionate influence in shaping the DA’s politics remained.

Faced with internal calls for greater decentralisation, accountability and transparency, Zille and Steenhuisen deftly influenced the leadership selection for two powerful positions — federal leader (Geordin Hill-Lewis) and federal council chair (Ashor Sarupen) — to prevent these calls from coming to fruition.

While Zille and Steenhuisen did not explicitly endorse Hill-Lewis and Sarupen to present coherence and unity in the lead-up to the congress (since the DA often mistakes factions’ invisibility for their absence), the former is often perceived as a protégé of Zille-era governance thinking and is aligned with Steenhuisen’s leadership direction. The latter fits Zille’s core values of market fundamentalism and institutional discipline and has been Steenhuisen’s useful ally.

Robert Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy” provides the well-established political foundation for making this assertion: party elites tend to reproduce themselves.

Candidate selection

Candidate selection should also be inclusive. Party members should influence who appears as a candidate on the party’s final list. The congress exposed a clear contradiction in this regard. Delegates strongly supported the Medi Pele (Roots First) policy, which aims to reduce parachuting into the party and empower branches.

However, they did not amend the party constitution to limit or redefine federal council powers over candidate selection, implying that the Medi Pele policy did not fundamentally alter who controls candidate selection.

As a result, control remains centralised. Such contradictions are signs that the DA talks left and walks right, implying that the party is no different from the other parties it so decries.

A party cannot claim to be practising IPD unless it is inclusive and representative with respect to gender, race and age in leadership and candidate selections.

While the election of Siviwe Gwarube as the first deputy federal chair was a positive step for age and gender representation, it simultaneously highlighted that promoting greater women’s representation and age diversity in leadership and candidate selections is rarely seen as an objective in the DA.

The absence of quotas to promote women’s representation in all-men party elites suggests that representation is not yet systemic in the DA and therefore insufficient for robust IPD. Isolated breakthroughs do not equal meaningful inclusion.

Participation and deliberation

IPD requires more than voting; it requires deliberation. At the DA congress, party members certainly voted on proposed policy resolutions and constitutional amendments.

However, deliberation was a tightly controlled spectacle. A clear example of this was a constitutional amendment to introduce a deputy federal leader position. This amendment, supported by younger party members, attempted to proactively thwart the “sins of incumbency” in the party.

Despite visible support, it was hastily dismissed by the constitutional amendment committee and rejected by the federal congress for failing to meet the required two-thirds threshold for a constitutional amendment.

This process raised concerns (possible manipulation of voting processes or gatekeeping by party elites to vouchsafe their self-serving interests), with limited space to challenge or question the outcome, leaving party members calling for this amendment frustrated.

This reflects a broader issue: participation without influence. A one-member, one-vote system could address this challenge. Notably, the ANC is considering one member, one vote, reflecting a wider recognition that a delegates system can entrench party elites’ dominance.

Accountability, transparency and fair disciplinary procedures

Fair disciplinary procedures are the backbone of IPD. They prevent selective targeting of opponents to shape outcomes around key political events like the congress.

The disqualification of Karabo Khakhau from the leadership race ahead of the congress due to unpaid party tithes may be formally justified.

However, the timing of her disqualification created a strong perception of selective application of disciplinary procedures to amplify political advantages of favoured leadership candidates. It is alleged that Steenhuisen has failed to pay tithes in the past, yet nothing happened to him.

Such inconsistencies turn disciplinary procedures into tools of political control rather than neutral mechanisms of accountability. This has deeper implications. It may disproportionately affect black women candidates in historically exclusionary positions in the DA — Gwarube’s position does not negate the pattern, as her election was a classic case of “selective permeability”.

For a party to be internally democratic, it must be transparent and accountable, both to its members and to the public. At the congress, transparency and accountability were outward-looking (too much emphasis was placed on the DA’s performance in government than was necessary), with inward-looking transparency and accountability playing second fiddle.

For instance, the congress adopted an Ethical Governance Charter, which sets out ethical standards for clean, transparent and accountable governance in all spheres of government the DA controls.

However, it does not address internal political finance. It does not regulate how leadership campaigns are funded, require disclosure of private donors, or clarify who funded the congress itself.

This omission is critical. Without transparency, money can shape internal outcomes in ways that remain invisible. The gap is even more concerning when viewed alongside the Political Funding Act. While the act regulates external party funding, it does not cover internal party funding.

Similarly, proposed amendments to the executive members’ code of ethics aim to strengthen accountability in public office but do not regulate the internal party funding processes that produce public representatives.

Overall, the DA congress demonstrated that IPD remains incomplete. However, the challenge is not the absence of IPD in form, but its limitation in practice.

• Pule is a researcher at My Vote Counts, an NPO focused on improving accountability and transparency in South Africa’s political and electoral systems.