The rivalry between political parties often reaches fever pitch, with each one fiercely vying for the ultimate prize: governing power. Desperate to secure the mandate to lead, parties will go to great lengths and often find themselves engaging in all manner of untoward pursuits.
Governance seems to be a highly profitable venture. The intense, cutthroat rivalry among political parties vying for electoral victory stems from the fact that whoever seizes power gains control over abundant resources. The belief is that these resources will flow down to benefit the members of the victorious party.
This column advocates for a radical shift in this expectation. Instead of the ruling party reaping the benefits, the government should be the one that gains, with the ruling party acting as the benefactor. While this may sound absurd to some, it should not be.
Any government’s primary source of funding is taxpayers’ money. People feel obligated to pay taxes because the law mandates it. On reflection, taxes are an ancient method of collecting revenue, practiced since the dawn of organized societies. Historically, the ruling elites have imposed tax levies on their subjects, often punishing non-compliance with severe consequences.
I recall hearing about the poll tax requirement during my childhood. Many men in Malawian villages struggled with the requirement to pay this tax, as they often had no steady income. There was a man at Nkhoma, which is where I lived in my youth, who would habitually visit homes at Nkhoma Mission, begging for alms. He came from a nearby village, and while most residents believed he was a lunatic, the more perceptive ones knew or suspected that he faked his insanity to escape the burden of paying the poll tax. People would go to such extremes in those days to avoid paying taxes.
Tax collectors are generally not beloved figures in society, especially when people fail to see the benefits of the money collected. The Biblical Zacchaeus comes to mind. Neither is tax collection the most imaginative method of raising funds, but it is arguably the easiest since the money is simply surrendered to those in power, not earned. Consequently, political parties fiercely compete for the coveted position of running the government and controlling the resource pool, which is perpetually replenished by taxpayers’ money.
Surely, we can be more creative than that. We need a paradigm shift from relying on funds that are simply surrendered to those in power, to funds that are earned instead. While this is not an easy task, it is achievable. It would, obviously, require a cultural revolution to break away from the long-held assumption that taxes are the primary or indeed the only way to generate government revenue.
This article proposes a radical idea: political parties should find creative ways to generate their own income. This may sound strange but by learning to run businesses and invest in various ventures, parties can diversify their revenue sources. Adopting this model would not only make parties self-reliant but also enable them to provide their members, and even those outside their parties, with opportunities to earn a decent living through employment.
Political parties can establish and run mega farms, for example. They can invest in manufacturing, retail, extraction, hospitality or training, among other ventures. The possibilities of generating decent income are limitless.
Parties are particularly suited to this approach, as they can easily raise venture capital by pooling money from their members. They just need to identify creative and acceptable methods to do this. The more popular a party is, the more followers it will have, and these followers can be offered the chance to invest in various ventures. By doing so, they become shareholders who receive a return on their investment.
Party authorities need not be directly involved in running the party’s businesses; they should, instead, provide oversight to the technocrats managing them. In fact, it should be mandatory that anyone employed by the party’s businesses ceases to be an active party member.
The Bible says “whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” If a party can prove its trustworthiness in managing its own enterprises, it can be expected to be trustworthy in running the government. For example, if the government is expected to created employment opportunities, those who run it must first demonstrate, through their enterprises, that they have the capacity to create jobs.
Voters must be able to sample the achievements of parties in terms of running the affairs of organisations before they can entrust them with the responsibility of running the bigger organization – Government.