Voters have a right to information about party funding, court told

DA to oppose calls for disclosure of funders

By Ashleigh Furlong
15 August 2017

My Vote Counts is arguing for disclosure of political party funding in the Western Cape High Court. Photo: Masixole Feni

Political parties should have to disclose who funds them, argued counsel for My Vote Counts in the Western Cape High Court today.

Arguments were heard from Advocate David Unterhalter, for My Vote Counts, and from Advocate Thabani Masuku, for the Minister of Justice. The Democratic Alliance, the only political party to oppose the court application, will present its arguments in court tomorrow.

Submissions on the topic of political party funding were also heard in Parliament today.

Unterhalter, for My Vote Counts, argued in court that the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) is constitutionally flawed in that it does not make provision for the recording and disclosure of information related to the funding of political parties.

Information about political party funding was very relevant to the “most fundamental” right – the right to vote, he said.

“When one chooses a party, one does not simply rely on what the party chooses to disclose. One wishes to know who stands behind that party, who backs it and why do they back it,” he said. Knowing this, revealed important information about the party, said Unterhalter, and was directly relevant to making an informed vote.

Unterhalter said citizens must make an “informed choice” when they vote. “All information relevant to the political choice must be on the table for the voter. Not [just] the information the political party chooses to show the voter.”

Unterhalter also argued that political parties are not private entities and that they are there to ensure we have a “just society”. “Information as to who supports a party is highly relevant to whether that party is going about its business to achieve the ultimate ends of the constitution.”
He said that the problem with PAIA is that it “lumps together” political parties and private individuals.

My Vote Counts also argued that the disclosure of information related to the funding of political parties, tied into concerns about corruption. Unterhalter said that there was a great risk that political parties’ constitutional role could be perverted if they were subject to the “pressures of corruption”.
Disclosure could help, said Unterhalter, as citizens would be able to “see who is doing what and why they are doing it”.

“You are entitled to know what a political party is doing, who supports them and why they might support them.”

He said that case law had shown that information that was “reasonably required” should be made available.This included information which was not documented. Political parties shouldn’t be able to say that because the information wasn’t recorded in a document, they did not need to disclose it.

He disputed the DA’s argument in its court papers that donors wish to remain anonymous. “You can’t hide behind the notion that [your] sources of funding remain private, even though you are a public institution seeking office,” said Unterhalter.

Privacy or anonymity claims were insignificant compared to the “foundational right to vote,” he said.
In response to DA arguments that donors feared they would be punished by the ANC for funding other parties, he said the possibility of illegal action was not an argument and if this concern was weighed up against the right to a free and open democracy, the latter would win.

Masuku, for the Minister of Justice, said My Vote Counts was targeting the wrong legislation. The Electoral Act and Electoral Commission Act should instead be targeted, said Masuku.
He will continue with his arguments tomorrow, followed by counsel for the DA.

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Published originally on GroundUp .

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Charlottesville attack shows homegrown terror on the right is on the rise

James Alex Fields Jr., second from left, holds a black shield in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a white supremacist rally took place.
Alan Goffinski via AP

The attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which a man named James Alex Fields Jr. used his Dodge Challenger as a weapon against a crowd of protesters, underscores the growing violence of America’s far-right wing.

According to reports, Fields was a active member of an online far-right community. Like many other far-right activists, he believes that he represents a wider ideological community, even though he acted alone.

My 15 years experience of studying violent extremism in Western societies has taught me that dealing effectively with far-right violence requires treating its manifestations as domestic terrorism.

In the wake of the Charlottesville attack, the Department of Justice announced it would launch a federal investigation:

“…that kind of violence, committed for seeming political ends, is the very definition of domestic terrorism.”

This acknowledgment may signal that a growing domestic menace may finally get the attention it deserves. While attacks by outsider Jihadist groups will probably continue, domestic terrorism still deserves more attention than it’s getting.

Domestic terrorism

Terrorism is a form of psychological warfare. Most terrorist groups lack the resources, expertise and manpower to defeat state actors. Instead, they promote their agenda through violence that shapes perceptions of political and social issues.

Fields’ attack, if it was motivated by racist sentiments, should be treated as an act of domestic terrorism. Here I define domestic terrorism as the use of violence in a political and social context that aims to send a message to a broader target audience. Like lynching, cross-burning and vandalizing religious sites, incidents of this kind deliberately aim to terrorize people of color and non-Christians.

I consider domestic terrorism a more significant threat than the foreign-masterminded variety, in part because the number of domestic terror attacks on U.S. soil is greater. For example, my report published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point identified hundreds of domestic terror incidents taking place between 2008 and 2012.

Another report, published in 2014 by New America Foundation on domestic incidents of extremist violence, shows that excluding the Orlando nightclub massacre, between 2002-2016, far-right affiliated perpetrators conducted 18 attacks that killed 48 people in the United States. Meanwhile, terrorists motivated by al-Qaida’s or the Islamic State’s ideology killed 45 people in nine attacks.

The Orlando mass shooting, given its mix of apparent motives, is difficult to categorize.

A spontaneous appearance

In briefings with law enforcement and policymakers, I have sometimes encountered a tendency to see U.S. right-wing extremists as a monolith. But traditional Ku Klux Klan chapters operate differently than skinhead groups, as do anti-government “patriot” and militia groups and anti-abortion extremists. Christian Identity groups, which believe Anglo-Saxons and other people of Northern European descent are a chosen people, are distinct too.

Certainly, there is some overlap. But these groups also differ significantly in terms of their recruitment styles, ideologies and whether and how they use violence. Across the board, undermining the threat they pose requires a more sophisticated approach than investigating their criminal acts as suspected hate crimes.

In an ongoing study I’m conducting at the University of Massachusetts Lowell with several students, we have determined that, as it seems to be also in the case of Fields, many attacks inspired by racist or xenophobic sentiments are spontaneous. That is, no one plans them in advance or targets the victim ahead of time. Instead, chance encounters that enrage the perpetrators trigger these incidents.

Sporadic attacks with high numbers of casualties that are plotted in advance, such as Dylann Roof’s murder of nine African-Americans in a Charleston, South Carolina church, are always big news. More typical incidents of far-right violence tend to draw less attention.

The widow of Clementa Pinckney, a pastor and South Carolina lawmaker slain in the mass murder at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, hugs her daughter during a 2015 memorial service for victims of that attack.
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

The fatal stabbing of Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche and Rick Best aboard a train in Portland, Oregon on May 26 seems to be no exception. The alleged killer of these two white men, Jeremy Joseph Christian, attacked them with a knife after they stood up to him for haranguing two young women who appeared to be Muslim, police said. A third injured passenger, Micahel Fletcher, has survived. Much of the media coverage is focused on Christian’s violent and racist background.

Given the spontaneous nature of so much far-right violence, U.S. counterterrorism policies should, in my view, target the dissemination of white supremacist ideology, rather than just identifying planned attacks and monitoring established white supremacy groups.

An iceberg theory

The number of violent attacks on U.S. soil inspired by far-right ideology has spiked since the beginning of this century, rising from a yearly average of 70 attacks in the 1990s to a yearly average of more than 300 since 2001. These incidents have grown even more common since President Donald Trump’s election.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that researches U.S. extremism, reported 900 bias-related incidents against minorities in the first 10 days after Trump’s election – compared to several dozen in a normal week – and found that many of the harassers invoked the then-president-elect’s name. Similarly, the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that tracks anti-Semitism, recorded an 86 percent rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the first three months of 2017.

Beyond the terror that victimized communities are experiencing, I would argue that this trend reflects a deeper social change in American society.

The iceberg model of political extremism, initially developed by Ehud Shprinzak, an Israeli political scientist, can illuminate these dynamics.

Murders and other violent attacks perpetrated by U.S. far-right extremists compose the visible tip of an iceberg. The rest of this iceberg is under water and out of sight. It includes hundreds of attacks every year that damage property and intimidate communities, such as the attempted burning in May of an African-American family’s garage in Schodack, New York. The garage was also defaced with racist graffiti.



Data my team collected at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point show that the significant growth in far-right violence in recent years is happening at the base of the iceberg. While the main reasons for that are still not clear, it is important to remember that changes in societal norms are usually reflected in behavioral changes. Hence, it is more than reasonable to suspect that extremist individuals engage in such activities because they sense that their views are enjoying growing social legitimacy and acceptance, which is emboldening them to act on their bigotry.

Budget cuts

Despite an uptick in far-right violence and the Trump administration’s plan unveiled earlier this year to increase the Department of Homeland Security budget by 6.7 percent to US$44.1 billion in 2018, the White House also proposed to cut spending for programs that fight non-Muslim domestic terrorism.

The federal government has also frozen $10 million in grants aimed at countering domestic violent extremism. This approach is bound to weaken the authorities’ power to monitor far-right groups, undercutting public safety.

How many more innocent people like Heather Heyer, who was killed in Fields’ attack – and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche and Rick Best in Seattle – have to die before the U.S. government starts taking the threat posed by violent white supremacists more seriously?

This is an updated version of an article originally published on May 28, 2017.

Arie Perliger, Director of Security Studies and Professor, University of Massachusetts Lowell

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

How safe is chicken imported from China? 5 questions answered

Cooked chicken meat imported from China could end up in U.S. restaurant meals without information about its origin.
Jacek Chabraszewski/Shutterstock

Editor’s note: Under a trade deal concluded in May, China has begun exporting chicken to the United States. Critics have pointed to China’s record of food safety issues and argued the deal prioritizes commerce over public health. Here Maurice Pitesky, a poultry extension specialist at the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine with a focus on poultry health and food safety epidemiology, answers five questions about importing Chinese chicken.

Why is the United States importing chicken from China? Do we have a shortage?

Hardly. The United States is the largest poultry producer in the world, and the second-largest poultry exporter after Brazil. However, as part of a recent bilateral trade deal, China has agreed to accept imports of beef and liquefied natural gas from the United States. In exchange, the United States is allowing China to export cooked poultry meat to the United States.

Why can China send us only cooked chicken?

This is most likely in response to concerns over avian influenza transmission from raw poultry to the United States. Viable avian influenza viruses could potentially infect U.S. poultry or birds and spread these novel viruses in North America. Some of these viruses can infect humans.

South and Southeast Asia have dense human populations, with numerous poultry producers, vendors and markets where people are exposed to live birds – all conditions that contribute to the spread of avian flu. Since 2013 China has confirmed 1,557 human cases of AH7N9 flu and 370 deaths.

A man selects chickens at a wholesale market in Shanghai, Jan. 21, 2014.
AP

Given China’s history of food safety problems, should US consumers be worried about eating chicken processed there?

China is already the third leading supplier of food and agricultural imports to the United States. U.S. consumers are eating imported Chinese fish, shellfish, juices, canned fruits and vegetables.

If poultry is cooked properly, there is no food safety risk from viruses or bacteria. However, if the poultry is not cooked properly, or if there is some type of cross-contamination – for example, if raw chicken or feathers come into contact with cooked product or packaging material – then zoonotic bacteria like salmonella and campylobacter can cross the species barrier and sicken humans.

Most cases of salmonellosis and campylobacteriosis are thought to be associated with eating raw or undercooked poultry meat, or with cross-contamination of other foods by these items. There are no publicly available data on rates of salmonellosis and campylobacteriosis in China. In the United States, infections from these two bacteria sickened nearly 14,000 people in 2014. Of this group, 3,221 were hospitalized and 41 died.

Poultry meat can also contain contaminants, such as heavy metals, and antibiotic residues if birds are treated with antibiotics in an inappropriate fashion. Specifically, when poultry farmers use antibiotics inappropriately (quantity, type and timing), residues can persist in muscle, organs and eggs and toxic and harmful residues build up in the birds. These risks are probably greater for poultry raised and processed in China than for poultry raised and processed in the United States.

Here in the United States there are strict rules requiring growers to stop giving birds antibiotics for periods of days or weeks before they are processed, and we have a National Residue Program that is designed to test for these compounds in eggs and meat.

U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety Inspection Service inspectors check the temperature of chicken carcasses at various control points in a processing plant to compare them with those measured and recorded by the plant to prevent multiplication of pathogenic bacteria, August 10, 2012.
Lester Shepherd, USDA

China has similar rules, but they are not robustly enforced, and many poultry farmers are not well-informed about them. The Chinese government recently announced a plan to increase surveillance, oversight and monitoring of poultry, livestock and aquatic products to decrease the presence of antibiotic residues by 2020.

Heavy metals in Chinese poultry products may also be an issue. This is a worldwide concern, but it’s especially serious in China because they still burn huge quantities of coal, which releases lead, mercury, cadmium and arsenic. High levels of lead and cadmium have been reported in agricultural areas near Chinese coal mines. These heavy metals can contaminate soil and end up in animal feed and animal meat and eggs.

We really don’t understand how widespread these problems are in China and the Chinese government isn’t very transparent about food safety. That’s starting to change, but there’s nothing like the publicly available data that we have in the United States at the processing plant and retail level.

What will US inspectors do to determine whether Chinese chicken is safe?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service is responsible for determining whether other countries have meat and poultry safeguards that are equivalent to ours. Chinese poultry processing plants cannot ship cooked poultry to the United States unless they meet that test.

When a foreign program is approved by the USDA, the Food Safety Inspection Service relies on that country’s government to certify that its plants are eligible and conduct regular inspections of the exporting plants. The Food Safety Inspection Service conducts on-site audits of the plants at least annually to verify that they are still meeting the required standards. It will be interesting to see whether the U.S. National Residue Program is involved in those inspections.

Demand for meat in China is rising along with incomes. U.S. beef producers are eager to export to China.
USDA

Where will chicken processed in China show up in US markets?

This is the million-dollar question. Cooked poultry is considered to be a processed food item, so it is excluded from country of origin labeling requirements which would apply to raw chicken. This means that U.S. consumers will not know they are consuming chicken grown and processed in China. Restaurants also are excluded from country of origin labeling, so the cooked poultry could be sold to restaurants without consumers knowing. The first Chinese exporter did not specify the name brand that its cooked chicken is being sold under.

The key issue is cost competitiveness. If China can sell cooked poultry at a competitive price point, there will most likely be a U.S. market for it. At this point, though, the Chinese poultry industry is not as integrated (that is, organized so that one company owns breeder birds, hatcheries, grow-out farms and processing plants) or technologically advanced as the U.S. poultry industry. In the short run this makes it difficult for China to compete with the U.S. poultry industry at any appreciable level, even though Chinese labor costs are lower.

Maurice Pitesky, Lecturer and Assistant Specialist in Cooperative Extension, University of California, Davis

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Why title deeds aren't the solution to South Africa's land tenure problem

Nearly 60% of all South Africans, live on land or in dwellings outside of the land titling system.
Filckr/Icrisat

The conventional view is that insecurity of land tenure results from the lack of a registered title deed which records the property rights of occupants of land or housing. Across Africa, many governments and international development agencies are promoting large-scale land titling as the solution.

In the South African context, some commentators suggest that a key legacy of the apartheid past is the continued tenure insecurity of the third of the population who live in “communal areas”, under unelected chiefs or of traditional councils. The remedy, they suggest, is simple: extend the system of title deeds to all South Africans.

We have just published a book which disputes this view. Untitled. Securing land tenure in urban and rural South Africa contains case studies of a wide range of land tenure systems found in different parts of the country. These include informal settlements, inner city buildings in Johannesburg, “deep rural” communal systems, land reform projects, and examples of systems of freehold rights held by black South Africans since the 19th century.

With the exception of systems of freehold rights, most people who occupy land or dwellings in these areas are “untitled”, and occupy land or dwellings under a very different kind of property regime. We term these social or off-register tenures.

But we argue that, fundamentally, South Africans need to question the assumption that the sole solution to the problem of tenure insecurity is a system of title deeds. Alternative approaches are needed, which we set out to explore.

Social tenures

The book offers an analysis of social tenures, which are regulated by a different logic and set of norms than those underpinning private property. Such tenures are diverse but share some key features. As is the case across the developing world, including Africa, land tenure is directly embedded in social identities and relations.

Rights are often shared and overlapping in character and generally derive from accepted membership of a community or kinship group. Processes of land allocation and dispute resolution are overseen by local institutional structures.

In these contexts, decisions are often informed by norms and values that stress the importance of reciprocal social relationships rather than buying power as the basis for land allocation. They involve flexible processes of asserting, negotiating and defending land rights, rather than the enforcement of legally defined rules.

It’s estimated that in 2011 some 1.5 million people lived in low-cost dwellings provided to the poor by government’s, so-called “Reconstruction and Development Programme” (RDP) houses, with inaccurate or outdated titles, in most cases due to transfers outside of the formal system.

Another 5 million lived in RDP houses where no titles had yet been issued due to systemic inefficiencies. Along with 1.9 million people in backyard shacks, 2 million on commercial farms, and 17 million in communal areas, this means that in that year around 30 million people, nearly 60% of all South Africans, lived on land or in dwellings held outside of the land titling system.

RDP housing.
Flickr

The edifice of title deeds

The book contrasts social tenures with the conventional system of title deeds, which constitutes a key element of an imposing “edifice”. The current system of rates, services and processes of development assumes that land tenure equals a surveyed plot with a singular registered owner, which may be persons or corporate bodies.

The system is serviced by a Deeds Registry, private sector surveyors and conveyancers, as well as municipal officials, all governed by a range of laws and regulations in a complex and interlocking manner.

One key problem facing those in social tenures is the discrimination they suffer at the hands of the state and the private sector. Despite some protection under laws such as the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act of 1996, people living in social tenures are severely disadvantaged. They may have to go to court to have their rights legally enforced, but most cannot afford to do so.

Development and land use planning, public investment and service delivery are constrained under these systems of tenure. Elite capture or abuse by unaccountable leaders can also take place, as in communal areas where minerals are found and chiefs and councils enter into business deals with mining companies that benefit only a few.

Titling enthusiasts argue that another problem with social tenures is the fact that banks do not accept untitled land or dwellings as security for bank loans. This constrains the poor from borrowing capital to invest in businesses of their own. But research indicates that few of the poor are willing to risk their homes in this way, since small enterprises often fail.

Tenure reform policy options

How then to proceed with pro-poor tenure reform? Our research indicates that it is not realistic to extend land titling to all; the system may be at breaking point, and is inadequate even for the emerging middle class.

Another option is to adapt elements of the edifice to provide a degree of official and legal recognition of rights within social tenures. Lawyers and planners working with communities and officials have developed a range of innovative practices, concepts and instruments aimed at securing such rights in an incremental manner. This includes special land use zones, recognising occupation rights in informal settlements, and recording rights using locally accepted forms of evidence.

A third option is a more radical overhaul of land tenure, leading to systematic recognition of and large scale support for social tenures. This would involve stronger laws protecting rights holders, an adjudication system that allows new forms of evidence to be considered in determining who holds rights, and new institutions for negotiating, recording and registering rights under social tenures. The system could include the office of a Land Rights Protector.

We believe that these alternatives all pose their own challenges. But we also believe that pursuing alternatives to a system of title deeds is not an impossible task.

The book was co-authored with Dona Hornby, a post-doctoral student at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape; Rosalie Kingwill, at the institute and Lauren Royston, a researcher at the Socio-Economic Rights Institute.

Ben Cousins, Professor, Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

What's happening inside the ANC, not parliament, is key to why Zuma prevails

Supporters of President Jacob Zuma reacting to the vote of no confidence proceedings in parliament.
Reuters/Rogan Ward

What matters inside the African National Congress, the party that governs South Africa, is not necessarily what matters outside it. This obvious point is missed by much of the commentary on the latest unsuccessful motion of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma – and in much discussion of South African politics.

One result of ignoring this reality is the claim that the vote seriously weakened Zuma because several dozen ANC members of parliament supported the motion or abstained.

This was the first time some ANC MPs supported a motion of no confidence in an ANC president. But, while Zuma came within 21 votes of losing in parliament, he was probably backed by 80% or more of the ANC caucus. Most of the votes against him were cast by opposition MPs, who do not have a say in who is ANC president, not ANC members, who do.

Unless parliament passes a motion of no confidence in him, which is not on the cards any time soon, his future depends on whether he was weakened in the ANC, not parliament.

Within the ANC, Zuma’s future is not the absorbing fixation it is outside it.

Loyalty amid factionalism

For many outside the ANC, politicians are defined by whether they want Zuma to go. Inside it, the key reality is a battle between two factions: Zuma’s is accused by its opponents, whose likeliest presidential candidate is deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, of using public office to advance private interests. While Zuma is supported by one and opposed by the other, both know he does not shape what the ANC and government do on his own – he acts as part of a faction. If he goes and the faction wins, nothing changes and so for both sides, winning the factional battle is far more important than Zuma’s fate.

The contest is centred on winning the leadership elections at the ANC’s December national elective conference. What both sides do, they do with that in mind – Zuma’s fate is a product of this battle.

Key figures in the factions also want to run an ANC in good shape to win the next election and so they worry about splitting or damaging the organisation. If doing what matters to people outside the ANC risks harming it, they will not do it.

There is no evidence yet that the vote weakened Zuma’s faction. Because the vote was secret, we don’t know which MPs voted for him to go. But common sense suggests that they are not pro-Zuma faction members who changed sides but staunch members of the group which wants him gone. So the anti-Zuma group has not grown because some of its members expressed themselves more forcefully.

Nor does it show that the tide within the ANC is moving against Zuma. What matters inside the ANC, but not outside it, is loyalty to the organisation. For many years it was banned and under constant attack – this produced a culture in which the default position is to close ranks in the face of what it sees as outside attack. This made the dissent by ANC MPs a huge step for them. But there is no reason why their view should be shared by others – given the premium on loyalty, their decision could help the pro-Zuma faction by discrediting its opposition.

This misfit between the logic of ANC politics and that outside it explains other aspects of the no confidence vote which have caused confusion. One is that figures such as secretary-general Gwede Mantashe and chief whip Jackson Mthembu worked to get ANC MPs to defeat the motion although they oppose Zuma’s faction; the SA Communist Party, which has called on Zuma to go, did not ask its members to support the motion.

They did this not because they have switched sides but because they believed Zuma’s defeat in a no confidence vote was unlikely – and would not help them if it happened. The opposing faction would still be there, as strong as before. They might be strong enough to replace Zuma with another member of the faction, changing nothing. Or, more likely, the deadlock between the factions would tear the ANC apart and might allow the opposition to elect a president by default. So they preferred to feign loyalty and to work to take over the ANC in December.

Balance of power

This means that the overwhelming ANC caucus vote against the motion does not tell us that the faction to which Zuma belongs is winning and will control the ANC after December. Many MPs who voted against the anti-Zuma motion may be part of the faction which wants him gone: they may have voted as they did because the leaders of their faction told them that strategy made this necessary. So the balance of power in the ANC, which decided who will lead it next year, may not have been affected either way by the no confidence vote.

What is happening inside the ANC may not be morally uplifting. But nor is it about foolishness or hypocrisy. It stems from decisions which are entirely logical if what matters inside the ANC matters to you. If everyone outside the ANC wants to grasp what is happening and where it might lead, they need to understand what matters inside the ANC.

Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.