Money is essential to politics. Unregulated money, however, can enable political corruption, which justifies the need for regulation. Public funding of political parties can promote equal political opportunities in heterogeneous societies. Hence, it is necessary to fund politics partly from public resources. A country adopts a political financing philosophy depending on its political environment. This article compares two main global approaches to funding political parties to identify best practices for South Africa’s nascent public funding regime. The first is Ghana’s egalitarian model, which emphasises strict regulation of both public and private funding of political parties. The second is Switzerland’s strategy, which relies on private funding with minimal state regulation. This article examines how these two models impact democratic values. Comparative doctrinal research methods underpin this analysis. It reviews Ghana’s and Switzerland’s legal and institutional financing systems to evaluate how effectively they uphold democracy. The paper shows that Ghana’s strict regulation promotes democratic equality by providing political opportunities in a diverse society, although challenges remain regarding effective regulation. Switzerland’s approach preserves the independence of political parties but risks fostering a plutocracy. Considering South Africa’s post-apartheid context, its emerging political financing system could include aspects of both libertarian and egalitarian models; it could adopt a hybrid approach using technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence to overcome transitional democracy challenges. The paper therefore recommends that South Africa should adopt a hybrid public financing model. The reason is that neither Ghana’s egalitarian system nor Switzerland’s libertarian regime sufficiently address the democratic challenges related to political financing.